Landing · 🇺🇸 United States · NASA

Apollo 15

Ended

Mare Imbrium, foot of the Apennine mountains (Hadley-Apennine)

Facts last verified against primary sources on 2026-10-10. Mission page →

Landing

1971-07-30 22:16 UTC

Target

26.13°N 3.63°E

Located after landing

Landed

1971-07-30 22:16 UTC

Soft landing

Sun · touchdown

+12.02°

E (az 96°) · whole disk up

Earth · touchdown

+69.18°

SW (az 203°) · direct link to Earth possible

Located after landing

2 km reference ring

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Site plan

North up, true scale around the target point. Arrows: where the Sun and the Earth sit on the horizon at touchdown.

The sky from the landing site

Where the Sun and the Earth sit above the horizon from two days before touchdown through the following four weeks. Predicted by JPL Horizons for a smooth Moon: hills and crater walls are not included, and near the poles they can hide a Sun that is a degree or two up.

Sun up: 49% of the window
Next sunset: 1971-08-13 14:00 UTC
Earth up: 100% of the window
Earth elevation: 56.9° to 69.4°

Source: JPL Horizons observer tables (DE441, Moon mean-Earth frame), Sun and Earth seen from 26.132°N 3.633°E at 0 m on the 1,737.4 km sphere, hourly, 1971-07-28 to 1971-08-27. “Sun up” means any part of the disk is above the smooth horizon. Method: landing-site sky.

Engine plume: reference distances

155 mApollo 12 → Surveyor 3. Apollo 12 landed about 155 m from Surveyor 3, and its plume sandblasted the older lander. source
600 m1 cm gravel, Apollo-sized lander. Gravel 1 cm across leaves a Lunar Module–sized lander's plume at about 30 m/s and lands within 600 m; NASA gives up to about 1.5 km for 1–10 cm rocks. source
2 kmNASA heritage-site standoff. NASA recommends targeting touchdown at least 2 km from U.S. lander heritage sites (0.5 km from impact sites). source

No CLPS or Artemis lander has a published plume keep-out distance; these are reference cases, drawn around the target point, not limits for this lander. Fine dust leaves a plume at up to kilometres per second and is not stopped by any ring. Apollo 15 Lunar Roving Vehicle is inside 2 km of the target point.

Hardware already nearby

Apollo 15 Lunar Roving VehicleNASA · 1971 · soft landing130 m E

Great-circle distance from the target point on the 1,737.4 km sphere, to landing and impact sites in our curated table.

Timeline

1971-07-30 22:16 UTCLunar Module Falcon landed
1971-08-02 17:11 UTCLunar Module ascent stage lifted off from the Moon
1971-08-07 20:45 UTCSplashdown in the Pacific Ocean