The Astronaut Who Fell on the Moon

 

Date: August 1971

Key Characters: Apollo 15 Commander David Scott.

Historical Reference: NASA mission transcripts and imagery.

The Story: Near the end of the final moonwalk of the Apollo 15 mission, Commander David Scott performed a small, secret ceremony that was not in the official flight plan. He placed a small, 3.5-inch aluminum sculpture onto the lunar dust. It was a stylized figure of an astronaut in a spacesuit, meant to represent all the space explorers who had died in the pursuit of reaching the stars. Next to this "Fallen Astronaut" statue, he laid a plaque bearing the names of 14 American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had perished. The memorial was left in a place of honor, a quiet and poignant tribute left on another world. The existence of the statue was not revealed to the public until after the crew had safely returned to Earth, making it a solemn, personal gesture of remembrance that remains on the Moon to this day.