Astronauts
Colonel Al Worden became an Apollo astronaut in 1966. He is from Jackson, Michigan, the same home town as Gemini 4 and Apollo 9's Jim McDivitt.
He graduated from West Point in 1955, and was commissioned by the Air Force. Upon joining NASA, he was Richard Gordon's backup as command module pilot on Apollo 12. That meant he was to become CMP on Apollo 15, in 1971, three flights later. This crew, with Dave Scott as mission CDR and James Irwin as LMP, received extensive geolopy training, and would explore the surface for three days, assisted by the first lunar rover.
Worden would remain in orbit, but his command & service Module was now outfitted with a SIM bay, a scientific instrument module, with mapping cameras, a sub-satellite, many environmental experiments. Worden did geology from orbit, while operating the SIM bay.
On the way home, Worden made a 38-minute deep-space EVA to retrieve the wxposed film canisters from the SIM cameras.
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