Landing Site Selection
As Apollo 14 was an early Apollo mission, landing sites were restricted to equatorial regions for technical reasons. After Apollo 12 demonstrated the ability to land at a pre-specified landing zone, mission planners considered landings in rough, but geologically interesting areas of the Moon.
The aborted Apollo 13 mission was originally scheduled to land at Fra Mauro, with Apollo 14 scheduled to land in the Littrow region of Mare Serenitatis. After Apollo 13 failed to land, it was decided to re-target Apollo 14 to Fra Mauro, as it was regarded as more interesting scientifically than the Littrow site. There, Apollo 14 had the objective of sampling ejecta from the Imbrium impact to gain insight into the Moon's geologic history. A landing site near the freshly formed Cone crater was chosen, as this crater served as a 'natural drill hole' to allow the astronauts to obtain Imbrium ejecta, the primary objective of the mission.
Read more about this topic: Fra Mauro Formation
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