On this day: humans drove a vehicle on the Moon for the first time (31 July 1971)
Having landed in the Moon's Hadley-Apennine region on 30 July 1971, the Apollo 15 crew would make history a different way the following day — 31 July — when David Scott and James Irwin became the first humans to drive a vehicle on a celestial body other than Earth.
The vehicle, officially known as the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), was developed by Boeing under contract to NASA. The first unit built cost roughly $38 million — making it one of the most expensive 'cars' of the space age. Its folding design allowed it to be stowed on the exterior of the lunar module and unfolded by the astronauts once they had landed on the Moon.
The rover's top speed was roughly 13 km/h — not much faster than a bicycle, but on the Moon's low gravity and dusty, cratered surface, even that speed represented a significant leap. On previous Apollo missions, astronauts had been limited to walking, confining their activities to the immediate vicinity of the landing site.
The mobility the LRV provided fundamentally changed the scale of scientific exploration possible. Over the three days between 31 July and 2 August, the Apollo 15 crew covered more than 25 kilometres on the lunar surface — vastly exceeding the roughly 6.8 kilometres astronauts on foot had covered across all previous Apollo missions combined.
That added mobility let science teams extend their research area well beyond the immediate landing site to geologically far more varied terrain — including the edge of a deep valley called Hadley Rille and the foothills of the nearby Apennine mountains. From there, the crew collected rock samples that shed light on the Moon's early geological history.
The rover also boosted the mission's overall scientific efficiency: astronauts could reach sample-collection sites too far to walk to, carry equipment, and conduct longer research excursions without becoming fatigued.
Following Apollo 15's success, the LRV was used on the programme's remaining two missions — Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 — where crews carried out similarly extensive geological surveys across different regions of the Moon.
The LRV's development reflected the technical ambition of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though the vehicle itself was designed as a practical engineering solution focused on extending the boundaries of scientific exploration.
Today, the Lunar Roving Vehicles remain where they were left, at the landing sites of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 — quiet remnants of a period of human presence on the Moon that has not been repeated since.
That first drive on 31 July 1971 might read, at first glance, as a technical footnote in space history. In fact, it marked the moment humanity's mobility on another world shifted from walking to driving, permanently changing the scale of what exploration there could achieve.
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