Neil Armstrong and his companion Buzz Aldrin were the first, but not the only Americans on the moon. Apollo 15, just two years later, carried Commander David Scott, Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin and Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden. While Worden stayed in the command module, Scott and Irwin made the descent to the moon’s surface where they planned to take some readings to take joyride across the field.

On this day, July 30, in 1971, the Apollo 15, with Scott and Irwin on board, landed on the moon. The men took samples of some rocks, bringing back one that was later measured to be 4.5 billion years old, formed around the time our entire solar system was just 100 million years old. And they also went for a spin in the Lunar Rover.

The Lunar Roving vehicle looked nothing so much as a bleached dune buggy with a satellite dish — hence its affectionate nickname “moon buggy”.  It was a rather expensive buggy — NASA paid around $38 million for a set of four — and it was limited in range to just three miles, powered by nonrechargeable batteries, but it was first time ever a crew was able to use any vehicle to move about the surface of the moon.