Alan Shepard explosion caused the moon landing to be aborted and nearly resulted in the loss of the crew. It became a joke between Shepard and Lovell, who would offer to give Shepard back the mission each time they bumped into each other. The failure of Apollo 13 delayed Apollo 14 until 1971 so that modifications could be made to the spacecraft. The target of the Apollo 14 mission was switched to the Fra Mauro formation, the intended destination of Apollo 13. Shepard made his second space flight as Commander of Apollo 14 from January 31 to February 9, 1971. It was
Apollo 15 postal covers incident about ; they entered the spacecraft in Scott's pocket. Apollo 15 blasted off for the Moon at 9:34 am on July 26, 1971, with three astronauts and about 641 covers aboard. At some point while the mission was en route to the Moon, the 400 covers were moved into the lunar lander "Falcon"; in his testimony, Scott agreed this violated the rules. He stated he did not recall how the transfer took place, and that he was only certain that the envelopes went to the lunar surface because they were in the bag of items taken out of the "Falcon"