NASA has released photos, videos,
and audio recordings
of its Apollo missions.
CapCom: We copy you down, Eagle.
Narrator: So there's little
left about these missions
that we don't already know,
except for one mystery
that's been hiding in
plain sight for decades:
One of NASA's Apollo lunar
modules may be missing.
That's right, missing.
And not even NASA seems
to know where it is.
Houston: Engines on
five, four, three, two,
all engines running.
We have liftoff.
Dave Mosher: Where is Lunar Module 14?
What state was it in?
Does anybody have it?
Does anybody know where it's at?
Narrator: From 1962 to 1970,
NASA commissioned Grumman Aircraft
to build 15 space-worthy lunar modules
for its Apollo program.
Each one was labeled
Lunar Modules 1 through 15
and cost around $150 million to make,
or about $1.1 billion today.
Newscaster: Charlie Brown was
selected by the astronauts
as the codename for the
Apollo 10 command module,
and his friend Snoopy was the call sign
for the lunar module.
Mosher: NASA launched 10 of
these lunar landers into space.
Six of them landed on
the surface of the moon
and brought the astronauts back.
Other four were used for practices
and dry runs, future missions.
And there were five that
were left on the ground.
Narrator: Three of those five
that never went to space,
Lunar Modules 2, 9,
and 13, are in museums,
which leaves us with LM-14 and 15.
Lunar Module 15...
Mosher: Was another lunar lander
that was being built for Apollo 20,
which, of course, never happened.
They turned it into scrap metal.
So that leaves us with
one lunar lander, LM-14.
On the Smithsonian's website,
there's a page listing the lunar landers
and all of their fates.
Lunar Module 15 is listed as scrapped,
but if you go up one row and
you look at Lunar Module 14,
it says "Not Used."
What that means, we don't know,
and that's what started this
adventure in the first place.
Narrator: To be clear, it is not easy
to hide one of these landers.
Once complete, they're
the size of a small house
and weigh about 35,000 pounds.
Mosher: Now, when we started
looking into Lunar Module 14,
things were a little weird.
The documents that we had access to
said incomplete or not used.
It didn't say anything
about it being scrapped.
It didn't say it was in
any institution or museum.
And so we started digging into this.
Narrator: NASA and the Smithsonian
didn't have evidence to its whereabouts,
the Cradle of Aviation Museum didn't know,
and even historians at Northrop Grumman,
the original manufacturers
of the lunar modules, were stumped.
Mosher: But one of the experts
that we talked to said,
hey, I think it's at
the Franklin Institute
in Philadelphia.
We looked into that, and it was not it.
It was an early prototype
from the Apollo program,
a lunar module that was never
supposed to fly into space.
Narrator: And then we got a lead. Sort of.
Mosher: There was a
document from March 1978
that is a disposition, or a list,
of everything in the Apollo program.
What it was, what its code number was,
and where it's located.
And that document is missing Page No. 9,
which is the page that
describes where Lunar Module 14
would be located or what
happened to it, if anything.
Narrator: Yeah, it sounds exactly
like some sort of Hollywood spy thriller,
but this actually happened.
Nobody could find this document.
Even one of NASA's
historians looked for us
and couldn't locate it.
And the same went for
the National Archives.
We finally got some clue
as to what happened to it
from University of
Houston's space archive.
Mosher: Hi, this is Dave
Mosher with Business Insider.
Is this Jean?
Jean: Hi. Yes, it is.
Hi, Dave.
Mosher: Hi.
So, I heard you found
Page 9 of that document.
Can you read it to me,
tell me what is says?
Jean: Next to LM-14, it
says "Mission Cancelled."
Mosher: Mission canceled.
And then is there anything
else that it says?
Jean: The next column says remarks.
It says, "Deleted from program."
Mosher: Deleted from program. [laughs]
It doesn't say where it
went or what happened to it?
Jean: No, it does not.
Mosher: OK.
Narrator: So we were at a dead end.
And, to be fair, this
wouldn't be the first time
a moon lander has been lost to history.
In 1969, the lunar lander for Apollo 10
was ejected into space
as part of a dry run for Apollo 11.
Newscaster: Ground contact was maintained
with the ascent stage until
its batteries were depleted,
some 12 hours later.
Narrator: NASA didn't track
the lander at the time,
so it was missing, floating
somewhere in space for decades.
Until, in 2019, a group
of enthusiasts from the UK
said they were pretty sure they found
where it was floating in space.
So, if those guys could
find a lost lunar module
in the vast expanse of space,
why does nobody know where a
moon lander on Earth has gone?
Charles Duke: OK, this has got to be
the greatest sight ever.
Narrator: So we had pretty much given up
on uncovering the truth.
That was, until we got ahold of Paul Fjeld
a few weeks later.
He's obsessed with these lunar landers.
Mosher: In fact, he worked with
the Cradle of Aviation Museum
to retrofit LM-13 into an
Apollo-style landing site
within the museum.
Narrator: So, here's what he had to say
about our grand
missing-lunar-lander mystery.
Paul Fjeld: 14 actually
never really got built.
I'm not gonna bet my son's life,
but I'll bet a lot of money
that there's not a scrap of LM-14 left.
Narrator: Of course, that would explain
why there's no photos of it.
Mosher: The really revealing
thing that Paul showed us
was this progress chart from Grumman
of the lunar landers that
were under construction
right before NASA canceled
the entire program,
and it shows that LM-14 was
about 1% to 5% complete,
based on Fjeld's analysis.
So the farthest that
technicians at Grumman got
was basically cutting out
all of these pieces of metal
and starting to assemble
them, weld them together,
before NASA canceled the program.
We also spoke to two other
space-flight-history experts,
and they also think
that LM-14 was scrapped,
but they're not entirely certain of that.
Fjeld: I'm gonna say they would've said,
look, we got a bunch of F-14s
that are just starting to
come off the line here.
This is what's the future for Grumman.
We need all the metal that we can get.
This is some lovely 2024 aluminum,
7075 structural aluminum.
Can we use that on F-14s?
Sure.
Narrator: So LM-14's Frankensteined pieces
maybe did fly, in a way.
And perhaps they're in an
aviation museum right now,
as part of a jet.
Newscaster: In this strange, metallic bird
rides the ancient and
endless dream of all mankind.
Narrator: But we may never know for sure.
Fjeld: I can't guarantee
that, you know, some guy
didn't just drive it off the lot
and it's now sitting in his
basement or up in an attic
that his grandkids have no
idea what the h--- it is.
Who knows? [laughs]
