With the success of the unmanned Artemis 1 mission last year, NASA took another step towards returning astronauts to the surface of the moon in the coming years, building on the legacy of the Apollo program. One part of that legacy is the Apollo 14 mission, which lifted off 52 years ago today.

Apollo 14 was the first lunar mission to follow the ill-fated Apollo 13 flight the previous year. On board was commander Alan Shepard, one of NASA’s original “Mercury 7” astronauts and the first American to ride a rocket into space on a suborbital flight in 1961. Lunar module pilot Ed Mitchell and command module pilot Stuart Roosa were alongside Shepard in the command module Kitty Hawk.

On February 5, Shepard and Mitchell descended to the moon’s surface aboard the lunar excursion module Antares, landing in the uplands of Fra Mauro crater, where they conducted two EVAs lasting more than nine hours in all, venturing more than a half mile from Antares to set up scientific equipment and collect moon rocks. Shepard also took a moment to hit a couple of golf balls, joking one went “miles and miles and miles.” The crew returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on February 9.

View a complete photo gallery of the Apollo 14 mission here.