Tee Time on the Moon: How Astronaut Alan Shepard Played Lunar Golf

In 1971, Alan Shepard and his fellow astronauts made their way to the Moon in the cramped Apollo 14 capsule. Their mission: Study the moon in more detail than ever before. While the world watched on TV, Shepard and Edgar Mitchell gathered rock and soil samples wearing stiff, heavy spacesuits. But Alan Shepard had a secret hidden in his sock: two tiny golf balls. Golf was Shepard’s favorite sport. And since the moon has virtually no atmosphere and gravity that is only a fraction of the Earth’s, a golf ball should have been able to go far. But did it?

Here's the little-known but true story of an experiment that may have started as a stunt, but ended up making people think differently about the moon, ask questions, and look for answers.