one had been worn by Lovell on Apollo 13. These were instituted because of the difficulty in telling one spacesuited astronaut from the other in photographs. Modular Equipment Transporter The Modular Equipment Transporter (MET) was a two-wheeled handcart, used only on Apollo 14, intended to allow the astronauts to take tools and equipment with them, and store lunar samples, without needing to carry them. On later Apollo program missions, the self-propelled Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) was flown instead. The MET, when deployed for use on the lunar surface, was about long, wide and high. It had pressurized rubber tires wide and in diameter, containing nitrogen and inflated to about . The first use of tires on the Moon, these were developed by Goodyear and were dubbed their XLT (Experimental Lunar Tire) model. Fully loaded, the MET weighed about . Two legs combined with the wheels to provide four-point stability when at rest. Mission highlights Launch and flight to lunar orbit Apollo 14 launched from Launch Complex 39-A at KSC at 4:03:02 pm (21:03:02 UTC), January 31, 1971. This followed a launch delay due to weather of 40 minutes and 2 seconds; the first such delay in the Apollo program. The original planned time, 3:23 pm, was at the very start of the launch window of just under four hours; had Apollo 14 not launched during it, it could not have departed until March. Apollo 12 had launched during poor weather and twice been struck by lightning, as a result of which the rules had been tightened. Among those present to watch the launch were U.S. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and the Prince of Spain, the future King Juan Carlos I. The mission would take a faster trajectory to the Moon than planned, and thus make up the time in flight. Because it had, just over two days after launch, the mission timers would be put ahead by 40 minutes and 3 seconds so that later events would take place at the times scheduled in the flight plan. After the vehicle reached orbit, the S-IVB third stage shut down, and the astronauts performed checks of the spacecraft before restarting the stage for translunar injection (TLI), the burn that placed the vehicle on course for the Moon. After TLI, the CSM separated from the S-IVB, and Roosa performed the transposition maneuver, turning it around in order to dock with the LM