and could see the surface in front of them. Scott, who as commander performed the landing, was confronted with a landscape that did not at first seem to resemble what he had seen during simulations. Part of this was due to an error in the landing path of some , of which CAPCOM Ed Mitchell informed the crew prior to pitchover; part because the craters Scott had relied on in the simulator were difficult to make out under lunar conditions, and he initially could not see Hadley Rille. He concluded that they were likely to overshoot the planned landing site, and, once he could see the rille, started maneuvering the vehicle to move the computer's landing target back towards the planned spot, and looked for a relatively smooth place to land. Below about , Scott could see nothing of the surface because of the quantities of lunar dust being displaced by Falcons exhaust. Falcon had a larger engine bell than previous LMs, in part to accommodate a heavier load, and the importance of shutting down the engine at initial contact rather than risk "blowback", the exhaust reflecting off the lunar surface and going back into the engine (possibly causing an explosion) had been impressed on the astronauts by mission planners. Thus, when Irwin called "Contact", indicating that one of the probes on the landing leg extensions had touched the surface, Scott immediately shut off the engine, letting the lander fall the remaining distance to the surface. Already moving downward at about per second, Falcon dropped from a height of . Scott's speed resulted in what was likely the hardest lunar landing of any of the crewed missions, at about per second, causing a startled Irwin to yell "Bam!" Scott had landed Falcon on the rim of a small crater he could not see, and the lander settled back at an angle of 6.9 degrees and to the left of 8.6 degrees. Irwin described it in his autobiography as the hardest landing he had ever been in, and he feared that the craft would keep tipping over, forcing an immediate abort. Falcon landed at 104:42:29.3 (22:16:29 GMT on July 30), with approximately 103 seconds of fuel remaining, about from the planned landing site. After Irwin's exclamation, Scott reported, "Okay, Houston. The Falcon is on the Plain at Hadley." Once within the planned landing zone, the increased mobility provided by the Lunar