Category Archives: Science / Space Race

Space, Computers, and other technology

[February 20, 1970] Fun-nee enough… (OSCAR 5 and the March 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

A black-and-white photo portrait of Kaye Dee. She is a white woman with long, straight dark hair worn down, looking at the camera with a smile.

by Kaye Dee

Recently, The Traveller covered the launch of the TIROS-M weather satellite, noting that the rocket’s payload also included a small Australian-made ham radio satellite, OSCAR-5 (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), also known as OSCAR-A.

Photograph of the cover of Goddard News depicting a rocket staged for launchCover of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre's in-house magazine, marking the launch of ITOS-1/TIROS-M and Australis-OSCAR-5

A New Star in the Southern Cross

It was exciting to be in “Mission Control” at the University of Melbourne when the satellite was launched in the evening (Australian time) on 23 January. You should have heard the cheers! After all, Australis-OSCAR-5 (AO-5), as we call it, is Australia’s second satellite. It’s also the first amateur radio satellite built outside the United States and the first OSCAR satellite constructed by university students – in this case, members of the Melbourne University Astronautical Society (MUAS).

Photograph of seven suited white men with exuberant expressions standing in an alley presenting the model satelliteThe MUAS student team with the engineering model of Australia's first amateur radio satellite

Radio Hams and Satellite Trackers

Commencing in 1961, the first OSCAR satellite was constructed by a group of American amateur radio enthusiasts. Cross-over membership between MUAS and the Melbourne University Radio Club (MURC) encouraged the students to begin tracking OSCAR satellites, moving quickly on to tracking and receiving signals from many other US and Soviet satellites.

Satellite photograph of cloud fronts moving over the continentNimbus satellite image of the western half of Australia received by MUAS for the weather bureau

One of MUAS’ achievements was the first regular reception in Australia of images from TIROS and Nimbus meteorological satellites. By 1964, they were supplying satellite weather images daily to the Bureau of Meteorology, before it established its own receiving facilities.

"How Do We Build a Satellite?"

After tracking OSCARs 3 and 4 in 1965, the MUAS students decided to try building their own satellite. “No one told us it couldn’t be done, and we were too naive to realise how complex it would be to get the satellite launched!”, an AO-5 team member told me at the launch party. MUAS decided to build a small ‘beacon’ satellite which would transmit telemetry data back to Earth on fixed frequencies.

Even before Australia’s first-launched satellite, WRESAT-1, was on the drawing board, the Australis satellite project commenced in March 1966. Volunteers from MUAS, MURC and university staff worked together to design and build the satellite, with technical and financial assistance from the Wireless Institute of Australia and a tiny budget of $600. The Australian NASA representative also gave the project invaluable support. The students acquired electronic and other components through donations from suppliers where possible: the springs used to push the satellite away from the launcher were generously made by a mattress manufacturer in Melbourne. Any other expenses came out of their own pockets!

Picture of AO-5 in launch configuration, somewhat resembling a metal-wrapped gift bound up twine holding the furled antennae down as 'the ribbon'Carpenter's steel tape was used to make AO-5's flexible antennae, seen here folded in launch configuration. Notice the inch markings on the tape!

AO-5 is a fantastic example of Aussie ‘make-do’ ingenuity. A flexible steel measuring tape from a hardware shop was cut up to make the antennae. The oven at the share house of one team member served to test the satellite’s heat tolerance, and a freezer in the university's glaciology lab was unofficially used for the cold soak. Copper circuit boards were etched with a technique using nail varnish, and a rifle-sight was used to help tune the antennae! Various components, including the transmitters and command system, were flight-tested on the university’s high altitude research balloon flights.

Colour photograph of the bare circuit-boards set up in a freezer
Colour photograph of a payload collection staged at the back of a truck in preparation for balloon flight
A university lab freezer and hitching a ride with university experiments on US HiBal high altitude balloon flights in Australia used to test the ruggedness of AO-5 components

A Long Wait for Launch

Australis was completed and delivered to Project OSCAR headquarters in June 1967, well before WRESAT’s launch in November that year. Unfortunately, AO-5 then had to wait a few years for a launch to be arranged by the Amateur Radio Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), which now operates the OSCAR project. However, it is surely appropriate that, as OSCAR-5, it finally made it into orbit with a weather satellite.

Colour photographs of the launch vehicle staged at Vandenberg Air Force Base, both before and during ignition

After launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, AO-5 was placed into a 115-minute orbit, varying in altitude between 880 – 910 miles. This means it will be in orbit for hundreds of years – unlike the short-lived WRESAT.

In Orbit at Last!

Battery-powered, Australis-OSCAR-5 weighs only 39 pounds and carries two transmitters, beaming out the same telemetry signal on the two-metre and 10-metre amateur radio bands. Its telemetry system is sophisticated but designed for simple decoding without expensive equipment. The start of a telemetry sequence is indicated by the letters HI in Morse code, followed by data on battery voltage, current, and the temperature of the satellite at two points as well as information on the satellite's orientation in space from three horizon sensors.

Colour photograph of the Australis OSCAR 5 (a rectangular box) with metal antennae extended

AO-5 includes the first use in an amateur satellite of innovations such as a passive magnetic attitude stabilisation system (which helps reduce signal fading), and a command system to switch it on and off to conserve power. Observations are recorded on special standardised reporting forms that are suitable for computer analysis.

Photograph of a telemetry coding form noting that the satellite is spinning at four rotations per minute

Just 66 minutes after launch, the first signal was detected in Madagascar and soon other hams reported receiving both the two and 10-metre signals on the satellite's first orbit. At “Mission Control” in Melbourne, we were thrilled when MURC members managed to pick up the satellite’s signals!  By the end of Australis’ first day of operation, AMSAT headquarters had already received more than 100 tracking, telemetry and reception reports.

Photograph of news clippings from The Australian (and other publications).  They provide a photograph of the satellite in pre-launch attitude (with furled metal antennae) and photographs (including a portrait of Richard Tonkin) of members of the Melbourne team who designed and built it.A selection of local newspaper cuttings following AO-5's launch. There was plenty of interest here in Australia.

The two-metre signal failed on 14 February, but the 10-metre transmission continues for now. How much longer AO-5’s batteries will last is anybody’s guess, but the satellite has proven itself to be a successful demonstration of the MUAS students’ technical capabilities, and the team is already contemplating a more advanced follow-on satellite project.

Picture of a post-card (posted Jan 23 1970, with an Apollo 8 stamp) with an illustration of a satellite over what appears to be a map of weather fronts. Above the illustration it reads 'ITOS-1 Day-Night Weather Eye', and to the side it reads 'Oscar 5' and 'Australis'
This philatelic cover for the ITOS-1/TIROS-M launch, includes mention of AO-5, but the satellite depicted is actually OSCAR-1


photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Fantastic emanations on Earth

And now that you've had a chance to digest the latest space news, here's some less exciting (but no less necessary) coverage of the latest issue of F&SF.

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction's March issue-- the cover illustration is a square wrapped wrapped in digits with the top sequence running from 1-17, and the others presenting variations on the sequence.  The inside of the square appears to show four mirrored illustrations of men laying under blankets as though awaiting surgery.  Extending from the crowns of their heads to the center of the square are matching banded gradients from pale to dark blue.
by Ronald Walotsky

Continue reading [February 20, 1970] Fun-nee enough… (OSCAR 5 and the March 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[January 4, 1970] Word for the Day: ARPANET


by Victoria Lucas

OK, kiddies, the word for today is ARPANET. Well, yes, good point, it’s not a word, is it? It’s an acronym jammed into an abbreviation. But a juicy one.

I found out what it means because Mel (my husband) and I have these friends in Orinda, California (a town east of Berkeley, nice place). Sharon is more of a stand-up comedian than a housewife, who uses her housewifery–-and sometimes herself–-as the butt of her jokes. Dick Karpinski is a fuzzy bear of a man who is the first computer programmer I ever met. We don’t get to their place too often, since it’s off our beaten track between SF/Berkeley and Fortuna that we usually run on the weekends and holidays (or when neither of us has an active temp job in the Eureka area).

Photograph of an older white man with gray curly hair and a thick white beard.
Richard Karpinski works for the University of California at San Francisco, supporting users of the IBM 360 and other tasks

At a recent visit, Dick was quite excited, and Sharon was complaining about her “three years of back ironing.” I don’t have much to say about the ironing, but once Dick had explained to me the reason for his excitement I admitted to some buoyancy myself. I wonder how you will feel about it.

With its initial transmission in October last year, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) is the first large-scale, general-purpose computer network to link different kinds of computers together without a direct connection. Not only that, but different kinds of networks are coming online following this one. But who cares, right? I mean who of us has ever even seen a computer?

Black-and-white photograph of a young woman sitting at an office, working with an old computer that is the size of a refrigerator.
The IBM 360 with operator

FAR OUT!

Up to now you could only connect the same kind of computers, and then only by special-purpose cables and outlets in the same building, unless you could connect your computer to a "modem” (modulator-de-modulator) that converts digital (computer talk) to analog (telephone signaling) and back again when connected to your telephone line. The same protocols and hardware can connect a computer to “terminals,” boxes that can interact with a computer but do not have the smarts to actually process data. Multiple people could use the same computer at the same time (the miracle of "time sharing" that Ida Moya talked about a few years back, but again, only at the same site or by telephone. No matter what, connections were direct: point to point and dedicated. If you wanted to interact with another computer, you had to go to another terminal hooked up, directly or via modem, to the new machine.

Photograph of a push-button landline telephone with its handset placed atop another device, which is connected to computer cables.
An electronic translator of one type of signal to another, the modem

But what if you wanted to access multiple other computers from a single terminal? What if you wanted your computer to talk to another, farflung computer of a different make (ie connect an IBM to a CDC?) Here’s where Dick had to bring out his yellow pad and start writing and drawing.

Dick draws a box on his pad. “One computer, right?”* he says. “And here’s another” as he draws another box to make #2. Now you could connect a single terminal to any number of computers using a newly developed "protocol" for connection. (A protocol, drawn as lines from that word toward the boxes, is a set of rules or instructions about how to do something, and it’s above a program, which is more of a detailed list of steps to use when doing something.) Rather than using specific hardware, the protocol allows computers to "speak" a common language, over phone-lines lines… regardless of computer make or location!

As Dick, the “Nitpicker Extraordinaire,” might have written at the top of his pad (I’m a little fuzzy about how the conversation progressed), the first set of computers involved in the evolution of this network would have belonged to the US Department of Defense as part of its Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an almost direct result of the success of Sputnik. When NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) was formed in 1958, most of ARPA’s projects and funding were moved to that group. That left ARPA with high-risk or far-out projects, such as computer networking. I can't tell you which computers are involved, nor the details of the protocol (even if I understood them) because they're classified. The main reason for the ARPA network is to test the survivability of communications in the event of a nuclear war. Because if one big computer is destroyed, someone could just use their terminal to contact a different one to complete a process.

Talk to any computer anywhere, without a telephone

Photograph of a switchboard with dozens of buttons and dials. The board is labeled: Interface Message Processor.
An ARPANET processor

While this exciting technology is limited to the ARPA for the moment, technology tends to spread to civilians eventually. Just think about it! The ARPA network and others like it will make it possible to distribute programs and data widely without printing it out and mailing it. As long as a computer can talk back, you can get and send data from and to it. Even more amazing, the initial transmission speeds showed that messages were being sent to a place 350 miles away 500 times faster than local data was traveling before. It was so fast that the initial speed caused a system crash, followed by a rebuild to handle the velocity, all during the very first transmission. It's not faster than light, but it's a darn sight better than having a computer operator working on far-out national research projects for ARPA fall asleep on his or her keyboard waiting for an answer.

What miracles could you work with a fast, smart, terminal that could connect to any computer in the world? Now that’s exciting!

*To Dick’s other friends. Yes, I know Dick, but I don’t remember any specific conversation like this. Any mistakes or misrepresentations are my responsibility.



[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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[December 20, 1969] Stars above, stars at hand (January 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Being #2… stinks

On the scene at the launch of Apollo 12, President Nixon assured the NASA technicians that America was #1 in space, and that it wasn't just jingoism—it was true!

Well, even a stopped clock, etc.  In fact, all accounts suggest the Soviet space program had some serious setbacks last year, the results of which will be felt through at least to 1971.  Schedules got shifted as large rockets were earmarked for purely military service in response to the escalating (now calmed) Sino-Soviet crisis.  But the biggest issue was reported in Aviation Weekly last month: apparently, the Soviets lost a Saturn-class booster on the launch pad before liftoff last summer.  I hadn't even heard that such a thing was in development!  The rocket's loss has set back the USSR's manned space program by at least a year, resulting in tepid non-achievements like their recent triple Soyuz mission rather than the construction of a space station or a trip to the Moon.

A rocket being launched into space.
This is actually the rocket from the Soviet film The Sky Calls (American title: Battle Beyond the Sun)

It didn't help that the Soyuz pads were occupied during the summer as the Soviets tried to match our lunar efforts.  It may well be that their Saturn was rushed to service too soon, and similar gun-jumping may have caused the loss of the Luna 15 sample-return mission.

Speaking of which, in September, the Soviets launched Kosmos 300 and 305.  Both of them were heavy satellites that went into the orbit usually used for lunar Zond missions.  And then they reentered shortly thereafter…in pieces.  It's not certain if these were to be circumlunar flights or retries of Luna 15.  Either way, they didn't work out, either.

Meanwhile, the Apollo mission moves blithely along.  Apollo 13 will go to the Moon next March to Fra Mauro, a landing site photographically scouted out by the Apollo 12 folks.  This chapter of the Space Race is well and truly over, won by the forces of democracy championed by such luminaries as Spiro Agnew.

That's a good rock

Speaking of Apollo 12, you may recall earlier this month I talked about analysis of the Moon rocks brought back by Apollo 11.  A similar report has come out about the rocks brought back by Conrad and Bean.  Dr. Oliver A. Schaeffer of New York State Univ. at Stony Brook says they are only 2.2 to 2.5 billion years old—1-2 billion years younger than the Armstrong and Aldrin's samples.  This means some kind of surface activity was ongoing on the comparatively quiet Moon—meteorite strikes and/or vulcanism, we don't know yet.


NASA astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, commander of the Apollo 12 mission, holds two moon rocks he and Alan Bean brought back to Earth.  Taken last month at Manned Spacecraft Center's Lunar Receiving Laboratory.

Also, Dr. S. Ross Taylor of Australian National Univ. says the Apollo 12 samples contain about half the titanium as the Apollo 11 rocks and also more nickel, though otherwise, their chemistry is similar.  Thus, the Moon is far from homogeneous, and we have just scratched the surface (so to speak) of the mystery that is the Moon.  As we get more samples from more sites, a better picture will come together, but it will undoubtedly take time; imagine trying to contemplate all of Earth's geologic diversity from just two short digs?

Holiday Feast

It may have been rocky going on the Moon (yuk yuk) but it's fair sailing with this month's issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction!

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It announces the stories Longtooth by Edgar Pangborn and A Third Hand by Dean R. Koontz. The cover illustration shows a racecar driven by a robot on a desert landscape at night.
Cover by Mel Hunter

Continue reading [December 20, 1969] Stars above, stars at hand (January 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[December 14, 1969] West Germany Joins the Space Race: The Azur Mission


by Cora Buhlert

One Large Step

Last month, in the early hours of November 8 to be precise, West Germany joined the ranks of spacefaring nations and became the eighth country to put a satellite in orbit with the launch of Azur, also known as German Research Satellite GSR A, to return radiation data from its vantage hundreds of kilometers above the Earth.

A Scout-B rocket lifts off at Vandenberg
The Scout-B rocket carrying Azur lifts off at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Azur Commemorative first day cover.

Cheers erupted at the newly established German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria, when footage of Azur taking off into orbit aboard a NASA Scout-B rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was broadcast on the great viewscreen in the control center. The fact that the launch had been delayed due to a malfunction and fuel leak during a test countdown was forgotten. And even more cheers erupted, when a ground station in Johannesburg, South Africa, made the first contact with Azur.

Control Center Viewscreen
The great viewscreen at the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria.
Technicians working at consoles at the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen
Technicians at work at the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen

A Massive Project

Azur weighs 71 kilograms and carries the hefty price tag of eighty million Deutschmarks, which includes the establishment of the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen. The satellite is the result of years of development and cooperation between various companies and agencies. On the administrative side, the West German Ministry of Science, the Deutsche Forschungs- und Versuchsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German research and testing agency for air and space travel) and the Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung (Society for space research) and were all involved, as was NASA who supplied the Scout-B rocket that carried Azur into orbit. The experiments and payload were developed by the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie (Max Planck Institute for aeronomics) and the actual satellite was built by a consortium of West German aerospace companies including Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm GmbH and ERNO Raumfahrttechnik GmbH.

Azur satellite in the EMI test chamber
Azur inside an EMI test chamber

The latter is of particular interest to me, because ERNO Raumfahrttechnik GmbH is based in my hometown of Bremen, a city with a long and illustrious history of aeronautics engineering. That is, the ERNO headquarters are in Bremen, but actual production facilities, where parts of Azur were manufactured, are located in an industrial park in Stuhrbaum, only some four kilometers from where I live. As a matter of fact, I have often driven past the drab ERNO production halls, which – very likely intentionally – give little indication from the outside of the cutting edge technology being developed and manufactured within.

Technicians in yellow labcoats surround the Azur satellite
Azur being assembled.

The Future is Bright… and Blue

Putting a satellite into orbit is a triumph in itself, but Azur also has a research mission beyond purely proving that West Germany can do it. Out of hundreds of suggestions, the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie in the small town of Katlenburg-Lindau selected seven experiments, which are supposed to research cosmic radiation, solar particles and their interaction with the magnetosphere, the Van Allen belt and the aurora borealis. That's also the reason why Azur's orbit crosses the polar regions at an inclination of 103 degrees at a height of between 368 and 1445 kilometres.

Azur satellite on the integration stand
Azur on the integration stand.

One issue was that the satellite designs suggested by NASA proved to be unsuitable for Azur, since its mission would take it across the polar regions, where the external solar panels with a fixed setting would not be able to supply sufficient power to the satellite. So German engineers came up with the solution to cover the entire exterior of the satellite with more than five thousand solar cells. The shimmering blue colour of these solar cells also gave the satellite its name: Azur.

Azur satellite being fitted to a Scout-B rocket.
Azur is being fitted to the Scout-B rocket that will carry it into orbit at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The distinctive blue colour that gave the satellite its name is clearly visible.

Setbacks and Mysteries

The excitement about the successful launch of Azur was somewhat dampened when it turned out that the settings of many of the scientific instruments aboard had been changed and needed to be reset. The team at the control center in Oberpfaffenhofen reset the all the instruments to their correct parameters, only to find them changed again after every circumnavigation.

There were suspicions that a hostile power, most likely the Soviets, had somehow managed to gain access to Azur and were messing with the settings. The solution to the mystery, however, was far from a James Bond movie, even though espionage did turn out to be at fault, albeit unwittingly. For the control center team noticed that the setting changes always happened whenever Azur was above the US west coast and Alaska, areas where there are a lot of radar stations spying on the USSR. Azur picked up the signals broadcast by those radar stations and misinterpreted them as commands. Requiring a command to be repeated two or even three times before an order is executed would have prevented this issue. However, NASA specialists had assured the West German Azur developers that this wasn't necessary.

Another setback occurred last week, when the onboard magnetic data storage tape recorder failed, so that the data collected by Azur can only be broadcast in real time now. Luckily, a network of German and foreign ground stations means that eighty percent of the data can be received anyway, so the failure of the onboard recorder is only a minor inconvenience.

Azur ground station in Northern Finland
One of the Azur ground stations in Northern Finland beyond the Arctic Circle.

Space Research in East and West Germany

Azur is projected to collect and broadcast data for at least one year. And though Azur was West Germany's first step into space, it won't be the last, for the next West German satellite, DIAL-WIKA is expected to launch in only four months, this time via a French Diamant-B rocket in cooperation with the Centre national d’études spatiales.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the iron curtain, East Germany is a partner in the Soviet Interkosmos program and supplied several of the instruments aboard the Interkosmos-1 research satellite which was launched in October.

Soviet Interkosmos-1 satellite
The Soviet Interkosmos-1 satellite, which includes instruments manufactured in East Germany.
Interkosmos-1 fully extended
Interkosmos-1 with its solar panels fully extended.

"Space is the final frontier", as the opening narration of a popular American TV-show that has yet to air in Germany puts it. Both East and West Germany have taken their first tentative steps across that final frontier. As we enter the new decade, more steps will follow and maybe we will even see a German astronaut (or cosmonaut) in space one day.

Christmas Lights on Lange Straße in Delmenhorst in December 1969
As Azur races past far overhead, the Lange Straße in the North West German town of Delmenhost is all decked out for the final Christmas of the decade.
Christmas Lights in the Lange Straße in Delmenhorst
Another look at the Christmas lights in the Lange Straße in Delmenhorst.

[December 6, 1969] Here comes the Sun (and Moon) — Orbiting Solar Observatory, Apollo, ESRO, and Explorer 41!

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

With the Apollo missions taking so much of our attention (there were four flights this year), it is understandable that unmanned missions and science have gotten short shrift.  I'm going to try to address this oversight now.

Far out!

Do you remember Pioneer 6 (launched Dec. 16, 1965) and Pioneer 7 (launched Aug. 17, 1966)?  They are deep space probes designed to observe the Sun from widely different vantage points.  In fact, we've been a bit remiss: since '66, two more identical Pioneers have gone up: Pioneer 8 (December 13, 1967) and Pioneer 9 (November 8, 1968).  A fifth and final Pioneer was launched August 27, 1969, but its carrier rocket exploded.  The loss of that one is pretty bad; whereas the others are all spread out fairly equidistantly around the Sun, more or less as far away from it as the Earth, Pioneer "E" was going to be put in an orbit that kept it close to Earth, where it would be used to give as much as a two-week warning of dangerous flare activity.

Nevertheless, NASA is blazing along with four satellites.  Indeed, thanks to the longevity and spread-out positions of Pioneers 6 and 7, they were able to perform an unique experiment.  On Nov. 6, the two satellites were 175 million miles apart on a common line with the Sun, and scientists observed the difference in behavior of solar wind particles due to their passage through space in opposite directions.  In a similar vein, on Dec. 2, when the spacecraft reached points on a common spiral line leading out from the Sun (the star rotates, so it flings out particles in a spiral rather than linear fashion), scientists measured different kinds of solar particles coming from the same events on the Sun.

We'll have to wait for the journals to publish any papers, but this is the kind of large-scale, long-term science made possible by the Pioneer probes!


Another cool example of Pioneer science

Continue reading [December 6, 1969] Here comes the Sun (and Moon) — Orbiting Solar Observatory, Apollo, ESRO, and Explorer 41!

[November 26, 1969] From the Earth to the Moon…and back (Apollo 12)

photo of Gideon Marcus, a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Just four months ago, men first set foot on the Moon, fulfilling a millennia-long dream of humanity as well as culminating a decade-long Space Race between the superpowers. And the question on everyone's lips: how do you top that?

It's important to remember that the flight of Apollo 11 was not the end, but only a beginning—just as John Glenn's orbital flight, Gus Grissom's mission in Gemini 3, Wally Schirra's in Apollo 7 were all beginnings. The Moon Port is open, and it is time to start the exploration of the cosmos in earnest.

Appropriately, the flight of Apollo 12 was planned to mark an incremental expansion upon the prior mission's success. Scheduled for a November 14 launch at 11:22AM Eastern time months in advance, the second lunar mission would include the following improvements:

  • Time spent on the Moon would be 32 hours, half again more than the 21 hours spent by Apollo 11.
  • There would be two Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) rather than one.
  • The astronauts would set up a series of experiments designed to operate for one year from the lunar surface.
  • The Lunar Module (LM) would execute a pinpoint landing at Site 7 in the Sea of Storms, as opposed to the less precise touchdown made by Eagle in July
  • As a result, the astronauts would be able to recover the TV camera from Surveyor 3, which had soft-landed on the Moon two years prior.
  • The Moonwalks would be televised in color this time.
  • After lunar exploration, Apollo 12 would spend an extra day in lunar orbit photographing future landing sites.

In all, Apollo 12 promised to be only slightly more ambitious than its predecessor, but how much more ambitious than a flight to the Moon do you need?

Continue reading [November 26, 1969] From the Earth to the Moon…and back (Apollo 12)

[October 22, 1969] Three for Three! (the flights of Soyuz 6, 7, and 8)

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

(Un?)Lucky Seven

In 1959, NASA unveiled the identities of the first seven astronauts—the folks who would fly the Mercury capsule into space.  Over the course of two years, from 1961-1963, six of them rode a pillar of flame beyond the Earth's atmosphere, one at a time.

This month, the Soviets orbited seven cosmonauts at once.

Continue reading [October 22, 1969] Three for Three! (the flights of Soyuz 6, 7, and 8)

[September 28, 1969] Apollo’s New Muses (Women Behind the Scenes in the Apollo Programme)

Seven years ago, the Journey published an article on the Women Pioneers of Space Science.  At long last, Kaye offers a much-needed update, this time focusing on the women who helped make Apollo 11's trip to the Moon possible…


by Kaye Dee

Classical literature tells us that the god Apollo was associated with the Nine Muses, the goddesses who inspired the arts, literature and science.

Our modern Apollo program also has its Muses – trailblazing women working behind the scenes in critical areas of the programme. They deserve to be better known, not just for their own impressive careers to date, but also as role models, inspiring girls and young women who might be interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics or medicine, but are diverted away from them by the prevailing view that careers in these areas are for men, not women.

The famous ‘Dance of Apollo and the Muses’ by the Italian architect and painter, Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi

As someone who has had to contend with these stereotypes myself, trying to establish a career in the space sector in Australia, I thought it might be interesting this month to delve into the stories of four of the women working behind the scenes in the Apollo programme: modern-day daughters of Urania, the Muse of Astronomy, Mathematics and the “exact sciences”.

The “Return to Earth” Specialist: Frances “Poppy” Northcutt

Every aspect of a lunar voyage involves moving objects – the Apollo spacecraft, the Earth and the Moon. Calculating the trajectories required for an Apollo mission to meet and go into orbit around the Moon at a particular date and time, is a mind-bending feat. But getting astronauts safely home from the Moon is even more important!

NASA’s specialist in the incredibly complex and precise calculations required to determine the optimal trajectories for the return to Earth from the Moon, minimising fuel and flight time, is Miss Frances Northcutt, who goes by the nickname “Poppy”. She is, perhaps, the only one of these ladies that you might have heard of (at least those of you in the United States), as she was such a “curiosity” during the press and television coverage of the Apollo-8 mission that she has been interviewed many times (and more on this below).

Born in 1943, Miss Northcutt earned a mathematics degree from the University of Texas, then commenced working at TRW in 1965 as a “computress”! Yes, that was her actual job title, although in Australia we’d have just called her a "computer" (a term applied here and in Britain to both men and women doing this kind of intensive calculating work). Miss Northcutt was placed at NASA’s Langley Research Centre, calculating spacecraft trajectories for the Gemini missions. She proved to be so talented in this area that within just six months TRW promoted her to engineering work with its Return to Earth task force, helping to design the computer programmes and flight trajectories to return an Apollo spacecraft from lunar orbit to Earth.

A simplified version of the Apollo lunar free return flight trajectories

Poppy Northcutt became the first woman to work in this type of role and was soon undertaking the intricate calculations involved in enabling the Apollo astronauts to travel around the Moon and come safely home. The Moon’s lower gravity changes parameters such as fuel usage, as well as the timing of manoeuvres, so the calculations are particularly tricky. Poppy identified mistakes in NASA’s original trajectory plan, performing calculations that reduced the amount of fuel used to swing around the Moon.

When NASA decided that Apollo-8 would become a lunar orbiting mission, the task force team, including Miss Northcutt, moved to Mission Control to instruct the flight controllers on the trajectory calculations and be available to make real-time calculations and course corrections in the event of unexpected incidents during the flight. Assigned to Mission Control's Mission Planning and Analysis room, Miss Northcutt and her team have been an integral part of Apollo-8, 10 and 11 and are now preparing for Apollo-12. She is the only female engineer in the teams that work in the backrooms of Mission Control in Houston, providing support to the flight controllers.

Poppy Northcutt working in the Mission Control support room during Apollo-8

Working Like a Man (but not being paid like one!)

“Computresses” in Miss Northcutt’s original position are classed as “hourly workers”, with their wages capped at working 54 hours per week (in other words, five nine-hour days). Their male counterparts were not only paid more (as we all know, female workers are generally paid between about half and two-thirds of the wages for a man doing the same job), they were also on salaries and paid overtime.

As an ambitious young woman, Miss Northcutt quickly realised that to earn the respect of her male colleagues and be considered a peer, she would have to work the same long hours they did – even if this meant that she was essentially working 10 or more hours a week for no pay!

A NASA promotional photo of Miss Northcutt at work in March this year. She presents herself as a diligent professional

Her talent and diligence paid off with her promotion to engineer, but, ironically, even though she was still being paid less than her male colleagues, Miss Northcutt tells the story that there was no normal mechanism to approve the pay rise she received with this jump from Computress! Her manager had to keep scheduling the highest possible raise as frequently as he could to bring her up to the full female rate of her new salary. 

During Apollo missions, when shifts last around 12 to 13 hours a day in Mission Control, Miss Northcutt usually commences her duty shifts for each mission around the time that the Apollo spacecraft, coasting towards the Moon, prepares to enter the lunar sphere of gravitational influence. During lunar orbit insertion she stands by to assist with new calculations, in the event of an emergency abort, and she reports for duty at Mission Control every day of the lunar phase of the mission and until the astronauts have returned safely to the Earth's sphere of influence. No one can say Poppy Northcutt isn’t pulling her weight, just like a man!

Sexism, Celebrity and Activism

As the only female engineer in Mission Control during the Apollo-8 mission, Miss Northcutt was such a “curiosity” that she received a lot of attention from journalists. While much of this coverage was not seen in Australia, from what I have heard from friends in America, I understand that many of the questions that she received were quite sexist – and even silly.

Miss Northcutt is a very pretty woman and dresses fashionably, so apparently ABC reporter Jules Bergman thought it was more important to ask about her potential to distract her male colleagues from the mission, than to ask about her crucial role: “How much attention do men in Mission Control pay to a pretty girl wearing miniskirts?” Would they have asked a male flight controller if the suit he was wearing turned the heads of the typing pool?! I gather that she gave him a polite brush off response.

A friend in the US took this photo from her television screen, giving me a glimpse of Mr. Bergman's interview with Miss Northcutt

It is bad enough when reporters focus on her appearance and ask her such inane questions, while she operates at the level of her male colleagues, for far less monetary reward. But Miss Northcutt has also reported an instance in which she discovered that the other flight engineers were covertly watching her on a video feed, from a camera trained on her while she was conducting equipment flight tests.

As a result of her personal experiences with sexism, Miss Northcutt has become a strong advocate for women’s rights, and has joined the feminist National Organisation for Women. Even in her early days at TRW, she worked to improve the company’s affirmative action and pregnancy leave policies. “As the first and only woman in Mission Control, the attention I have received has increased my awareness of how limited women’s opportunities are”, she has said. “I’m aware of the issues that are emerging. Working in this environment I can see the discrimination against women.”

TRW is happy to use Miss Northcutt's minor celebrity to promote itself, but not happy enough to pay her the same salary as her male colleagues!

However, while she is not pleased that much of the attention she has received has been focussed on her appearance, or treating her as a rare exception to the male-dominated world of spaceflight, Miss Northcutt has said that she recognises that being a woman visibly occupying a critical position in the space programme does send a very positive message to women and girls: a career in science and technology is possible if you want it – and are prepared to work for it!

Miss Northcutt has received letters and fan mail from around the world (including several marriage proposals, it seems!) She has said that she is motivated to continue to advocate for women’s rights in the workplace by the letters she has received from young women, who have said how much she has inspired them. 

Whoever Heard of a “Software Engineer”? Margaret Hamilton

The Apollo missions not only need precise trajectories for their lunar voyages – they also need software for their onboard flight computers, which control so many aspects of the flight. If you’re not familiar with this term, “software” describes the mathematical programmes that tell a computer how to carry out its tasks, and a “software engineer” applies the engineering design process to develop software for those different tasks.

The Director of Apollo Flight Computer Programming is Mrs. Margaret Hamilton Lickly, who prefers to be known professionally as Margaret Hamilton.I've heard that women in the United States who prefer not to be categorised by their marital status, are now starting to use the designation "Ms.". I don't know if Margaret Hamilton is using this new honorific, but it seems to me appropriate to apply it to her in this article. 

33-year-old Ms. Hamilton is another woman playing a crucial role in NASA’s lunar program. Not only is she a pioneer in software engineering, she even coined the term!


Like Miss Northcutt, Ms. Hamilton is also a mathematician, having studied at the University of Michigan and Earlham College. Shortly after graduating in 1958, she married her first husband, James Hamilton, and taught high school mathematics and French, before taking a job in the Meteorology Department at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in 1959, a few months before the birth of her daughter.

Ms. Hamilton developed software for predicting weather, and in 1961 she moved to MIT’s Lincoln Lab for the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Project, adapting weather prediction software into a programme used by the U.S. Air Force to search for potential enemy aircraft. At the Lab, she was the first person to get a particularly difficult programme, which no-one had been able to get to run, to actually work! While working on SAGE, Ms. Hamilton began to take an interest in software reliability, which would pay dividends during Apollo-11’s lunar landing.

A Calculated Move

When Margaret Hamilton learned about the Apollo project in 1965, she wanted to become involved in the lunar programme, and moved to the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which was developing the Apollo Guidance Computer. She was the first programmer hired for the Apollo work project at MIT and has led the team responsible for creating the on-board flight software for both the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules. She also serves as Director of the Software Engineering Division at the Instrumentation Laboratory.

The Apollo Guidance Computer was installed on both the Command and Service Modules. Astronauts communicated with it using a numeric display and keyboard

While working on the Apollo software, Ms. Hamilton felt that it was necessary to give software development the same legitimacy as other engineering disciplines. In 1966, she therefore coined the term “software engineering” to distinguish software development from other areas of engineering. She believes that this encourages respect for the new field, as well as respect for its practitioners.

A page from the software for the Apollo Guidance Computer

On one occasion when her young daughter was visiting the lab, the little girl pushed a simulator button that made the system crash. Ms. Hamilton realised immediately that the mistake was one that an astronaut could make. While Ms. Hamilton has said that she works in a relationship of "mutual respect" with her colleagues, when she recommended adjusting the software to address the issue, she was told: “Astronauts are trained never to make a mistake.” Yet during Apollo-8, astronaut Jim Lovell made the exact same error that her young daughter had!

While Ms. Hamilton’s team was able to rapidly correct the problem, for future Apollo missions protection was built into the software to prevent a recurrence. With her interest in software reliability, Margaret Hamilton insisted that the Apollo system should be error-proof. To achieve this goal, she developed a programme referred to as Priority Displays, that recognises error messages and forces the computer to prioritise the most important tasks, also alerting the astronauts to the situation.

In Part 2 of my series of Apollo-11 articles, we saw how, during the descent to the Moon’s surface, the Lunar Module’s computer began flashing error messages, which could have resulted in Mission Control aborting the landing. However, the Priority Displays programme gave Guidance Officer Bales and his support team confidence that the computer would perform as it should despite the data input overloads that it was experiencing, and that the landing could proceed.

Ms. Hamilton with this year's printout of the entire Apollo Guidance Computer software

Ms. Hamilton and her 100-strong team continue to work on developing and refining the Apollo flight software, and I’m sure that they will contribute to whatever future spaceflight projects NASA develops, stemming from Vice-president Agnew’s recently-delivered Space Task Group report to President Nixon.

“I’ve Got Rocket Fuel in my Blood”: JoAnn Morgan

Mission safety and reliability are, of course, critical, but Apollo-11 could not even have made the historic lunar landing if the mission had been unable to launch in the first place! When Apollo-11 lifted off, there was one lone woman in the launch firing team at Kennedy Space Centre’s (KSC) Launch Control Centre, who helped to ensure that would happen – Instrumentation Controller JoAnn Morgan.

JoAnn Morgan watching the lift-off of Apollo-11 from her station in Launch Control

Mrs. Morgan, who was born in December 1940, has described herself as a “precocious little kid” who loved mathematics, science and music, and wanted to become a piano teacher. However, after her family moved to Florida from Alabama, she was inspired by the launch of the first American satellite, Explorer-1, in January 1958, and its significant discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belts. It was the “opportunity for new knowledge” that space exploration represented that filled the teenager with a desire to be part of the new space programme.

Young JoAnn with one of her favourite books. As a child she loved to read and play with her chemistry set

Soon after, JoAnn saw an advertisement for two (US) Summer student internship positions, as Engineer’s Aides with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Cape Canaveral. As we know, job openings are often advertised separately for males and females, but this ad only referred to “students” (not “boys”), so she took the chance, decided to apply, and was successful thanks to her strong marks in science and mathematics.

So, at just 17, JoAnn Hardin, as she was then, began working as a University of Florida trainee for the Army at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. “I graduated from high school on the weekend and went to work for the Army on Monday. I worked on my first launch on Friday night” is how Mrs. Morgan describes the beginning of her NASA career. The Army programme she was working with became part of NASA when it was established in October 1958.

Supportive Male Mentors

While undertaking her degree in mathematics at Jacksonville State University, Mrs. Morgan continued her Summer internships with the NASA team launching rockets at Cape Canaveral. The young student’s potential did not go unnoticed, and she acknowledges that she received significant support in furthering her career from several senior NASA personnel, including Dr. Wernher von Braun, the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, Dr. Kurt Debus, the first director of Kennedy Space Centre and Mr. Rocco Petrone, Director of Launch Operations at KSC.

Mentors Kurt Debus, left, and Rocco Petrone, right, during the Apollo 7 flight readiness test in the blockhouse at Complex 34

Dr. Debus provided Mrs. Morgan with a pathway to becoming an engineer, and she gained certification as a Measurement and Instrumentation Engineer and a Data Systems Engineer, which enabled her to be employed as a Junior Engineer on the launch team. “It was just meant to be for me to be in the launching business,” she says. “I’ve got rocket fuel in my blood.”

As a young woman joining an all-male group, Mrs. Morgan was fortunate that (unbeknownst to her at the time) her immediate supervisor, Mr. Jim White, insisted that the men on the launch team address her professionally, not be “familiar”, and reportedly told them that “You don’t ask an engineer to make the coffee”! (Which, of course, is often a task that falls to the women in any office).

Professional Disrespect

Despite Mr. White’s efforts to create an environment of respect for his first female engineer, Mrs. Morgan has still described experiencing sexism and harassment, treatment similar to the experiences of Miss Northcutt. With no female restrooms in the launch blockhouses at Cape Canaveral, when she needs to use the restroom, she has to ask a security guard to clear out the men’s room so that she can enter. She has reported receiving obscene phone calls at her station (which disappointingly could only have come from colleagues).

However, like Miss Northcutt, while she has said that she sometimes feels a sense of loneliness as the only woman in the team, Mrs. Morgan “wants to do the best job she can” and works the same long hours as her male colleagues. In 1967, as the Apollo programme was ramping up, her dedication to her work had tragic consequences. The stress and long hours of her job contributed to her miscarrying and losing her first child.

The crowded interior of the blockhouse at Launch Complex 34, where Mrs. Morgan has often worked

Perhaps the most shocking example of professional disrespect and harassment (which could be considered an assault) that Mrs. Morgan has experienced was during a test being conducted at the blockhouse for Pad 34, where the first Apollo missions were set to be launched. When preparing to acquire some test results, she was actually struck on the back by a test supervisor, who aggressively told her that “We don’t have women in here!” She had to appeal to her own supervisor, Mr. Karl Sendler (who developed the launch processing systems for the Apollo programme) to confirm that she could remain. He told her to disregard the test supervisor and continue with her work (though it’s not clear if any action was taken against the offending supervisor).

On Console for Apollo-11

The unpleasant incident with the test supervisor prompted many of Mrs. Morgan’s colleagues and senior managers to come forward in expressing acceptance and respect for her as part of the team. Nevertheless, even though she has worked launches for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, received an achievement award for her work during the activation of Apollo Launch Complex 39, and been promoted to a senior engineer, Mrs. Morgan has frequently found herself rostered for the inconvenient evening shifts. Since her husband is a school teacher and band-leader, this hasn’t always allowed them a lot of time to be together.

Until Apollo-11, Mrs. Morgan was also not selected to be part of the firing room personnel for a launch, usually being stationed at a telemetry facility, a display room or a tracking site for launch. She found this very disappointing, as she always wanted to feel the vibrations from a launch that her colleagues described.

But her desire to experience the incredible shockwave vibrations of a Saturn-V lift-off was finally achieved with the launch of Apollo-11. Recognising that Mrs. Morgan is his best communicator, Mr. Sendler quietly obtained permission from Dr. Debus for her to be the Instrumentation Controller on the console in the firing room for Apollo 11! (This achievement also had the bonus of working day shifts, so that she has been able to spend more time with her husband).

Can you spot the lone woman in a sea of men? In this picture of the Launch Control firing room during Apollo-11, Mrs. Morgan is in the third row, just to the left of centre.

A successful launch is critical to each mission and Mrs. Morgan believes that her prime role in the launch of the historic mission will help to further her career within NASA. Although she has not received the same level of press and television attention as Miss Northcutt, she does hope that even the photos of her in Launch Control – a lone woman in a sea of men – will help to inspire young women to aspire to careers in the space programme, so that, at some time in the future, photos like the ones she is in now “won’t exist anymore.”

Making Packed Lunches for Astronauts: Rita Rapp

You could say that the astronauts are the most fragile component of each Apollo mission. Nutrition is important in keeping crews healthy and functioning during a flight, so space food has to be as appetising as possible, within the constraints of spaceflight and the weightless environment – especially as missions to the Moon, and future space stations and lunar bases will keep astronauts in space for longer and longer periods. 

Physiologist Miss Rita Rapp, head of the Apollo Food Systems team, has been looking after the astronauts' bodies – and stomachs – since she joined NASA in 1960. For the Apollo programme, she has developed the space food and food stowage system designed to keep the astronauts supplied with the right mix of calories, vitamins, and nutrients to enable them to function well in space. One of her goals has been to ensure that crews have something worth eating during their spaceflights.

Rita Rapp with some of her space food innovations that have greatly improved the space food menu for Apollo astronauts

Born in 1928, Miss Rapp studied science at the University of Dayton and then took a Master’s in anatomy at the St. Louis University Graduate School of Medicine. She was one of the first women to enrol in this school. Graduating in 1953, she took a position in the Aeromedical laboratories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where she began assessing the effects of high g-forces on the human body, especially the blood and renal systems, using centrifuge systems.

In 1960 Miss Rapp joined NASA’s Space Task Group preparing for the Mercury manned spaceflight programme, later transferring to the Manned Spacecraft Centre in Houston. For the Mercury program, she continued her work on centrifugal effects on the human body. She also designed the first elastic exercisers for Mercury and Gemini missions, devised biological experiments for the astronauts to conduct in-flight, and developed the Gemini medical kit.

The first Gemini biological experiment, designed by Miss Rapp

From Aeromedicine to Space Food

In 1966, as the Apollo programme was ramping up, Miss Rapp joined the Apollo Food Systems team. Although she has continued to work on space health and hygiene projects, in her new role her primary focus became looking at systems for storing food onboard the Apollo spacecraft. Working with dieticians, and commercial companies, she has investigated the ways space food could be packaged and prepared, and become the main interface between NASA’s Food Lab and the astronauts.

Although she tries to use as much commercially available food as possible, Miss Rapp and her team are also continually experimenting with new recipes in the food lab, gradually replacing the earlier “tubes and cubes” style of space food used in Mercury and Gemini with meals that are closer to an everyday eating experience.

She has developed improved means of food preservation, such as dehydration, thermostabilisation, irradiation and moisture control, which allows for a wider range of foods to be suitable for spaceflight, and I have no doubt these useful technologies will find their way into commercial food preparation and onto our supermarket shelves in the not-too-distant future. 


Working with the Whirlpool Corporation, Miss Rapp has developed new forms of food packaging for Apollo, such as the spoon bowls, “wet packs” and cans for thermostabilised food. These containers enable astronauts to eat with more conventional utensils, instead of sucking food out of a tube or plastic bag. Creating a more natural, homelike eating experience is good for the astronauts’ morale and psychological health during missions. You can discover more about Miss Rapp's space food developments in my articles on the various Apollo missions. 

Miss Rapp takes great pride in providing the Apollo crews with the flavours and comforts of home. “I like to feed them what they like, because I want them healthy and happy,” she says. She takes note of their individual food preferences, often devises new recipes and prepares the individual meals of each Apollo astronaut separately. Her home-made sugar cookies, that she bakes herself, are a special favourite of Apollo crews, and additional supplies are included as snacks in the onboard food pantries of the Command and Lunar Modules. She also likes to provide the crews with special food “surprises”, such as the turkey dinner enjoyed by the Apollo-8 crew in lunar orbit on Christmas Eve last year.


Just the Beginning

The women of Apollo who I’ve discussed in this article are trailblazers for women’s participation in mathematics, engineering, and other technical aspects of spaceflight.  While they are not the only women in professional roles in the space sector, female participation in space careers, and in science, engineering, and technology more generally, is still very low.

I hope that by highlighting the exciting Apollo-related careers of the four women above, it will plant a seed in the minds of young girls reading the Journey that they, too, can aspire to careers in scientific and technological fields that are generally thought of only as careers for men. I also hope that growing levels of female participation in the workforce, together with feminist activism, will eventually consign the sexism, discrimination and harassment that women working in all careers experience at present, to the history books—though I won’t hold my breath on it happening any time soon.






[August 20, 1969] Hail Columbia! (Apollo-11, Part 3)


by Kaye Dee

Columbia photographed over the Bay of Success in the Sea of Fertility by the LM crew before their descent to the Moon. They did not photograph the CM on their return to orbit

It’s hard to believe that it’s already a month since Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first human beings to land on the Moon – and what an eventful month it’s been for the crew of Apollo-11! It feels like this is the right time for the final part of my Apollo-11 coverage, wrapping up the final phases of the historic mission and its aftermath.

Another Giant Leap
I concluded my previous Apollo-11 article with the Lunar Module (LM) Eagle on its way to lunar orbit after a successful lift-off from the Moon’s surface. This was one of the critical stages of the mission, because if the LM’s ascent engine had failed to fire, its crew would have been stranded on the Moon – there was no back-up system. (It is rumoured that President Nixon had a suitably sombre speech prepared had the worst occurred).

The astronauts have since reported that, as they took off, they heard no sounds in the Moon’s airless environment, but they felt the acceleration and a high frequency vibration through their feet. Seconds after liftoff, the LM pitched forward about 45 degrees, so Mr. Armstrong and Col. Aldrin could see the Moon’s surface scrolling past and receding as they leapt towards rendezvous with the Command Module (CM) Columbia in lunar orbit. As they had during the landing, Aldrin worked the computer while Armstrong flew and navigated the LM. “We’re going right down US-1,” Commander Armstrong informed Mission Control about three minutes into the flight.

All Quiet on the Orbital Front

While orbiting the Moon alone, CM Pilot Collins had a comparatively quiet time. He generally performed maintenance and “housekeeping” tasks, although on his third solo orbit a problem arose with the temperature of the environmental coolant, which might have caused parts of Columbia to freeze. Fortunately, this was soon resolved and there were no other major issues.

When the LM crew slept after their exhausting Moonwalk, so too did Col. Collins. He wanted to be well-rested for the rendezvous with Eagle , on which the next step in Apollo-11’s success would rest.

Crucial Rendezvous

Just as the separation from the CM to begin the descent to the lunar surface had occurred behind the Moon, with the astronauts out of contact with Mission Control, so to would the crucial return rendezvous between the two spacecraft.

While Columbia orbited 60 miles above the lunar surface, Mike Collins prepared for the rendezvous. Slung around his neck, he carried a book he had prepared containing 18 different rendezvous procedures – he was taking no chances at this stage of the mission! Although the flight plan called for Eagle to fly up to Columbia, if necessary Col. Collins could descend to meet the LM.

Collins' favourite photo of the images he snapped of this scene. It shows the Earth, Moon, LM and the CM window frame, thus capturing all four players in the mission in one image

Eagle fortunately encountered no problems during its ascent to orbit. As the two spacecraft came around the Moon and back into contact with Mission Control, Col. Collins captured yet another magnificent sight: the Moon, Earth, and returning Ascent Stage of the LM approaching him, all in one picture.

Duelling Vehicles

Mr. Armstrong took up a station-keeping position just 50 ft from the CM. Then the three astronauts prepared for the critical re-docking. At 128:03:00 Ground Elapsed Time (GET), the two spacecraft gently connected, so smoothly that Col. Collins said he did not even feel the docking latches snap together.


However, moments later, the astronauts were jolted as the joined vehicles began to jerk around, with both the LM and CM firing their thrusters! What was happening? It seems that the automatic attitude systems on both spacecraft were competing with each other to control the attitude of the docked vessels! Fortunately, when the Eagle’s automatic pilot was switched off the problem disappeared.

Together Again

Despite that unexpected incident, the Apollo-11 crew were safely back together again, just three minutes behind the time specified by the original Flight Plan! Col. Aldrin was the first through the hatch into the CM, followed by mission commander Armstrong, and an excited reunion took place.

The precious 47lbs of lunar samples were transferred to Columbia, along with the still and movie camera film magazines and some other equipment. Two hours after the docking, the Eagle was jettisoned into lunar orbit in preparation for the return to Earth. Mr. Armstrong commented, “The separation was slow and majestic; we were able to follow it visually for a long time” (although Col. Collins forgot to film it as had been intended).

On Their Way Home

One orbit later, behind the Moon, at 135:23:42 GET, Apollo-11 fired the Service Module’s motor for 2 minutes 31.41 seconds to set them on a safe course for home at an initial speed of 5856 miles per hour. The Command Service Module (CSM) had completed 30 orbits of the Moon in 59 hours 30 minutes 26 seconds.

View of Lomonosov and Joliot craters, taken after Apollo-11 was en-route for Earth

As the Moon quickly receded behind them, the Apollo-11 crew snapped many pictures of it to use up some of their film, and then took the time for some much-needed rest, sleeping for about ten hours. Waking at 147:37:00 GET, they passed through the gravity hump between the moon and Earth about 30 minutes later, as they ate their breakfast 200,000 miles from the Earth and 39,000 miles from the Moon.
View of the receding Moon 1922 miles behind Apollo-11

Pinpointing the Landing Site

I mentioned in Part 2 that, because Commander Armstrong had to overfly the originally planned landing site to find safer terrain on which to put the LM down, the exact site of Tranquillity Base was uncertain. As they were returning to Earth, Mr. Armstrong made a casual remark during a debriefing that finally helped to pinpoint the exact location.

“I took a stroll back to a crater behind us that was maybe seventy or eighty feet in diameter and fifteen or twenty feet deep and took some pictures of it. It had rocks in the bottom….”


While that might not sound like much to those of us who are not geologists, it was just the description NASA’s lunar mapping team needed to identify the landing spot on their maps – an identification later confirmed by the 16mm film of the landing. We now know that Tranquillity Base is located at 0° 41'15" North latitude, 23° 25'45" East longitude. If only Armstrong had mentioned that crater before!

The Apollo-11 Show

At 155:36:00 GET the Apollo-11 crew presented an 18 minute television broadcast. The show began with views of the Moon, and Capcom Duke in Mission Control generated some amused banter when he misidentified the image of the Moon on his monitor as the Earth!

Would you mistake this Moon for the Earth? The image quality of the monitor Charles Duke was looking at was apparently very poor!

Mr. Armstrong showed the boxes of lunar samples and explained that they were vacuum packed on the lunar surface. Col. Aldrin provided a quick history of space food, showed how to make a weightless ham-spread sandwich, and then demonstrated the physics of gyroscopes (a lot more fascinating than reading it in a textbook).


For “all you kids” on Earth, Col. Collins showed how water clings to a spoon in zero-g, before demonstrating how the crew actually drank water using a water gun. The broadcast finished with a view of the approaching Earth.

Greg Saves the Day

As Apollo-11 sped towards the Earth, the Manned Space Flight Network tracking station in Guam, due to play an important role in the final stages of the mission, had a problem. A bearing seized from lack of grease had immobilised the antenna. A normal repair would take too long, and only a narrow hole could provide access for a quick fix—too small for the staff to reach the bearing through it.

View of the Guam Manned Space Flight Network Station

Eventually, Station Director Charles Force drafted his ten-year-old son, Greg, to help. The boy was able to slip his hand into the small opening and pack the bearing with grease, enabling the antenna to move again so that the station could continue its tracking support. I’m told that Neil Armstrong intends to thank Greg personally when the Apollo-11 crew visits the Guam station to thank the team for their mission support work. I'm sure it will be a wonderful surprise for the lad.

A Thoughtful Final Broadcast

Commencing at 177:32:00 GET, 105,150 miles from Earth, the Apollo-11 astronauts gave the final television broadcast of their mission, which began by referencing Jules Verne's "Del la Terre a la Lune" (From the Earth to the Moon) and included thoughtful commentaries on the contribution of the hundreds of thousands behind the scenes whose work had helped to make the mission a success. This was very much in keeping with the spirit in which the crew decided not to include their names on their mission patch, so that it could symbolise everyone involved.


Col. Collins pointed out the number of components involved in the Apollo spacecraft and expressed the crew’s confidence in their reliability. He likened the mission to the periscope of a submarine. “All you see is the three of us, but beneath the surface are thousands and thousands of others, and to all those, I would like to say thank you very much.”

During his talk, Col. Aldrin expanded on this idea: “We have come to the conclusion that this has been far more than three men on a voyage to the Moon. More still than the efforts of one nation. We feel that this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all Mankind to explore the unknown.”


Finally, Mr. Armstrong concluded the broadcast with this tribute: “The responsibility for this flight lies first with history and with the giants of science who have preceded this effort. Next with the American people, who have through their will, indicated their desire. Next to four administrations and their Congresses for implementing that will. And then to the agency and industry teams that built our spacecraft […]. We would like to give a special thanks to all those Americans who built those spacecraft, who did the construction, design, the tests and put their their hearts and all their abilities into those craft.

"To those people tonight, we give a special thank you, and to all those people that are listening and watching tonight, God bless you. Good night from Apollo 11.”

View of the Earth from around 100,000 miles taken about an hour after the final television broadcast

Returning to Earth

As I’ve noted before, the entry corridor into the Earth’s atmosphere when returning from the Moon is extremely critical: too steep an entry would cause the spacecraft to burn up, while too shallow an entry would make it skip off the atmosphere and out into solar orbit, to be lost forever. Apollo-11’s re-entry corridor was 40 miles wide, and they would be coming in at 24,680mph! Consequently, before re-entry, the Apollo-11 crew jettisoned the Service Module at 189:28:35 GET, to re-enter and burn up separately. The 4.8 (imperial) ton Command Module would be the only part of the original 3,148-ton Apollo-Saturn vehicle that made this historic lunar voyage that returned to Earth.

Apollo-11's Service Module disintegrates and burns up on re-entry. This photo was captured by a NASA ARIA tracking aircraft

Re-entry commenced at 400,000ft, with the CM becoming engulfed in a fireball as it hit the denser air. The effects of gravity and deceleration subjected the Apollo-11 crew to stresses of up to 6.5g.

Skipping Home

Prior to re-entry, the astronauts had been informed that their splashdown point was being shifted 215 nautical miles due to a dangerous thunderstorm in the planned recovery area. This required the CM to make one final manoeuvre during re-entry to target the new splashdown site, about 1,000 miles south-west of Honolulu.

The gumdrop-shaped Command Module has a slight aerodynamic lift capability, and this was used to "fly" the extra distance downrange, by generating two short atmospheric “skips” (ones that would not cause the CM to fly off into space again!) during the re-entry.

Diagram showing how the CM's offset centre of mass results in a lift vector during entry, which provides the CM with some manoeuvrability

Then, right on time at 195:12:06 GET, the small drogue parachutes deployed, hauling out the three main orange-and-white striped parachutes and allowing Columbia to float gently down towards the Pacific Ocean.

Splashdown!

Dawn was just breaking as Columbia descended towards the recovery area, where 9,000 men in nine ships and fifty-four aircraft, spearheaded by the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, were waiting. 11 miles away from the Hornet, the spacecraft splashed down in the inverted position known as the Stable 2. In this position, the heavy side of the spacecraft goes downward leaving the hatch facing upwards, while the crew are upright but hanging forward in their harnesses at about 45°.

A low-resolution night vision camera image of the Apollo-11 splashdown, captured by a recovery helicopter. It is the only known image of this event

The historic first lunar landing mission came to an end at 195 hours, 18 minutes 35 seconds GET, 7.50am local Hawaii time on Thursday 24 July (2.50am 25 July for us here in Australia). Amazingly, and a tribute to the mission planners, this was just 24 seconds ahead of the time specified in the original flight plan! The return voyage from the Moon had taken 59 hours 36 minutes 52 seconds.

Taken some minutes later, when the daylight has increased, this photo shows the CM still in the inverted Stable 2 position

It took the floatation bags almost 8 minutes to flip the CM the right way up (Stable 1 position), which allowed the frogmen recovery crews to access to the spacecraft hatch. Although the waves were only about three or four feet, rumour has it that the astronauts were glad they had taken the precaution of swallowing seasickness tablets before re-entry commenced!

Returning Heroes – and Biological Hazards!

Although it has been generally accepted for some time that the Moon is likely a dead and sterile world, an overabundance of caution encouraged the treatment of the returning astronauts, their spacecraft and the lunar samples, as potential biological hazards – just in case there is some unknown form of microbial life on the Moon that might be pathogenic to Earthly lifeforms.

So while the Apollo-11 crew may have returned to Earth as heroes for accomplishing the first successful lunar landing, they were initially treated in a most unheroic way – as potential carriers of contagion! Biological Isolation Garment (BIGs) were tossed through the CM hatch to the astronauts by one of the recovery frogmen. Then, looking like aliens themselves in their masked isolation garments, the astronauts exited the hatch and climbed into a rubber dinghy, spraying each other down with Sodium Hypochlorite.

A recovery helicopter then transferred Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the Hornet, where they were immediately installed in the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF), a converted Airstream caravan in which they would spend the next three weeks in isolation, supported by volunteer medical personnel. As they set foot on the deck of the Hornet, its band – at President Nixon's request, in honour of the crew and their spacecraft – played "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean".


It was here that President Nixon, who had travelled to the recovery zone to greet the returning astronauts, welcomed the historic crew back to Earth standing outside the MQF’s viewing window.

President Nixon and the Apollo-11 crew in quarantine bow their heads as the USS Hornet's chaplain offers a prayer of thanksgiving for their safe return

Mission Control Celebrates

As the big screens in Mission Control displayed televised images of Columbia floating safely in the Pacific swell, the room erupted in celebration! Excited flight controllers and NASA officials waved flags and smoked the traditional splashdown cigars. When the news came that the astronauts were safely on board the USS Hornet and Mission Control’s responsibility was over the euphoria became even more fervent. It was especially satisfying for them to have met President Kennedy’s deadline and a new image flashed up on the big screen, saying “Task accomplished July, 1969”. 


Congratulatory messages were also sent to the tracking stations around the word that had supported the Apollo-11 mission. Their personnel, too, felt a deep pride in the accomplishment, and their part in it.

The Last Leg of Columbia’s Journey

With its crew whisked away to quarantine, Columbia, bobbing in the ocean, was scrubbed down with Betadyne by the recovery crew, to kill any external contamination it might be carrying. It was then winched aboard the USS Hornet and positioned next to the MQF, so that the two could be connected by a flexible tunnel. This allowed the retrieval of the Moon rocks and other items into the MQF without contaminating the surrounding environment. Like the crew, the interior of the CM was ‘in quarantine’ for 21 days.


After the Hornet docked at Pearl Harbor on 26 July, NASA engineers saved the spacecraft at Ford Island in Honolulu, removing any residual thruster propellants and other hazardous materials before it was transferred by cargo plane to Houston for quarantine in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) in Building 37 of the Manned Spacecraft Centre (MSC).


Columbia finally left the confines of the LRL on 14 August, to be sent back to its manufacturer, North American Rockwell, in Downey, California. Engineers are currently giving her a thorough inspection. Once this is completed, Columbia will be sent to the Smithsonian Institution where this historic spacecraft will eventually be displayed.

Moon Rock Movements

Apollo-11’s lunar samples, literally priceless in both scientific and monetary terms, have made their own separate journey to the LRL in Houston.

After being retrieved from Columbia into the MQF, the sealed boxes were released to NASA officials via the MQF’s transfer lock. Within a few hours of splashdown, the first box of Moon rocks was flown from the USS Hornet to the US Air Force base at Johnston Island in the Pacific, where it was transferred to a cargo plane and sent on to Houston. Just eight hours later it arrived at Ellington Air Force Base near the Manned Spacecraft Centre, from which the container was ferried by two NASA officials to the LRL.


Less than 48 hours after splashdown, the first box of precious lunar samples was opened inside a glovebox at the LRL, and its contents began to be documented. I’m delighted to note that New Zealand-born Australian National University geochemist, my friend Prof. Ross Taylor, has played a significant role in setting up the chemical analysis section of the LRL and is right now carrying out the first emission spectroscopy analysis of Apollo-11’s samples.

Prof. Ross Taylor (left) carrying out an analysis of an Apollo-11 sample at the LRL using an emission spectrograph

While his results are not yet available, the initial findings from other parts of the lab indicate that the lunar rocks are igneous in origin and point to past, if not current, volcanic activity on the Moon. Coupled with some early detections from the seismograph that was left on the Moon as part of the EASEP instruments, some geologists are suggesting that this provides evidence for the Earth and the Moon having a common origin.

Other initial findings are that there is very little evidence of water, and no indications of life in the lunar rocks and regolith, and that the regolith itself contains unusual microscopic spherical glass particles. Dating of some of the samples suggests they could be around 3.6 billion years old, which is the estimated age of the Solar System and the discovery of such ancient rocks has surprised many geologists.

Mice and other animals and plants exposed to lunar materials have so far shown no signs of infection or disease, and neither have the Apollo-11 crew, who were released from quarantine on August 11, leading NASA to indicate that it will generously distribute samples of lunar materials to researchers around the world in September.

A Long Journey Home for the Astronauts

With the Apollo-11 crew confined in the MQF, once the USS Hornet arrived at Pearl Harbour a crane carefully lifted the quarantine facility and its human occupants from the aircraft carrier onto a flat-bed trailer. After a brief welcoming ceremony, the MQF was transported to Hickam Air Force Base, from where it was flown to Houston.


Despite the 2am arrival on July 27, the astronauts’ wives and children were there to welcome them home, along with a large crowd of well-wishers. From inside the MQF, the astronauts could talk with their families by telephone and see them through the window, but a more affectionate homecoming was still weeks away. The MQF was then transferred to the LRL, where the sealed Crew Reception Area (CRA) provided more expansive living and working quarters for the Apollo-11 astronauts for the duration of their quarantine.


Although confined to the CRA, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were not idle, writing their mission reports, and conducting press conferences and mission debriefings from a glass-enclosed conference room. Their health was monitored on a daily basis, without the astronauts ever showing any signs of illness or ill-effects from their sojourn on the lunar surface. They even celebrated Armstrong’s 39th birthday with a surprise party!


On the evening of 10 August, Mr. Armstrong, Col. Aldrin and Col. Collins were finally released from quarantine, stepping out of the CRA to be welcomed by NASA officials and large number of reporters before they were whisked away home by car for long-awaited reunions with their families.

Instant Celebrities

After a day of relaxation at home, the Apollo-11 crew faced a packed press conference on 12 August, where they were greeted with a standing ovation. Referring to the Apollo programme as a “great adventure”, the astronauts spent 45 minutes describing their historic mission in great detail and illustrating it with photographs and film clips taken during the flight. Among the questions they then received from the reporters, Armstrong was asked whether he believed that one day women could become astronauts, to which he promptly replied, “Gosh, I hope so!”

The next day, at the invitation of President Nixon, the astronauts and their families embarked on a day-long whirlwind celebratory tour across the United States, travelling on the presidential jet for the occasion.


From Ellington Air Force Base they flew to New York City, where they were treated to the “largest, longest, and loudest” tickertape parade in the city’s history, with an estimated four million people lining the parade route. After being awarded the gold medal of New York City, the astronauts continued to the United Nations, where UN Secretary General U Thant welcomed them, and they made a brief speech.


Whisked from New York to Chicago, this time around two million people turned out to see the Apollo-11 crew in a tickertape parade through Chicago’s downtown. At the Civic Centre Plaza, a crowd estimated at 100,000 saw the astronauts made honorary citizens of the city, before a final stop on the way back to the airport, at which they addressed a crowd of 15,000 young people.

The final leg of this exhausting day was a visit to Los Angeles, to attend a state dinner hosted by President Nixon, the first ever to be held outside of Washington, DC. 1,440 guests assembled for the event, including the President and Vice President and their families, 14 members of the President’s Cabinet, 44 Governors, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 50 members of Congress, NASA Administrator Thomas Paine and 48 astronauts, ambassadors from 83 countries and numerous Hollywood celebrities – it seems that everyone wants to meet the Apollo-11 astronauts!

Apollo-11 crew and their wives with Vice-President Agnew, President Nixon, and their wives at the Los Angeles gala

Those of you in the US were, I understand, able to see this dinner televised live, which must have been an interesting show. Fittingly, Guidance Controller Steve Bales, who had given the Moon landing the “Go” to proceed despite the guidance computer’s programme alarms, accepted a NASA Group Achievement Award on behalf of the entire flight operations team. President Nixon also presented Mr. Armstrong, Col. Aldrin, and Col. Collins with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honour.

The Price of Fame

The following day, accompanied by NASA Administrator Paine, the astronauts and their families flew back to Houston aboard the presidential jet, but it seems their post-flight celebrity is only ramping up. On 15 August the Apollo-11 crew taped a major television interview, during which Col. Collins announced his decision that he would remain with NASA but make no more space flights. The next day, Houston turned on its own welcome for the astronauts with another tickertape parade, attended by about 250,000, followed by a barbecue for an estimated 50,000 invited guests, MC’d by Frank Sinatra.

Neil Armstrong and his wife Jan buried in tickertape during the Houston parade

The Apollo-11 astronauts are not only American heroes, they are also heroes to the world, and the United States intends to use that fame by sending the crew and their families on a global goodwill tour next month. I just hope that they can cope with the hectic pace of their new-found celebrity – I know I wouldn’t have the stamina for such an intense schedule of public appearances – and that the price of this fame will not be too high for the astronauts' families and their marriages.

During the state dinner in Los Angeles, Col. Aldrin summed up the significance of Apollo-11 saying, “The footprints on the Moon are a true symbol of the human spirit… they show we can do what we want to do, what we must do, and what we will do…”

I think those words make a fitting conclusion to my series of articles on Apollo-11, so I’ll sign off here and leave you all to reflect on this momentous and historic mission.

First day cover celebrating the suggestion that the day of the Moon landing becomes Day One of a new universal calendar!






[August 8, 1969] Two by Four (Mariners 6 and 7 go to Mars)

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Into the Wild Black Yonder

Ten years ago, when we started our planetary series of articles, none of other worlds in our solar system had been explored.  Since then, five intrepid spacecraft have toured two planets.  Mariner 2 and Mariner 5 probed Venus, returning the revelation that the shrouded world is a seething cauldron.  Mariner 4 returned the first pictures of the Red Planet, shocking humanity with images of Moonlike craters and reports of a vanishingly thin atmosphere, dashing forever the vivid, science fictional conception of Mars as an inhabitable world.

Now, twin Mariners 6 and 7 have flown by Mars, dramatically increasing what we know about the fourth planet.  While we'll never get back that fantasy so elegantly woven by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, the new Mars is also not a blasted husk either.


Distant views of Mars, as seen by Mariner 7 as it approached the planet

Continue reading [August 8, 1969] Two by Four (Mariners 6 and 7 go to Mars)