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Science / Space Race

[December 6, 1969] Here comes the Sun (and Moon) — a NASA and friends space update!

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[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

Far in!

While the Pioneers study the Sun far from Earth, there are a host of spacecraft monitoring our home star from Earth orbit.  For instance, we haven't talked about the Orbiting Solar Observatories (OSOs) for a while, but there have been six so far.  They were the first heavy satellite series to be launched by NASA, providing nearly continuous coverage of the Sun since 1962, in wavelengths we can't observe from Earth because they are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere: ultraviolet, X-Ray, and gamma ray.

Why was the Sun such an early focus?  Three major reasons: 1) understanding the dangers posed by flares and their relation to the high energy particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field is critical to ensuring astronaut safety, 2) surveying the Sun and comparing changes on the solar surface with fluctuations of space weather near Earth tell us both about the interactions of the two as well as the nature of both, and 3) the Sun is the closest star at hand, and what we learn about the Sun as a star can be applied to the millions of other stars we can observe.

The revelations OSO have given us are not easily conveyed.  It's not like Explorer 1, which discovered the Van Allen Belts—a hitherto unexpected phenomenon—or the TIROS weather satellite, which discovered storms we hadn't even known about.  Rather, they give us a huge body of data with which we can refine our understanding of how the Sun works, and also so that we can better predict space weather.  What's called "basic research."

OSO 1 operated continuously from March-May 1962, and intermittently on to August 1963, returning data on 75 solar flares—most importantly, what events preceded, succeeded, and coincided with them in many different wavelengths, a fingerprint of an eruption, so to speak.


(ground-taken picture of the Sun flaring)

OSO 2 expanded its coverage to the corona, that bright bit of the Sun you can only see during a lunar eclipse.  Its launch was delayed until February 3, 1965 because the original OSO B was damaged in a launch explosion, April 14, 1964, that killed three technicians!  Though OSO 2 returned data for nine months, I can't find a single article on the Sun that stemmed from it.  There's one on about 20 other stars observed by the satellite, though, and the difficulties of seeing through the Sun's glare to them.

OSO 3, the one that launched March 8, 1967, and not the one that failed to orbit in August 1965, was more successful.  It returned interesting solar data, for instance finding solar X-ray sources that weren't flares, determining that the chromosophere (visible surface) didn't necessarily heat up before a flare, and monitoring the change in the solar spectrum over the course of its 28-day rotation.

And the onboard gamma ray experiments told us a lot about the universe.  For instance, the torrent of gamma rays streaming in from the universe is highly confined to the galactic plane, and particularly toward the Milky Way's core, which means it must be galactic in origin.  OSO 3 also observed X-ray bursts from a star (maybe stars) that isn't the Sun: Scorpius X-1, later determined to be a neutron star, and Lupus XR-1 (which may or may not be the same source—the literature is unclear).  The satellite stopped working just last month.

OSO 4 went up October 18, 1967, and was the first OSO to carry an international experiment—a University of Paris device that measures the Sun in the ultraviolet frequency that best shows solar activity ("Lyman-alpha").  Indeed, it was the first OSO to scan the Sun in ultraviolet at all.  Also really cool is that its X-ray resolution is such that it could watch flares in X-ray wavelengths as sharply as we could see it on the ground in the visual spectrum, so scientists could make one to one comparisons.

You'll note the use of past tense—the satellite is still in orbit, but its tape storage failed in May 1968, and last month, OSO 4 was ordered into standby mode.

That brings us to the OSOs we haven't covered yet.  OSO 5 went up on January 22, 1969, and has the ability to scan the Sun in the X-ray range more quickly and thoroughly.  OSO 6 went up August 9.  I don't have too much to say about them because it's too early for papers.  NASA reports both did their jobs fine, and they're still operating.  Like OSO 3 did, they not only study the Sun but also galactic X-ray sources…so stay tuned.

Small satellites are doing their part, too.  For instance, Explorer 41, the latest in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform series, launched June 21 into a high orbit that goes almost halfway to the Moon.  The Sun this satellite examined has been unusually quiet, an expected trait of the "solar maximum"—the time in the Sun's 11-year cycle of highest output.  On the other hand, low-energy galactic cosmic rays rates fluctuated more than usual, and interplanetary conditions appeared to be more disturbed.  The satellite is still operating.

Finally, and only tangentially related to the Sun, there are the missions of Aurorae and Boreas, launched October 3, 1968 and October 10, 1969, respectively under the auspices of the European Space Research Organization (ESRO).  They report on the brightness of Earth's aurorae, the composition and temperature of the ionosphere, and the charged particle environment in orbit.  The first satellite is still working just fine, but Boreas went into a lower than expected orbit, and it reentered on November 23rd.  Still, the mission was deemed successful.

Rocks to dig

Veering back into the manned space program, there was some exciting coverage during the Apollo 12 flight that I didn't have a chance to relate.  As Conrad, Bean, and Gordon finish their three weeks in quarantine (joined on Dec. 2 by 11 scientists and technicians who had accidentally been exposed to lunar samples), this is a good time to talk about what we've learned from Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Walter Cronkite had, as a guest on his programming, Dr. John O' Keefe—a geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Center.  The visibly excited O'Keefe stated that the most extraordinary aspect of the Moon rocks is that they are deficient in nickel and cobalt as compared to the Sun, that latter body presumably being representative of the nebula that originally coalesced and formed our solar system.

Why is that significant?  Well, the Earth's crust is similarly lacking in nickel and cobalt (and other "precious metals" that dissolve easily in iron, collectively called "siderophiles").  We know Earth has a dense iron core because nothing else would account for the planet's mass with respect to its volume, and also, it explains why the planet has a magnetic field.  While our planet was first cooling, it makes sense that the siderophiles melted and mostly sank to the center of the planet.

The Moon has no core—we know this because its density (volume divided by mass) is too low, and it has no appreciable magnetic field.  That the Moon's surface rocks correlate to Earth's surface rocks, and because its density appears to be constant from crust to center, that suggests that the Moon was somehow formed from Earth's crust.  It is, in fact, a piece of our planet's outer surface that somehow spun off into orbit and formed its own little, low-density world.

What causes this is still unknown.  Perhaps the Earth was spinning so fast when it was formed that its middle flew off.  Or maybe a rogue planet smashed into the Earth.  What we do know is that the composition of the Moon rocks puts paid the hypothesis that the Moon formed separately from and at the same time as Earth, since we'd then expect its crust's composition to either be more like that of the Sun, or for our moon to have a dense core.

We also know that whatever created the Moon happened quite early in Earth's history.  The lunar rocks have been dated as 4.6 billion years old.  That's very close to the estimated age of the Earth.  What I found particularly exciting is that the Moon rocks must be the very oldest rocks we've ever encountered, except maybe for meteorites.  That's because erosion and vulcanism are constantly erasing the Earth's surface, and the oldest rocks I know of down here are somewhere around 3 billion years old.

As we continue to explore the cosmos, we shall find more data points with which to create an holistic view of the universe, something that would be impossible were we to stay Earthbound.  I am happy that I live in the Space Age, when our scientific knowledge is expanding exponentially.  Who knows what new discoveries 1970 will bring!

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


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Science / Space Race

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

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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?

Crew and Capsule

The astronauts selected for this mission included two veterans and a rookie, the first time since Apollo 9 that an Apollo crew has included a newcomer. The mission commander was Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr., an irrepressibly cheerful and talented fellow who almost made the Mercury 7. He was pilot on the Gemini 5 endurance mission and commander on Gemini 11, which conducted docking and microgravity experiments. Richard "Dick" Gordon served as Command Module Pilot, and since he had been Conrad's pilot on Gemini 11, it must have seemed like old times. The newcomer was Alan Bean, who, like Gordon, had been part of the third group of NASA astronauts. His job was to pilot the Lunar Module down to the Moon's surface.

A promotional color photograph of astronauts Conrad, Gordon and Bean, in their spacesuits minus gloves and helmets, in front of the Apollo 12 Lunar Module.
Left to right: Conrad, Gordon, and Bean

The timing for this crew's mission was determined by quirks of fate, only becoming set in stone in December. NASA has a protocol of assigning back-up crews (stand-ins who will replace mission crews in an emergency) to live missions three flights later. Originally, Conrad and Gordon had been the back-up crew for Apollo 8, along with third group astronaut Clifton Williams. Apollo 8 was supposed to test the LM in Earth orbit. But after the successful flight of Apollo 7, which tested the Command and Service Modules, and with the threat of an impending Soviet circumlunar flight, Apollo 8 was bumped to the 9th slot, and the December 1968 flight was reprogrammed for a mission around the Moon.

Conrad and Gordon backed up the delayed Apollo 9 flight, along with Alan Bean, who replaced Clifton Williams, who had died in a test flight October 5, 1967. Nine plus three is twelve, and so those three were put on the second lunar lander mission. But if Williams had not died, and had Apollo's missions gone as schedule, then it would have been Conrad and Bean to set the first steps on the Moon.

As with the prior Columbia and Eagle, NASA wanted proud names for the Apollo 12 vessels. Thousands of NASA employees and contractors sent in their suggestions, and the all-Navy crew decided on Yankee Clipper for the Command Module and Intrepid for the Lunar Module. This marks the first time that a NASA ship has shared a name with one that appeared on Star Trek—namely, the Vulcan-crewed starship in "The Immunity Syndrome". Of course, Intrepid has also been used for American naval vessels since the country's founding, but one has to wonder if Trek's outsize impact on popular culture wasn't a factor. I guess we'll see if we ever get a spaceship called Enterprise…

Official crew insignia for the mission. It is circular with concentric thin blue, thin white then thick yellow edges, the latter sporting the text Apollo 12, Conrad, Gordon, Bean. The center of the insignia consists of a drawn picture of a clipper ship in space in front of the Ocean of Storms area of the Moon, where the Lunar Module was to, and did eventually land. The clipper ship was chosen because the all crew comes from the Navy.

The crew were intimately involved in the creation of the Apollo 12 patch. The blue and gold motif was chosen to honor the U.S. Navy. The Eagle was featured on the last patch; this time, Yankee Clipper got to star. Al Bean went to the library to round up suitable ship references for the clipper and worked closely with the artist to ensure it had a truly "American" look, nixing the first draft as looking too much like the Argo from Greek myth.

Stormy weather

In 1949, President Truman chose Cape Canaveral in Florida to be the nation's spaceport as it allowed launches over the Atlantic rather than over populated regions; it is also as close to the equator as you can get in the continental United States, which means space launches get the most boost from the Earth's rotation.

But it also rains a lot in Florida, and an approaching storm front threatened to delay the Nov. 14th launch date. There was a four and a half hour window that day; if rain grounded the launch beyond that point, the back-up date was Nov. 16th, with a different landing site.

An internal problem reared its head, too: one of the fuel cells (a kind of refillable battery) on Yankee Clipper was leaking hydrogen and had to be replaced.

A color photograph of Apollo 12's Saturn V lift-off from Kennedy Space Center. The sky is completely overcast. The fuel burning at the back of the launcher makes a bright spot in the center of the photograph, with fumes and steam on the sides of the launchpad. Two birds are passing in the frame, near the photographer.

Nevetherless, at 22 minutes past the 8:00 (Pacific time) hour, Apollo 12's Saturn V spurted flame and began its ascent, President Nixon in attendance with his family. The rocket was almost immediately lost in the clouds. Moments later, ABC anchor Frank Reynold's voice went tremulous. He reported that an electrical shock, perhaps caused by a lightning strike, had shot through Apollo 12, taking the fuel cells off-line. Worse, the inertial navigation platform "eight-ball", common to air and spacecraft alike, went haywire. Without these, the mission would probably have to be scrubbed.

A picture of the Flight Director Attitude Indicator. It serves to know at any given moment the relative position and direction of a spacecraft in space.
Flight Director Attitude Indicator: the "platform" or "Eight-ball"

Apollo Commander Conrad, to his credit, retained his cool. "I always like to start out behind the eight-ball and get ahead," he joked as the spacecraft slid into its first orbit around the Earth.

Moonward, Ho!

Once in orbit, a reset brought most of the affected systems back on line, and bright stars were used to realign the platform once Yankee Clipper had passed into night time. Conrad and Bean thoroughly checked their lunar module, entering it ahead of schedule, to ensure there was no lightning damage. That survey complete, they blasted out of orbit into a "free-return" trajectory that would take them around the Moon. On the way, they snapped this picture of the Earth:

A photograph of a crescent Earth taken by Apollo 12 crew on their way to the moon.

They also conducted two color broadcasts, Dick Gordon donning shades to deal with the solar glare. Although we've seen it before, I always marvel at the spaciousness of the Apollo/LM complex compared to prior spacecraft. That one can travel fifteen feet now without hitting anything seems like incomparable luxury compared to the cramped Gemini and Mercury capsules.

After three days, Yankee Clipper decelerated, entering lunar orbit. Apollo 12 was now at that scary juncture, out of radio contact for 45 minutes every hour and a half as the spacecraft ducked behind the Moon. And, as CBS anchor Walter Cronkite never failed to remind us, if the Service Module's engine did not fire, the astronauts would be stranded a quarter million miles from home.

While looping the Moon, the Apollo 12 crew returned live TV shots, gawking at the stark beauty of the horizon, whose peaks looked like distant clouds to them, and at the pebbled landscape, which Conrad described as cotton candy someone had shot BBs at.


The big crater, Copernicus, ejecta of which ridged the Apollo 12 landing site


Fra Mauro, potential future landing site of Apollo 13

Stormy approach

As Intrepid undocked from its mother ship and began its hour-long descent to the lunar surface, two concerns sprung up: firstly, a solar flare had erupted, threatening radio communications, if not the lives of the astronauts; secondly, Alan Bean got a congested nose—but a decongestant pill kept trouble at bay.

Then the LM was on its way, the two Navy aviators, Conrad and Bean, as jovial as any two spacefarers have ever been. Cronkite noted to former astronaut Wally Schirra that the spacemen seemed particularly jocular this flight, to which the Navy Captain replied that that's the way it should be; astronauts shouldn't have to be stuffy.

At first, the spaceship flew almost perpendicular to the lunar surface, not so much landing as orbiting. In fact, until a final burn at about 50,000 feet, Intrepid was in an orbit just nine miles high, such a feat being possible because the Moon has no atmospheric drag.


See how the ship is sideways for most of it?

Once the landing burn commenced, the Intrepid began slowly arcing toward vertical, its engine spewing close to its maximum thrust: some 9000 pounds of force. As the lunar horizon came into view, the astronauts burst into excited exclamations. The target crater was right where it was supposed to be, and they were bang on course. Pete Conrad maneuvered the LM closer and closer to the lunar surface, Bean calling out altitude checks and attaboys in a constant stream. As the module descended, a huge cloud of black dust billowed up—a feature of that site, as Surveyor 3 had found previously. At last, Intrepid landed in "Pete's Parking Lot" just 600 feet from Surveyor 3 with 7% of its fuel left in the tanks, a healthy margin. The pinpoint landing had worked out perfectly.

Going for a walk

Unlike Apollo 11, no post-landing rest period was planned for the astronauts. Who could restrain them anyway, at this point? Just four hours after touchdown, Pete Conrad was out the hatch and making his descent down the ladder. This happened around 3:30 in the morning for me. I have to wonder what viewership was like for this flight given that coverage started at 10 PM. Luckily, Amber works third shift, so we kept each other company on the phone, and when I fell asleep around 11:30 PM, she kindly gave me a wake-up call when the Moonwalk began.

True to style, Pete's first words as he lit on the lunar surface were, "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" I watched the astronaut toodle around, in color and at 30 frames per second, for a while, but then fell back into unconsciousness around 4 AM. No worries, I thought. The exciting stuff wouldn't happen until the second EVA…


Hard to tell, but that's Conrad jumping down to the surface

Except when I woke up and watched the news, it turned out Alan Bean had accidentally set up the camera on a tripod pointed directly at the Sun. In short order, the picture tube had burned out. So much for color TV from the Moon.

I'd actually missed the deployment of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), which included a seismometer, a magnetometer, and a spectrometer for measuring the solar wind. The last instrument, in particular, would return data that would be compared with that being returned from Explorer 35, which has been in lunar orbit since 1967. This will tell us if the Moon, itself, generates or conducts any electric fields that can't be detected from space. All are powered by a SNAP-27 nuclear reactor that creates electricity from radioactive decay. The solar wind experiment was, in part, built by Marcia Neugebauer, whom you may recall was responsible for similar devices on the Venus probe, Mariner 2.


Diagram of ALSEP components laid out on the Moon

I did not miss, however, the astronauts walking into Surveyor 3's crater. As they bounced around, Bean noted that they looked like they were in one of those overcranked silent films of the '20s. They collected samples, uttering profound statements like, "That's a good rock!" The landing site is particularly good for selenology (the lunar equivalent of geology, natch), because the terrain is rather varied; ejecta from Copernicus crater when it was formed fell over the site, creating a mixed set of soil.

Then they found Surveyor and, as planned, began taking a hacksaw to it to bring some pieces home with them. Interestingly, they noted that it was no longer white, but a kind of tan. A trick of the light or erosion? We don't know yet. The metal also seemed to have crystallized, becoming more brittle than it had been on Earth.

The astronauts blasted off from the Moon and, with almost blasé affect, docked with Yankee Clipper. Bean and Conrad rejoined the more laconic Gordon, and they jettisoned Intrepid's top half. Shortly thereafter, they activated the half-LM's engines and plowed the vehicle into the Moon in a test of the ALSEP's seismometer. So much for that ten million bucks. The result was a Moonquake that lasted a good hour, so long that NASA scientists believe the impact may have triggered a landslide. Either that, or the material of the Moon is unique such that, instead of dampening shock waves, as on Earth, it actually amplifies them.


Intrepid as seen from Yankee Clipper; sorry for the monochrome—I snapped this shot off my black and white TV

After a day of photographing the Moon from orbit, Yankee Clipper fired its main engine, broke lunar orbit, and began the three day trip to Earth. On the way, the space trio gave us one final broadcast and also snapped a shot of the Earth as it eclipsed the Sun. All the while, the astronauts suffered from runny noses and wheezy breath, the consequence of lunar dust ending up in the capsule.

On the morning of the 24th, Yankee Clipper sailed into the Earth's atmosphere and the typical radio blackout. Three minutes before splashdown at 12:58 Pacific time, cameras from the U.S.S. Hornet recovery carrier, 1200 miles south of Hawaii, spotted the three orange and white parachutes, just two and a half miles away. This ties Apollo 8 for the closest recovery. The command module touched the roughest waves ever encountered on an Apollo recovery, immediately inverting. Recovery was swift and efficient, the Hornet's helicopter #66 making its fourth Apollo astronaut pick-up (previous ones included 8, 10, and 11).

Once the spacemen were on the carrier, we got to see that they were not wrapped up in suits, but merely wearing respirators. They jauntily waved to the cameras as they entered their quarantine trailer, where they will stay for five days, before transferring to a larger facility for thirteen more days. Missing were the folks in protective suits immediately washing away their bootprints. One has to wonder if they'll even bother with quarantine after this mission. They don't seem to be taking it very seriously this time.

President Nixon called the astronauts to congratulate them. He capped the conference with an on-the-spot promotion. This is customary for spacemen after each flight, but I think this is the first time the President has done it. Conrad, Bean, and Gordon are all now Navy Captains.

There was some concern that Apollo 12's systems might have been permanently damaged by the lightning that struck on take-off. Nothing seems to have been hurt at all, but there is still a clamor to launch the next missions in clearer weather to avoid another strike.


The lightning strike was caught on camera after launch but not discovered by NASA until later

It is an amazing and saddening thing that the public seems already somewhat tired of the Apollo missions. NBC's David Brinkley and CBS' Harry Reasoner could barely keep the disdain out of their voices as they described the astronauts gallivanting on the Moon, as if they were personally wasting taxpayer money. Conrad and Bean's casual mien, rather than charming the public, seems to have belittled the enterprise in the public's esteem.

Beyond that, NASA itself is in turmoil. They are demoralized at what they see as the end of an era, rather than the beginning of a new one. Vice President Agnew may be gung ho on going to Mars, but President Nixon refuses to make any commitments. To quote Music Scene's David Steinberg, who said this about Nixon's Vietnamization speech, "We would like to go out of our way to salute President Nixon, who in his speech exactly one week ago had the courage and the confidence to believe that he actually said something."


After that comment, an FBI agent stepped up and snapped his picture. This became a running gag.

NASA scientists feel that they have not been listened to, and that the Apollo missions stress engineering and political issues over the acquisition of knowledge. Indeed, many prominent researchers have quit, and others have been laid off.

Nevertheless, the money has been paid and the Saturns have been built. Apollo 13 is scheduled to launch next March to some spot scouted by Apollo 12, and we'll have at least four more missions after that (Apollo 20 has been cancelled; Apollos 18 and 19 may be on the block). I, personally, am excited that travel to the Moon has become routine. We are very much at a similar juncture as when Schirra flew his textbook Sigma 7 flight, and he didn't even make the front page. You know what? I am okay with taking the spectacle out of things. Let's get down to the real business: exploration and utilization of space. It's not about the missiles anymore, but humanity.

The kind of humanity down-to-Earth heroes like Conrad, Bean, and Gordon represent. Hear, hear, folks.


The astronauts enter their quarantine trailer, one of them miming a pistol shot at the crew




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Science / Space Race

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

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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.




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Science / Space Race

[July 18, 1969] The Greatest Adventure Lifts Off (Apollo-11, Part 1)

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Two days ago, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy's Pad 39A, destination: Moon.  KGJ, our affiliated TV station, will be simulcasting CBS coverage of the landing and Moonwalk starting at noon, Pacific time, on July 20th, and going all day from then.

Please join us for this once-in-a-lifetime event!


by Kaye Dee

"Lift off. We have lift off”, Launch Control at Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) excitedly announced, as Apollo 11’s Saturn-V thundered off the pad just two days ago! While a Saturn-V liftoff is no longer a new occurrence at KSC, this launch was special. An astronaut crew is now on the way to fulfill the millenium-old human dream of reaching the surface of the Moon!

Describing Apollo 11 as Mankind’s “greatest adventure” has already become hackneyed and overused. And yet, I didn’t really feel that I could give this article today any other title – because the attempt to land the first astronauts on the Moon is an incredible adventure: some commentators are calling it the greatest human adventure since our hominid ancestors ventured out of Africa to explore the world. Is that hyperbole? Perhaps. But it is a daring exploit to venture out from our home planet, across a totally inimical environment, and actually set foot on another world for the first time.


This mission is exciting, complex and – yes – dangerous, so to follow it all, I’m once again going to divide my coverage of it into two parts, beginning today with some background for the mission and its launch. The second part will follow, after the astronauts’ (hopefully) successful return to Earth.

Where to Land?
Operational and engineering considerations have played the major role in dictating where the first astronauts will land on the Moon. Over the last two years, intense analysis has gradually winnowed down some thirty possible landing sites originally suggested based on Lunar Orbiter images and Surveyor lander data and more recent close-up imagery from Apollo-8 and 10.

Several constraint parameters have determined the Apollo-11 landing site and its backup landing locations. The Moon has a peculiar lighting characteristic, in that it reflects the light from the Sun directly back into your face, and it was a concern to the astronauts that they might be dazzled by this reflected light while trying to land. To avoid this, they wanted to have the Sun only about 10 degrees above the horizon, meaning that the Lunar Module (LM) must fly in from the east with the Sun behind it, to land shortly after sunrise, when surface objects cast revealing shadows to identify possible hazards around the landing site.


This trajectory for landing means that the landing site had to be east of the lunar meridian, so that if the launch was delayed for a few days, back-up sites would still have suitable lighting.  NASA wanted the site to be within 5° of the lunar equator, as a higher latitude site would consume more fuel, and fuel economy is an important consideration for this first landing attempt. Finally, mission planners wanted a relatively flat landing site for the initial landing, free from sharp ridges, large boulders or steep sided craters.


A “Water Landing” on a Dry World
These constraints required the location for the first manned lunar landing to be a “mare” region (those areas thought by ancient sky-gazers to be lunar seas) near the Moon’s equator, with the choice settling on the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility). This area provided two possible landing targets designated ALS (Apollo Landing Site)-1 and ALS-2.

Map showing the final five prospective landing sites for Apollo-11. Site 2 is the selected location for the landing attempt

The selected site, ALS-2, is only 25 kilometres southeast of the Surveyor-5 landing site, and when Apollo 10 made a low pass over the spot it received a favourable report from Commander Tom Stafford. 

Apollo-10 view of the Apollo-11 landing site

ALS-2 would also allow a two-day recycle in the case of a delay, to the next back-up site in Sinus Medii. Last, but not least, the choice of ALS-2 has made the scientists happy, since it will provide them data from a typical mare site.

A Crew to Make History
For the astronauts of Apollo-11, becoming the crew that would make the historic first lunar landing attempt has been a matter of luck and crew rotation, rather than deliberate selection. As the back-up crew for Apollo-8, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were automatically rotated into the prime crew for Apollo-11. The third member of that back-up team, Fred Haise, was replaced by Michel Collins, following his return to flight status after surgery for a bone spur in his neck. (Haise has now been switched to the Apollo 14 crew).

L. R. Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin

We already know that Apollo-10 was a brief contender to make the first landing attempt, while had that mission failed to achieve all its “rehearsal” objectives, Apollo-11 would now be repeating its flight plan. In that case, Apollo-12 would have become the first landing attempt – and should Apollo-11 fail to achieve its landing objective, Apollo-12 may yet become the first Moon landing mission.

While perhaps not “hand-picked” for the job, the current Apollo-11 crew, formally announced on 9 January this year, are certainly up to the task of ensuring the success of this history-making spaceflight!

Apollo-11 crew portrait at the announcement of their selection

Spaceflight Veterans
Each member of the Apollo-11 crew is a veteran of one previous space mission, so we have met them before in the annals of the Journey.

Mission Commander Mr. Neil Armstrong, 38, was the Command Pilot of the Gemini-8 mission, which experienced NASA’s first in-flight emergency. He safely rescued that mission by drawing on his extensive test flight experience. As a civilian, Mr. Armstrong earns $US22,500 a year from NASA, making him the most highly paid of all the astronauts.

A lovely portrait of the Apollo-11 crew with their wives and children, from Life magazine

USAF Colonel Edwin Aldrin, 39, known to his family as “Buzz” and to his astronaut colleagues as Dr. Rendezvous, is the designated Lunar Module Pilot (LMP). Col. Aldrin was the Pilot of Gemini-12, performing three successful spacewalks. If the onboard radar fails, this is a man who can manually complete the rendezvous using a sextant and a slide rule!

Also a Colonel in the US Air Force, Michael Collins is the Command Module Pilot (CMP) for this mission. His first spaceflight was Gemini-10, for which he was the Pilot, performing both a “stand-up” EVA (standing in the hatch of the spacecraft) and a partially-successful spacewalk.

Who’s First Out the Hatch?
At the very first press conference for the Apollo 11 crew in January, on the assumption that it would be the first landing mission, a reporter raised the question of who would be the first astronaut to step onto the Moon. Early mission flight plans and timelines noted that the LM Pilot would step out first, and this scenario was consistent with the practice on the Gemini missions, where the Pilot would make the Extravehicular Activities (EVAs), rather than the Command Pilot.

Fish-eye view of astronauts Aldrin and Armstrong as they train in a mock-up lunar module

However, in April it was announced that Mr. Armstrong, as mission commander, would be the first to step onto the lunar surface. Col. Aldrin, apparently expecting to be first out of the hatch, is rumoured to have been put out by this, especially when there were some stories flying around that he had been sidelined in favour of Armstrong because the commander was a civilian. Aldrin is said to have felt this to be a slight to the military.

A Quiet Hero
There is an official NASA rationale for the decision that Mr. Armstrong should be the first person to exit the LM and step onto the lunar surface: the interior design of the Lunar Module and the physical locations of the two astronauts inside the cabin makes it more practical for Armstrong to be the first one out. As LMP, Col. Aldrin will stand on the right side of the LM, while Mr. Armstrong, on the left, will be closest to the hatch opening.

Diagram of a forward view of the LM, showing the Commander's station the let and the LMP station to the right. It would have been difficult for Armstrong and Aldrin to swap places in this very cramped interior

I have heard through the grapevine at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station that senior NASA managers decided unanimously in March that they wanted Mr. Armstrong to be the First Man on the Moon, because they felt that the first human to set foot on another world should be someone like the pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh – a calm and quiet person. Armstrong fitted this mould as “the example of the great American hero – calm, quiet, softly spoken, with absolute confidence and with no ego”.

Charles Lindbergh and Neil Armstrong – seen by NASA managers as two men in the same quietly heroic mould. There is certainly something similar in their facial expressions

Flight Operations Director Deke Slayton is also said to have felt that, as Commander, it was a matter of protocol that Mr. Armstrong should be first out the hatch, especially as he was senior to Col. Aldrin, having joined the astronaut corps in Group Two, while Aldrin entered in Group Three.

But whatever the reasoning, as long as the landing on the lunar surface is a success, Neil Armstrong looks set to become the astronaut whose name will reverberate through history as the First Man on Moon in just a few days’ time.

Symbolic Callsigns
As was the case with Apollo-9 and 10, Apollo-11 requires separate callsigns for the Command and Lunar Modules when they are operating independently at the Moon. Given the globally significant nature of this flight, and its symbolic role in winning the Space Race for the United States by landing the first astronauts on the lunar surface ahead of the USSR, the crew, according to Mr. Armstrong, were inundated with suggestions for the names of their spacecraft.

NASA Public Affairs wanted the Apollo-11 crew to be “less flippant” in selecting their spacecraft names following the more light-hearted choices of the Apollo-9 and 10 crews. While I’ve heard that the names Snowcone (CM) and Haystack (LM) were referred to early in mission planning, ultimately the Apollo-11 astronauts selected the names Columbia (for the CM) and Eagle (for the LM) as being suitably representative of the historic nature of the mission.

1915 US coin depicting Columbia and the American eagle

Columbia (a feminine form derived from the name of Christopher Columbus) is the traditional female personification of the United States. This name is also a nod to Jules Verne’s spacecraft “Columbiad” (from the 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon), which was the name the Apollo-8 crew wanted to use for their historic Command Module.

The obverse of the Great Seal of the United States depicts a bald eagle carrying both an olive branch and a bundle of arrows in its claws, symbolising war and peace

The bald eagle is, of course, the symbolic bird of the United States, depicted on the Great Seal of the United States and the National Coat of Arms. It also appears on the seal of the US Department of the Air Force – and Col. Aldrin and Col. Collins are both USAF officers.

And a Symbolic Mission Patch
The association of the eagle with the United States is a motif that also occurs in the design of the Apollo-11 mission patch. In fact, the deciding factor in selecting the name “Eagle” for the Lunar Module was the patch design already under development, that depicted an American bald eagle landing on the Moon.


Mr. Armstrong’s backup, Captain Jim Lovell, is credited with originally suggesting the symbol of an eagle on the mission patch.

Some early sketches for an Apollo 11 patch were prepared by Allen Stevens of Rockwell International, who has been involved with the development of several Apollo mission patches, but Astronaut Collins seems to have had a major role in the final design.

Allen Stevens early designs for the Apollo-11 patch incorporated the names of the crew and the Roman numeral XI

Col. Collins found a depiction of a bald eagle in a National Geographic book on birds that he considered ideal – the eagle with its wings partially folded, swooping down with its talons extended.(left) A beautiful eagle painting by National Geographic Society staff artist Walter A Weber, first published in the July 1950 issue of National Geographic magazine, was re-used and re-oriented (below) for the book that inspired Michael Collins

Tracing the picture, Collins then sketched in the Moon’s surface to give the impression that the eagle was landing, and included an image of the Earth in space in the background above the eagle’s right wing. In the final patch design, the eastern seaboard of the United States and parts of the northern portion of South America are visible on the globe, with a scattering of white clouds over the blue oceans.

As the design evolved, the crew decided on a departure from previous patch designs, leaving off their own names so that the patch could be said to represent all the people involved in the mission, not just the astronauts. Since Armstrong felt that the Arabic number ‘11’ would be more easily understood around the world, the use of the Roman numeral, or Collins’ suggestion of writing out “eleven” were both dropped as design elements.

An interim step towards the final mission patch design

Images and Impressions Matter
NASA simulator instructor Tom Wilson suggested that the eagle carry an olive branch, as a symbol of the United States’ peaceful intentions in landing on the Moon.

The olive branch was added to the design, depicted as being carried in the eagle’s beak. To round out their design, the three astronauts selected a naturalistic black for the sky, with blue and gold edging around the around the outside of the circular patch.

NASA illustrator James Cooper produced the finished artwork for this design. However, when the crew submitted it for approval, it was rejected on the basis that the eagle’s powerful talons, extended stiffly below it, were "too warlike", and might give a wrong impression in our Cold War environment, where propaganda imagery matters.

Recalling that in the Great Seal, the eagle carries an olive branch in one set of talons, the olive branch was switched from the beak to the eagle’s claws. Although Col. Collins expressed the thought that “the bird looked a little uncomfortable” depicted in this way, the design was approved and became the official mission patch.

Artist James Cooper hands over the finsihed version of the final artwork for the Apollo 11 patch to Astronaut Collins

Tracking Apollo to the Moon
For the previous Apollo missions, I hadn’t written in any detail about the worldwide NASA tracking network that will be following every second of Apollo-11’s voyage to the Moon and back. Time to fix that, as none of the lunar missions would have been possible without it.

NASA’s global Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) will be constantly monitoring the flight, using the resources of 17 stations, 4 ships and the 8 aircraft that form the Apollo Range Instrumented Aircraft (ARIA) fleet.

Map showing the MSFN deployment for Apollo-11's Trans Lunar Injection. The irregular circles mark the reception areas of each tracking station, ship or aircraft

Three MSFN stations – at Goldstone in California, Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra, Australia, and Fresnedillas, near Madrid, Spain – were specifically constructed to support the Apollo missions, being deliberately sited close to existing stations in NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) so that the two networks could work together for lunar operations.

The MSFN tracking station at Goldstone, California

Working Together
The DSN facilities at Goldstone, Canberra and Madrid (which have similar 85ft dishes to those used by the MSFN), will be shadowing the MSFN stations to provide back-up, as well as complementing spacecraft communications at the Moon. During the period when the Columbia and Eagle will be operating independently – with the CM in lunar orbit, while the LM transports Armstrong and Aldrin to the lunar surface and back and during their surface activities – the DSN facility will support tracking and communication with one spacecraft while the MSFN station supports the other.

The "Pioneer" DSN antenna at Goldstone, with its "Apollo Wing", housing the equipment added to support Apollo missions

In addition, for the planned live television broadcast from the lunar surface during the LM crew’s historic first Moonwalk, the new 210ft antenna at Goldstone is anticipated to be the prime receiving station for the signals from the Moon, with the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia providing back-up. I’ve mentioned the Parkes telescope previously, in conjunction with the Our World global satellite television broadcast, but what is not generally known is that the design of this 210ft radio telescope was, in fact, the prototype on which the new 210ft dishes of the DSN are based.

The Parkes Radio Telescope, photographed on the evening of Apollo 11's launch

The new "Mars" 210ft antenna at Goldstone

A Tough Training Schedule
It’s hard to believe today that when Alan Shepard made the first Mercury spaceflight, he had only conducted 150 hours of mission simulations. Given the critical nature of the Apollo-11 flight, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins worked 14-hour days, 6 days a week for a full 6 months before the mission. They each spent over 1,200 hours in simulators wrestling with a continuous stream of missions, frequently peppered with emergencies, equipment malfunctions, and potential catastrophes to test their knowledge, skill, and coolness to the limits.

Armstrong and Aldrin practicing their lunar surface activities

CMP Collins concentrates during a session in the LM simulator

Col. Aldrin during survival training at the U.S. Air Force Air Defense Command Life Support School in Texas

It's well-known that Mr. Armstrong has demonstrated his coolness in emergency situations. Not only did he successfully bring the stricken Gemini-8 safely back to Earth, in May last year, he survived the crash of a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle and shortly afterwards was back at work in his office at the Manned Spacecraft Centre as if his narrow escape had not occurred!

Scientist-Astronaut Dr. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, a professional geologist, also worked extensively with the Apollo-11 crew, preparing them for lunar rock collecting. After such thorough preparation, the astronauts surely know every twist and turn of the normal and emergency operational procedures, as well as every capricious component of the spacecraft’s 26 subsystems.

Mr. Armstrong and Col. Aldrin on a geology field trip at Sierra Blanca, Texas

Bringing It All Together
Apollo-11’s Lunar Module, LM-5 and its Command and Service Modules, CSM-107, arrived at Kennedy Space Centre in January. LM-5 has several differences from Apollo 10's Lunar Module, customising it for an actual landing on the Moon. These include: a VHF radio antenna to facilitate communication with the astronauts during their time on the lunar surface; a lighter ascent engine and more thermal protection on the landing gear. The LM is also carrying a scientific instrument package – the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP), which will be deployed on the Moon.

LM-5 being checked out at KSC prior to being installed for launch in in the Saturn-V

Apollo-11’s Saturn-V vehicle, AS-506, was rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building on 20 May, and transported to Launch Pad 39A while Apollo 10 was still on its way to the Moon. A countdown test was conducted between 26 June and 2 July, which went extremely smoothly, without any major issues – hopefully a good omen for the entire mission.

The Apollo-11 launch vehicle arrives at Pad 39A, in preparation for the historic flight

Avoiding Any Infections
To prevent the crew from picking up any infections that might lead to illnesses causing delays to the mission, since a brief visit home with their families (whom they will not see up close again after their release from quarantine in August if all goes to plan) for the Fourth of July holiday, the astronauts have been kept carefully isolated from all un-necessary contacts.

A dinner with the crew, proposed by President Nixon for the night before launch, was cancelled, while at their last press conference before the launch, Mr. Armstrong and Colonels Aldrin and Collins were stragetically placed on a platform so that air flowed from behind them towards the assembled press corps, in hope that this would keep any germs from the audience reaching the astronauts!

The Apollo-11 crew at their final press conference, hoping to avoid any germs!

At their final medical checks, all three astronauts were pronounced fit and ready for flight – so one assumes that the precautions worked as intended. 

Pre-flight Preparations
The final preparations for Apollo-11’s launch continued the now established pattern for Apollo missions, with an early morning wake-up for the crew, the traditional pre-flight breakfast of steak and eggs with Flight Operations Director Deke Slayton and the backup crew, followed by the ritual of suiting up. A small folding shovel with plastic sample bags were placed in the special pocket of Mr. Armstrong’s spacesuit, to be used should the astronauts’ stay on the Moon be cut short for any reason: at least they would return to Earth with a few lunar soil samples.

L. The Apollo-11 crew enjoy their traditional pre-flight breakfast; R. Suited and ready for space, the astronauts enter their transfer van for the ride to the launch pad

When the crew arrived at Pad 39A, the White Room crew chief, Guenter Wendt, greeted them holding a 4ft long "key to the Moon", which he presented to Neil Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong in turn gave Wendt a card reading, “Space Taxi ticket, good between any two planets.”

At three minutes and twenty seconds before launch, the countdown became automated, and over 450 personnel at the consoles in Launch Control Firing Room 1 turned their eyes to watching that very special Saturn-v leave the tower and soar into the sky.


A Million Spectators?
The Cocoa Beach Chamber of Commerce estimated that perhaps one million spectators would gather to watch the launch of Apollo-11 from the highways, beaches and waterways within the vicinity of Kennedy Space Centre. CBS news later reported that the number was closer to 300,000; local motel owners, charging rates as high as $65 a night, were reportedly disappointed. Nevertheless, the essentially uncountable number was still the highest ever to attend a space launch.

A crowd of spectators in Titusville, near KSC, ready to watch the launch

These spectators included a group from the American Poor People's Campaign demonstrating against the expenditure on space exploration, when people are going hungry in the United States. The Campaign director, Mr Hosea Williams, said the demonstration included hungry people from five southern States. “We're not against things like the space shot” he said, explaining the reason for their protest. "But there's been a miscalculation in priorities". NASA Administrator Paine agreed to host protesters as spectators at the launch. Awestruck, by the powerful spectacle of the rocket's launch, they prayed for the astronauts, despite protesting the mission itself.

Although President Nixon decided to watch the launch on television in the White House, Vice President Agnew and former president Johnson and his wife were among the VIP guests at the launch site. Other dignitaries at the launch included the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, four members of the Cabinet, 19 state governors, 40 mayors, 60 ambassadors and 200 congressional representatives. There were approximately 3,500 press, radio and television representatives: while the majority were from the United States, 55 other countries were also represented in the media contingent.

President and Mrs. Johnson, with Vice President Agnew, were among the VIPS watching the launch from Kennedy Space Centre, along with a huge press corps.

It is estimated that 25 million people tuned in to watch the launch in the US, while thanks to satellite communications, the lift-off was televised live in 33 countries, including Australia. Millions more around the world listened in to radio broadcasts of the launch.

Despite the late night timeslot of the launch here in Australia (11.32pm), thousands of households around the country stayed up to watch. Like many other parents, my sister and her husband roused their children from bed to join the viewing audience: they even sat their eight-month-old baby on the couch to watch. He may not remember it, but at least in the future he will be able to honestly say that he saw the launch of Apollo-11!

Lift off into History!
At last, on 16 July, at 9.32am EDT, Apollo-11 lifted off into history, rising slowly at first from the launch pad.  The three astronauts have reported that they were not aware of the moment of lift-off, but first felt a powerful thrust to their backs, accompanied by a distant rumble, sounding rather like a train. They were thrown left and right against their straps in spasmodic jerks as the 36 storey vehicle adjusted itself to wind effects, to keep on the planned course.


Within forty seconds the Saturn-V was travelling faster than the speed of sound, and the noise in the cabin dropped away. However, Commander Armstrong noted that those first 40 seconds of flight were uncomfortably noisy and rough, much worse than the Gemini Titan launches. He reported that he found it was hard to hear any voices in his earphones, even with his helmet on.

Twelve minutes into the flight, Apollo-11 entered a near-circular Earth orbit. Within 30 minutes, the astronauts were feeling so relaxed that they were playing with the onboard still and movie cameras as they plunged into the night over Tananarive. The powerful FPQ6 radar at the Carnarvon tracking station in Western Australia confirmed that Apollo-11 was in the planned parking orbit, and on the second orbit over Carnarvon, the Capcom at Houston gave the astronauts the “Go!” for the Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burn that would send Apollo-11 on the way to the Moon.

The FPQ6 radar at Carnarvon tracking station that confirmed Apllo-11's initial orbit. This MSFN station also relayed the TLI confirmation to the spacecraft

On the Way to the Moon

With the Apollo-11 crew now on their way to the Moon, I have no more photos from the mission to share, until they return to Earth with their film canisters hopefully filled with wonderful images from the flight.

To quickly summarise the activities since TLI, about 30 minutes post-TLI, Col. Collins performed the transposition, docking, and extraction manoeuvre, needed to free the LM for the voyage to the Moon. Since leaving Earth orbit, the Apollo-11 crew has quickly settled into routine. After the docking with the LM, they astronauts exchanged their bulky pressure suits for their more comfortable white Teflon jump suits and consumed a lunch of beef and potatoes, butterscotch pudding, and brownies washed down with grape punch.

The crew's first in-flight meal included beef and potatoes, made possible by the new thermostabilised wet pack container technique that is expanding the range of available meals for Apollo flights

During that first day in en route for the Moon, the astronauts said that the Moon didn’t seem to be getting bigger, although the Earth was visibly shrinking. At 11 hours and 20 minutes after launch, they settled down for a sleep period, about 2 hours early, made possible by the cancellation of a mid-course correction.

Television Tryout
Just before 23 hours into the flight, the crew’s second day in space began with a wake-up call from Houston. Then, at the 30 hour mark, there was a 50 minute trial television broadcast from the spacecraft using the omni-directional antennae, which was received at the Goldstone tracking station. This impromptu broadcast showed some spectacular colour views of the Earth, I'm told, and provided practice for the crew's first public television broadcast a few hours later. The astronauts also showed themselves “running” in their seats, while asking if the medical team was receiving their heartbeat data. Goldstone reported they could see the astronauts trying to run in their seats, and Capcom Charles Duke in Houston indicated that the medical telemetry was being received.

This marks the point at which I will have to complete this article to send it via telex to the Traveller, so we’ll pick up the second part of story of Apollo-11's great adventure once the mission has returned, hopefully safely and successfully from the Moon.

Just the Beginning
If Apollo-11 achieves all its mission goals, it will be just the first small step in the exploration of our local neighbourhood in space, the true beginning of our road to the stars. 

Neil Armstrong, who will soon become the first person to set foot on another world has said “I think we’re going to the Moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul…we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream”. I think he’s right!




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Comics, Science / Space Race

[May 28, 1969], The Big One Before the Big One (Apollo-10)

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by Kaye Dee

May has been an exciting month for space exploration, with two Soviet space probes arriving at Venus and Apollo-10 safely returning just days ago from its epic lunar voyage, which has constituted a full-dress rehearsal for the first manned Moon landing.

A philatelic cover referring to Apollo-10 as "the Big One before the BIG One"! (Meaning Apollo-11, of course)

The Bridesmaid, not the Bride
Before Apollo-10 lifted off on its big mission as NASA’s final test flight ahead of the planned landing of Apollo-11 in July, for a while there was the possibility that the landing attempt might actually be made on this flight, to ensure that American astronauts reached the Moon before any Soviet cosmonauts!

I’m told by my friends at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, that there was considerable discussion within NASA about accelerating the lunar landing programme. As early as February, even before the launch of Apollo-9, there were suggestions that, if the Earth orbit test of the Lunar Module (LM) was successful, Apollo-10 might go for the first manned lunar landing. George Mueller, Head of NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight (left), supported this approach. He may not look it, but Dr. Mueller has been described as someone who “always shoots from both hips”, and he strongly pushed for the Apollo-10 landing scenario.

However, a dress rehearsal mission had been planned since June 1967, and the consensus was that the programme was not quite ready to safely achieve a landing with Apollo-10, with more work needed on different docking techniques, as well as more experience with communications and tracking capabilities at lunar distances.

There were concerns that not enough is known about the effect on planned lunar orbit manoeuvres of the Mascons (gravity peaks caused by heavy material under the lunar surface) discovered by Apollo-8. In addition, the lunar landing computer software wasn’t quite ready, and the LM allocated to the Apollo-10 mission was one that had been planned for use in an Earth orbit flight test. Since it was heavier than a LM intended for a lunar landing, its greater weight might have caused problems lifting off the lunar surface.

LM-4 being prepared for the Apollo-10 mission at Kennedy Space Centre

Thus, on 26 March, with the Saturn-V for its mission already on the launchpad, senior NASA officials finally announced that Apollo-10 would remain the bridesmaid and not become the bride, performing the final full-dress rehearsal for a Moon landing with Apollo-11, rather than itself attempting the historic first lunar touchdown. “With the exception of the actual landing of the Lunar Module on the lunar surface, the mission planned is the same as for the [Apollo-11] lunar mission”, NASA’s announcement of the decision said.

Dr. Paine (right) with Mr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Manned Spacecraft Centre, celebrating the safe return of Apollo-10

Perhaps Dr. Thomas O. Paine, only confirmed as NASA's third Administrator on 20 March – and a Democrat in the Republican Nixon Administration, which has yet to demonstrate strong enthusiasm for continuing the spaceflight programme of the previous Administration – preferred to err on the side of caution, rather than take another bold gamble like Apollo-8 at such a late stage in the Moon landing programme.

Seasoned Crew
Whether Apollo-10 remained the lunar landing dress rehearsal, or if it had become the first mission to land on the Moon, its crew were well-qualified for either mission scenario, as seasoned veterans of Gemini spaceflights.

Mission Commander Colonel Thomas Stafford previously flew as Pilot of the Gemini-VI mission, and then as Commander of Gemini-IX. On the latter flight, his Pilot was Commander Eugene “Gene” Cernan, assigned as LM Pilot for Apollo-10. The third member of the Apollo-10 crew, Command Module (CM) Pilot Commander John Young, made his first spaceflight as Pilot of Gemini-III, before becoming Commander of Gemini-X. I think NASA would have been hard-pressed to assemble a more experienced crew for this crucial flight.

A Mission Patch with Mission Heritage
North American Rockwell artist Allen Stevens, who has previously collaborated with the crews to design the mission patches for Apollo-1 , 7, and 9, apparently wanted to break away from the circular shape used for so many previous missions. He initially offered the Apollo-10 crew some concepts based on polygonal patch shapes, but these did not appeal.

Instead, US Navy officers Cernan and Young primarily developed the patch, which Stevens then illustrated. Their concept drew heavily on the design of Stafford and Cernan’s Gemini-IX mission patch, especially using the shape of a shield.

Astronaut Cernan has said that the mission patch was based on the mechanics and goals of the mission, and this is exemplified in the dominance of the spacecraft and the mission number represented by a large Roman numeral in the middle of the design.

The final version of the Apollo-10 patch depicts the CM circling the Moon as the LM makes its low pass over the surface, with the Earth in the background. The three-dimensional rendering of the Roman ‘X’ gives the impression that it is sitting on the Moon, its prominence in the illustration indicating the mission’s significance in furthering the Apollo programme. The crew names appear around the rim of the shield.

A Mascot Namesake
With two spacecraft operating independently around the Moon, the CM and LM would need their own individual callsigns, as was the case with Apollo-9. For their historic mission, the Apollo-10 crew looked to the popular “Peanuts” comic strip, injecting a light-hearted note into a critical mission by designating the Command Module “Charlie Brown” and the Lunar Module “Snoopy”. It seems that NASA executives were once again unhappy with the crew’s choice of names, being particularly concerned about the perception of the hapless Charlie Brown as a born loser.

But the two characters, particularly Snoopy, have been associated with spaceflight since last year, when the lovable beagle was adopted as the mascot for NASA’s Manned Spaceflight Awareness programme. This safety campaign, begun in 1963, focuses on encouraging the workforce constructing spacecraft and equipment for NASA to remember that astronaut lives, and mission success, depend upon the quality and reliability of their work: a message that has taken on new meaning and urgency following the Apollo-1 fire. Snoopy, with his daring imaginary adventures (as a World War 1 flying ace, Olympic skater and other action roles), seemed an ideal choice for a mascot to raise morale and increase visibility for the renewed effort.

In 1968, with the permission and participation of “Peanuts” creator Charles Schultz, Snoopy became not only the mascot for this programme, but the symbol of its special achievement award, the “Silver Snoopy”. The award recognises individuals within the NASA workforce and contractors who have made valuable contributions to safety and mission assurance. Recipients receive a silver lapel pin which depicts a spacesuited Snoopy doing his famous “happy dance”.

A batch of Silver Snoopy pins was carried to the Moon on Apollo-8, and each award pin is presented to its recipient by an astronaut. As a person can only be honoured once with a Silver Snoopy award, it has already become a highly-coveted form of recognition.

Snoopy-ing Around
In March this year, Snoopy beat the Apollo-11 crew to a Moon landing in his comic strip fantasies, but he and Charlie Brown are turning up in many guises across the space agency, frequently featuring on motivational posters.

Small models of the boy and his dauntless dog are found in the Apollo spacecraft simulator area, where the astronauts spend much of their time in training. The astronauts have also taken to calling their communications headgear “Snoopy caps”, because of their resemblance to the flying helmet Snoopy wears in his daydreams of battling the Red Baron. The black-and-white design of the caps also recalls Snoopy's white head and black ears. Toy models of Charlie Brown and astronaut Snoopy also graced the consoles in Mission Control while Apollo-10 was in flight.

In an interview in April, Col. Stafford explained why the astronauts adopted the Snoopy and Charlie Brown callsigns. “Since we're going to the Moon to find all these facts and kind of snoop around, we decided that the Lunar Module is going to be called Snoopy. Snoopy is a comic character that’s a favourite, I know, of many people in the United States and around the world, and to go with it, we'll call the Command Module Charlie Brown”. In the same interview Commander Cernan also referenced the Silver Snoopy as a reason for the name choice, saying “Snoopy is a sort of champion of the space programme, anyway”.



Getting Ready
Despite not landing on the Moon, Apollo-10 was still going to be a big mission, with its flight plan closely following that of Apollo-11. To enable detailed photography of the designated Apollo-11 landing site at the Sun angle planned for the July mission, the launch was postponed from 16 to 17 May. In March, it was delayed again to 18 May, to allow for a better view of the backup landing site. An extra day in lunar orbit was also added to the mission to provide time for additional testing of the LM’s systems and photography of possible future Apollo landing sites.

Col. Stafford and Commander Cernan training for their flight in the LM simulator

The Apollo-10 crew’s intensive mission training schedule saw them putting in five hours of formal training for every hour of their mission’s eight-day duration. This included more than 300 hours each in the CM or LM simulators, and centrifuge training to prepare for the high-acceleration conditions they would endure during re-entry.

An accidental fuel spillage from the first stage of the Saturn V at the end of April fortunately caused no damage, and countdown preparations went ahead as planned, with no major delays. On 14 May, the astronauts received their final lunar topography briefing from scientist-astronaut, geologist Dr. Harrison Schmidt, and were pronounced fit and ready for lunar flight in their final medical checks. Everything was ready for the full-dress rehearsal of a manned lunar landing!

Mission Commander Stafford pats a giant Snoopy plush toy for luck, as the crew walk out to the Astronaut Transfer Van. Snoopy is being held by Cernan's secretary, Jamye Flowers

Lift Off!
Due to mission scheduling requirements, Apollo-10 was slated to lift off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Centre, the first Apollo mission to use that pad. (LC 39A, used for Apollo-8 and 9 is being used for Apollo-11, whose Saturn V vehicle was rolled out to the pad just a few days before the Apollo-10 launch). Firing Room 3, at Kennedy Space Centre’s Launch Control Centre was also used for the first time on Apollo-10’s launch.

Mission Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton and other NASA officials in Firing Room-3 during Apollo 10's pre-flight preparations

Apollo-10 lifted off exactly on time at 16.49 GMT on 18 May. Although pogo effects gave the astronauts something of a rough ride into orbit, this fortunately had no impact on the mission. However, during Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burn, shuddering vibrations caused by the S-IVB stage pressure relief valves blurred the astronauts’ vision, to the point that they feared that the mission might have to be aborted. Fortunately, after five minutes the burn ended satisfactorily, with Apollo-10 safely on the way to the Moon.



The TLI burn occurred about 100 miles above outback Queensland, witnessed on the ground by thousands of people thanks to perfect observing conditions. A local official in the town of Cloncurry gave an interview to NBC News, which I understand was broadcast live in the US, describing what they saw: “The veil surrounding the relatively large white spot of the rocket’s rear end could best be described as resembling a mercury vapor street light seen through thick fog, although it was of a tenuous nature.”

I've not yet seen a picture of the Apollo TLI burn from Queensland, but this photo of the Apollo-8 TLI burn above Hawaii will give some idea of the amazing sight seen by many in remote Queensland towns

Coming to You in Living Colour
The Apollo-10 Westinghouse colour television camera and its custom-made viewing monitor for onboard use in the CM

Apollo 10 has seen the first use of a compact colour television camera, developed by Westinghouse. Installed in the CM, the camera was first used to show mission controllers in Houston the complex transposition, docking, and extraction manoeuvre performed by CM Pilot John Young, to extract the LM from the S-IVB stage, attaching it to the nose of the Command Module for the journey to the Moon.

Soon after the special LM extraction transmission, the first public broadcast on the way to the Moon treated the audience to live colour vistas of the Earth from 25,000 miles away in a thirteen-minute show.



This was followed, before the crew's first sleep period, with a 24-minute TV transmission, that began with views from 36,300 nautical miles in space, showing the Earth floating in the black void of the cosmos. The scene moved LM Pilot Cernan to say: "It's just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. It's unbelievable…it's just incredible".

The camera was then turned inside the the CM showing the astronauts themselves. Capcom Bruce McCandless commented, “It’s really great. The colours are fantastic.”

Images of the Apollo-10 crew captured during one of the broadcasts from the CM. Stafford (top), Cernan (middle), Young (bottom)

The Apollo-10 crew must have thought their colour camera was a great new toy, as they treated Earth audiences to nineteen colour television transmissions, totalling 5 hours 52 minutes across the entire mission. In one of the early broadcasts, the crew displayed colour illustrations of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, produced by a NASA illustrator, which I understand were intended as colour calibration checks.



During another broadcast on the way to the Moon, Astronauts Stafford and Young were shown side by side, with Young upside down to demonstrate the weightless environment. Col. Stafford, using just a light touch, moved his CM pilot up and down, as Young joked “I do everything he tells me.”

Monitors in Mission Control show the Stafford-Young broadcast from the CM demonstrating the weightless environment

The first broadcast after Trans-Earth Injection was initially received in Australia and distributed to the local television networks (albeit in black and white, since we don't yet have colour television), prior to transmission back to the United States and on to the rest of the world. This functioned as a test for the systems that have been put in place to handle Australia's potential role as the prime receiver for Apollo-11's lunar surface transmissions.

Amusingly, the normally laconic Cernan and Stafford gushed like schoolboys on an outing, clearly excited to be floating in weightlessness, on their way to the Moon. Speaking of which, it was just shortly before this flight that NASA determined what was causing some astronauts to get "space sick" during missions. It wasn't a cold or food-related; it was weightlessness, itself, affecting the inner ear adversely.


Eating Out
Food for the astronauts is being continually improved, and new items were added to the menu on this mission, such as small sandwiches with real bread, and ham, chicken and tuna salad. I've heard that this expanded menu was a real boost to the crew's morale as they travelled to the Moon – although looking at pictures of some space foods, I'm not so sure that they are appetising, even if they are nutritious.



(above) Some of the new menu items available to the Apollo-10 crew. (below) I'm not so sure about the new dehydrated chicken salad!



Another innovation for Apollo-10 has been the introduction of the "wet pack" or "spoon bowl" packaging, allowing the astronauts to eat many meals with a spoon! To reduce the risk of food floating away and becoming a nuisance and potential hazard to electronic equipment, the spoon-eatable wet pack food is mixed with just enough water to make it sticky, so that it clings to the inside of the container and sticks on the spoon.

(above) A spoon-bowl container with a beef and vegetable meal. It looks a lot more enjoyable to eat than that chicken salad

Unfortunately, some food on Apollo-10 was not so morale-boosting, as Col. Stafford apparently put too much chlorine in the drinking water used to rehydrate the meals, making the dehydrated foods taste strange.

Cruising Along
The astronauts had a relatively light workload on the way to the Moon, with only one slight course correction to place Apollo-10 on the trajectory Apollo-11 is expected to take. The only real problem they encountered was that the mylar cover of the CM’s hatch pulled loose, spreading shreds of fibreglass insulation into the docking tunnel, CM and LM.

Photograph of the Earth from 100,000 miles, showing parts of Africa, Europe and the Middle East

About 62 hours after launch, Apollo-10 crossed into the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence, passing about 10 hours later into the darkness of the lunar shadow. Just on 76 hours into the mission, Apollo-10 passed behind the Moon, with the Lunar Orbit Insertion burn occurring out of radio contact with the Earth. Fortunately, this manoeuvre experienced no issues and Apollo-10, now safely in lunar orbit, emerged from the behind the Moon to begin the real work of the mission. “You can tell the world that we have arrived,” Col. Stafford announced.

The Real Work Begins
Almost as soon as they were back in contact with the Earth, the crew began describing the lunar terrain they were flying over, with Commander Cernan saying, “It might sound corny, but the view is really out of this world.” Within the first couple of hours at the Moon, after circularising their orbit at approximately 60 nautical miles above the Moon, the crew began planned observations of lunar surface landmarks. This included photographing three of the proposed Apollo-11 landing sites (which the astronauts would also photograph at a lower altitude from LM Snoopy), as well as many craters and other surface features.

(top) A view of the prime Apollo-11 landing site. (bottom) Crater Necho on the far side of the Moon

For their first telecast from lunar orbit, the Apollo-10 crew described the lunar terrain speeding below them, which included the approach to the Apollo-11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquillity. I could only see this broadcast in black and white, but I understand that for viewers in the US and other parts of the world, the colour and quality of the television images was quite breathtaking: these stills made available to me by the Australian NASA representative certainly suggest that!

(top) Colour view of craters Messier and Messier-A (bottom) Crater Maskelyne

Waking Up Snoopy
When Commander Cernan opened Snoopy’s hatch for the first time, to be engulfed in fibreglass particles from the earlier damage to the CM hatch, bits got into his hair and eyebrows. Col. Stafford helped remove some of these particles, remarking that the LM Pilot “looked like he just came out of a chicken coop”. Though the astronauts used a vacuum cleaner to remove as much of the fibreglass particles as possible, tiny flecks annoyingly continued to circulate in the spacecraft, making the astronauts itch. They got into the air conditioning system and had to be constantly scraped from the CM’s filter screens for the rest of the mission.

Despite the fibreglass nuisance, Cernan partially activated the LM, conducted communications checks, and prepared the vehicle for its test flight. “I’m personally very happy with the fellow”, the LM Pilot later reported to Mission Control, saying in reference to the next day’s flight “We’ll take him out for a walk and let him stretch his legs in the morning.”

A spectacular Earthrise image captured during Apollo-10's first orbit of the Moon

Taking Snoopy for a Walk
Apollo-10’s first full day in lunar orbit was going to be its busiest, with the critical eight-hour sequence of manoeuvres in lunar orbit to simulate all aspects of Apollo-11 mission operations except the landing itself. Stafford and Cernan transferred to Snoopy, while Young remained in Charlie Brown. Despite some issues with the docking tunnel, Mission Control assured the astronauts that it was safe to undock, and the two craft separated while they were out of contact behind the Moon.

Returning to contact with Earth, Commander Young made a visual inspection of the LM and then fired the CM’s thrusters to separate from Snoopy. With a GO from Mission Control, Snoopy commenced its Descent Orbit Insertion burn while on the lunar farside, to lower itself to about 50,000 feet. This critical manoeuvre took place behind the Moon, so that the low point of its orbit would be reached on the nearside near the Apollo-11 landing area in the Sea of Tranquillity. As they looped back around to the nearside of the Moon, Cernan reported to Capcom Charles Duke, “We is down among them, Charlie,” referring to their low altitude over the lunar landscape.

A low-altitude view of the Apollo-11 prime landing site, focussed towards the upper right of the image

Snoopy successfully tested the landing radar, a particularly critical test in advance of the actual landing mission, as the crew maintained a running commentary describing the landscape below them, including all the landmarks leading up to the planned Apollo 11 landing site. This was followed by a firing of the LM’s Descent Propulsion System to set up the right orbital geometry for a simulated liftoff from the Moon during the next orbit.

Crisis averted
As Snoopy’s crew prepared to separate the LM’s ascent stage from the lower stage, the vehicle began to gyrate and tumble out of control, causing Cernan to utter a shocked expletive that was broadcast live, bringing some complaints about his language (though I think his outburst was perfectly understandable in the circumstances).

Col. Stafford quickly discarded the descent stage and fought to manually regain control of the LM, suspecting a thruster stuck firing.  Fortunately, after about eight seconds Snoopy was brought back under control and the Ascent Stage, was able to safely climb to orbit, mimicking the orbital insertion manoeuvre after launch from the lunar surface that Apollo-11 would have to conduct.

For a tense hour, it looked as if the Apollo-11 mission was in jeopardy. If the ascent stage always subjected its crew to "wild gyrations" upon firing, that was a problem that had to be solved, and pronto. Fortunately, the actual cause of the problem was determined quickly: it seems that a switch controlling the mode of the abort guidance system, a sort of back-up computer, has been left on, conflicting with the main guidance computer. That issue is easily resolved with a better checklist!

Blue Moon
There are rumours that NASA deliberately did not load Snoopy with enough propellant to safely land on the Moon and return to orbit, in order to dissuade Stafford and Cernan from unofficially attempting the first lunar landing. However, I’m told that, since Snoopy was overall too heavy to attempt a safe return from the lunar surface, the ascent stage was loaded with the equivalent quantity of propellant that it would have had remaining if it had lifted off from the lunar surface and reached the altitude at which the Apollo-10 ascent stage was fired.

After coasting for about an hour, Snoopy performed manoeuvres to bring it close to Charlie Brown, while the two craft were behind the Moon. Just after they returned to contact with the Earth, Commander Young completed the CM-LM docking, with Stafford joking that “Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other.” During its independent flight of 8 hours 10 minutes, Snoopy met all planned objectives for the Lunar Module flight tests.

The scene in Mission Control as the LM and CM are safely docked together

With all the astronauts safely back in the CM, Snoopy was cut free from Charlie Brown. To prevent any further contact between the two spacecraft, Snoopy’s ascent engine was automatically fired to fuel depletion, sending it safely out of lunar orbit and into an orbit around the Sun. LM Pilot Cernan said sadly, “I feel sort of bad about that, because he’s a pretty nice guy; he treated us pretty well today.”

On Their Way Home
During their final day in lunar orbit, the Apollo-10 crew took stereo images of the Apollo-11 landing site, gave another 24-minute colour TV broadcast, and prepared the spacecraft for its critical Trans Earth Injection manoeuvre, that would send the CM out of lunar orbit and on its way back to Earth. Just as with Apollo-8, this critical engine firing occurred while the spacecraft was behind the Moon and out of radio communications with Earth.

With extra fuel left over from the lunar activities, Apollo-10 burnt it off to accelerate the spacecraft back to Earth, the return trajectory taking only 42 hours rather than the normal 56. By the time it reached re-entry, the CM was travelling at 24,791 mph relative to Earth on re-entry, making the crew of Apollo 10 the fastest humans in history!

During their relatively lazy return to Earth, the Apollo-10 astronauts indulged themselves with the first shave in space. Using safety razors, a thick shaving gel and a wet cloth to wipe away gel and whiskers, the crew displayed freshly shaven visages during their final broadcast from space.

Eight days after launch (with a mission elapsed time of 192:03:23), Apollo-10 splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean on 26 May, about 400 nautical miles east of American Samoa and just a couple of miles from the recovery ship USS Princeton. The carrier crew witnessed the spectacular sight of the Service Module streaking across the pre-dawn sky in a blazing fireball as it burned up, followed by the Command Module silhouetted against the brightening sky under its three big parachutes.

When the astronauts, waiting in their “rubber-ducky” to be retrieved, looked up at the recovery helicopter hovering above they saw “Hello there Charlie Brown” written across the underside of the fuselage!

After taking a congratulatory phone call from President Richard Nixon, the crew were flown to Pago Pago and then on to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, where they are now undergoing medical checks, debriefing and, of course, re-union with their families.

Apollo-10 has completed an epic voyage that has in many ways surpassed even Apollo-8. Its completion of a successful full-dress rehearsal, means that nothing now stands in the way of the first manned landing taking place in July 1969, with Apollo-11 – that will be the BIG one, to stand on the shoulders of this big test-flight mission. I can't wait!

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Science / Space Race

[January 22, 1969] NASA’s Christmas Gift to the World Part 2 (Apollo 8 continued)

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by Kaye Dee

Last month, I began this article just hours after the crew of Apollo 8 returned safely to the Earth from their historic mission around the Moon. But even while the mission was in progress, I felt that it might be best to wait to tell the story of the lunar flight in detail, until it could be illustrated with the photographs taken by Col. Borman, Major Anders and Capt. Lovell during their epic journey – images whose breathtaking full-colour views were only hinted at in the low-resolution b/w television broadcasts and the astronauts’ excited descriptions of what they were seeing during the mission.

"Oh my God!" is what Astronaut William Anders said just before he took this awe-inspiring photograph of the Earth rising over the Moon, as seen from lunar orbit. That was my exact response – and yours, too, I expect – on first seeing this incredible sight. I confidently predict that this amazing view will become one of the defining images of the Space Age

Now that we can see for ourselves the awesome sights that the Apollo 8 crew witnessed, I think I made the right call.

On Course for the Moon
We left Apollo 8 on the way to the Moon, after a successful translunar injection. Just 30 minutes later, the CSM separated from the S-IVB stage, which was ordered to vent its remaining fuel to change the stage’s trajectory. The S-IVB gradually moved away from the CSM and is now in orbit around the Sun.

Fuel venting isn't visible in this image of the jettisoned S-IVB stage, but small debris from the separation can be seen floating around it. Although Apollo 8 carried no Lunar Module, this shot shows the LM test article contained in the S-IVB stage

As the crew rotated their spacecraft to view the jettisoned stage, they had their first views of the Earth as they moved away from it—the first time human eyes have been able to view the whole Earth at once. The perspectives of the two images below, taken less than 45 minutes apart, help us gain an impression of how fast the Apollo spacecraft was travelling (around 24,200 mph).

Taken just around the time of TLI, this view from high orbit shows the Florida peninsula, with Cape Kennedy just discernible, and several Caribbean islands

The view of Earth after S-IVB stage separation. From the Americas to west Africa, and from daylight to night, for the first time humans could see their entire planet at a glance!

Mission Commander Borman has said that he thought this must be how God sees the Earth, while Astronaut Lovell felt he was driving a car into a dark tunnel and was watching the entrance dwindle into a distant speck! But perhaps Major Anders best summed up the awesome view: “How finite the Earth looks. Unlike photographs people see there’s no frame around it. It’s hanging there, the only colour in the black vastness of space, like a dust mote in infinity.”

On the way to the Moon, the CSM adopted the PTC (Passive Thermal Control) or “barbecue” mode tested on Apollo 7, slowly rotating the spacecraft to keep temperatures evenly distributed over its surface. As the CSM turned, every so often the Earth would appear in one of the windows, making the astronauts aware that they were travelling away from their home planet: it became steadily smaller, until eventually they could cover the whole Earth with a thumb.

Where No Man Has Gone Before
I’m stealing that wonderful Star Trek catch phrase because soon after the S-IBV jettison, Apollo 8 surpassed the altitude record set by Gemini 11 in 1966 and was truly setting out into that “new ocean” of space only previously traversed by unmanned probes.

The coast to the Moon was relatively uneventful, with only a few issues arising, including some window fogging, like that experienced on Apollo 7, and a bout of space sickness that it was initially feared might lead to the cancellation of the orbits around the Moon.

Col. Borman reported diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting (none of which you want to have in weightlessness, given the unpleasant consequences!) and both Lovell and Anders also said they did not feel too well. Dr Charles Berry, the medical director at Cape Kennedy, at first feared a 24-hour viral gastro-enteritis that might “play ping-pong”, with the crew re-infecting each other and leaving themselves too weak to carry out their complex tasks correctly. Fortunately, with longer sleep periods, medication and additional rest, the complaint cleared up and did not prove a showstopper for the mission. 

The first mission status report for Apollo 8, sent to the NASA tracking stations around the world, for release to local media. Dated some 19 hours after launch, it outlines some of the activities of the early part of the coast to the Moon

A slight course correction saw the large SPS motor fired for the first time, providing a check that the spacecraft’s main propulsion system was working correctly. Had there been any problems, Apollo 8 would not have gone into lunar orbit, but looped around the Moon to return to Earth.

Out of this World Broadcasts
About halfway to the Moon, at 31 hours and 10 minutes after launch, the astronauts conducted the first of six television broadcasts during the mission. Like Mission Commander Schirra on Apollo 7, Borman was apparently not in favour of television broadcasts – holding that the weight of the camera was better used for other equipment and additional food supplies – but was overruled by NASA.

For this first deep space show, the approach was light-hearted, with the opening scenes from the spacecraft showing Capt. Lovell upside down in the lower equipment bay making jokes about preparing lunch. Bill Anders played with his weightless toothbrush, with quips from Frank Borman about his crewmate cleaning his teeth regularly. Jim Lovell sent birthday wishes to his mother. The crew tried to show us the Earth through the one of the CM windows, but without a viewing monitor, they couldn't quite capture it in their camera's field of view.

Astronaut Anders shows us his toothbrush (top) and Jim Lovell wishes his mother "Happy Birthday" (bottom) during Apollo 8's first deep space broadcast

The astronauts were disappointed to find their view of the approaching Moon was washed out by the Sun’s powerful glare. It should have been a spectacular sight to see its cratered surface increasing in size and detail as they closed in, but they were not able to get good views of the Moon until they were relatively close. However, during their second television broadcast, 55 hours into the mission, the crew of Apollo 8 were finally able to capture the Earth through one of their spacecraft's windows.

While the resolution of the image may not have been very high, this first ever live view of our planet from 180,000 miles out in space was yet another step in science fiction being made into reality! During the 25 minute broadcast, there was a delightful exchange between Lovell and Anders, with Capcom Michael Collins in Houston, wondering what a traveller from another planet would think of the view of Earth from that distance, and whether they would imagine it was inhabited.

The Apollo 8 second broadcast view of the Earth as we saw it on television (above) and how Capcom Collins saw it on his monitors in Mission Control (bottom). Would alien visitors to our solar system think anyone lived there?



Moving into the Moon's Sphere of Influence
Shortly after their second broadcast, Borman, Lovell and Anders became the first humans to leave the Earth’s sphere of gravitational influence: they were 202,825 miles from Earth and 38,897 miles from the Moon. This move into the lunar gravity field meant that soon a decision would need to be made as to whether or not Apollo 8 would go into lunar orbit, or loop around the Moon and return directly to the Earth. So concerned was Col. Borman about any trajectory perturbations that would preclude the spacecraft from achieving lunar orbit that he even checked with Houston before dumping urine overboard!

A view of the Moon, finally visible as Apollo 8 approached and prepared to go into orbit

Then came the moment to go behind the Moon – and the decision whether or not to orbit. “Apollo 8 this is Houston,” Capcom Jerry Carr called. “At 68 hours 4 minutes you are Go for LOI (Lunar Orbit Insertion).” But the necessary SPS engine burn to change the CSM's trajectory from "free return" to lunar orbit had to take place above the far side of the Moon, where Apollo 8 would be completely out of contact with the Earth.

On 24 December, just on 69 hours after lift-off, Apollo 8 slipped behind the Moon. Col. Borman was so impressed with the exact predicted timing of the loss of communication with the Earth that he joked about whether the Manned Space Flight Network had turned off its transmitters! But, in truth, the situation was very tense, as all the astronauts and Mission Control could do was wait and hope that all would go well with the burn to put Apollo 8 into lunar orbit. The Service Propulsion System engine had to work perfectly, or the astronauts would be in serious trouble.

The Manned Space Flight Network station at Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra, was tracking Apollo 8 as it went behind the Moon and received the first signals as it re-emerged, safely in lunar orbit

Fortunately, Apollo 8 slowed in response to the 4 minute 6.9 second burn – “Longest four minutes I’ve ever spent,” according to Capt. Lovell. This put the spacecraft into a 194 x by 69 mile orbit around the Moon after a Trans-Lunar Coast of 66 hours 16 minutes and 22 seconds.

Round (and Round) the Moon
Safely in orbit, the plan was for Apollo 8 to make 10 orbits around the Moon over a twenty hour period. Even though the far side of the Moon was first seen as far back as 1959, by the USSR's Luna 3, the first order of business was for the crew to observe the far side surface for themselves. The three astronauts were stunned by the crater-pitted Moonscape sliding below them, revealing a tortured terrain so unlike the familiar face of the Moon. Out of contact with the Earth, totally isolated from home, Borman, Lovell and Anders forgot their mission for a few moments to press their faces against the CM windows and soak up the sights!



The astronauts were not exactly impressed with the gritty, grey, plaster-like surface they observed as they orbited the Moon. Col. Borman described it as as “[looking] like the burned-out ashes of a barbecue,” while Capt. Lovell said “It’s like a sand pile my kids have been playing in for a long time. It’s all beat up with no definition. Just a lot of bumps and holes.” Major Anders felt the surface looked "whitish-grey, like dirty beach sand with lots of footprints in it.”

Jim Lovell's "sand pile" on the Moon!

Back on Earth Mission Control held its breath, waiting for Apollo 8 to re-emerge from behind the Moon and confirm that the SPS engine had performed as planned. But once the crew were back in contact with Earth, a packed routine of surface observations was quickly established: these images comprise the bulk of the more than 800 70 mm still photographs and 700 feet of 16 mm movie film that the astronauts took during the mission. Among their tasks, the astronauts observed Earthshine (the light reflecting from Earth shining on the dark face of the Moon) – which they found provided enough light to see surface features clearly – and took detailed photographs of the area within the Sea of Tranquillity where, all going to plan in the next few months, the Apollo 11 mission will make the first manned lunar landing.

On the second orbit, Apollo 8's 12 minute long third television broadcast was almost entirely dedicated to allowing us back on Earth to see the astronauts' view of the Moon. Even when it was difficult to see much detail in the views of the lunar surface passing below the spacecraft, this broadcast made us, as it were, part of the mission.

View of the Moon's surface during the third Apollo 8 television broadcast

Earthrise
Busy with lunar surface observations, during their first three orbits the Apollo 8 crew failed to even notice an incredible sight. It was not until their fourth orbit that the astronauts experienced perhaps the most sublime view provided by space exploration to date – the vision of the Earth rising above the lunar horizon!

On this fourth orbit, a navigation sighting meant that the CSM was rolled to look outwards into space instead of down towards the Moon's surface. As the lunar horizon came into view, the astronauts witnessed a magnificent sight – the cloud-mottled blue orb of the Earth swimming into their view. Awestruck, they scrambled so quicky to capture the vision that no-one is quite sure now who took which picture, although it seems that Col. Borman may have snapped the first black and white photograph, and Bill Anders a number of breathtaking colour images of the Earthrise.

Apollo 8's Earthrise images are usually published oriented with the lunar horizon at the bottom, as that is how we are used to seeing the Moon rising over the horizon on Earth. But the orientation of astronauts' orbit meant that they actually saw the Earth appearing to rise 'sideways', as seen in this original version of Major Anders' photograph

While Apollo 8 isn't the first space mission to capture the vista of the Earth rising over the Moon – that honour goes to Lunar Orbiter 1 – the impact of the superior quality and colour of the astronaut's photographs is profoundly inspiring, and Major Anders' evocative Earthrise image is already well on its way to becoming the most reproduced image of the Space Age so far.

This spread from the 15 January issue of the Australian Women's Weekly is just one example of thousands of magazine and newspaper articles already featuring the Earthrise photograph and Apollo 8's other amazing pictures

I'm so moved by the Earthrise image that I find it hard to put all my feelings into words, but perhaps those I quoted above from Astronaut Anders go some way to expressing them, as do Captain Lovell's similar thoughts on the view: “The vastness up here of the Moon is awe inspiring. It makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth. The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the blackness of space.”

This view of the living Earth in the immensity of the Cosmos truly brings home to us the fragility and isolation of our home planet and its finite resources, providing the visual encapsulation of the expression "Spaceship Earth" popularised over the past few years by Buckminster Fuller among others. The environmental movement needs to utilise the power of this image to help encourage us all to be better stewards of the Earth and preserve our environment, so necessary for our survival, for future generations.

"Something Appropriate"
Acutely aware of the historic nature of the Apollo 8 mission, NASA wanted the astronauts to “do something appropriate” for their fourth television broadcast. Due to occur on the ninth lunar orbit, this finale to Apollo 8’s time at the Moon was scheduled for late evening on Christmas Eve in the United States (comfortably at lunchtime on Christmas day for us here in Australia). The program was to be transmitted via satellite to 64 countries (where it was seen or heard by an estimated one billion people!), so it was a major global event, comparable to 1967’s Our World broadcast.

What would be appropriate for such an international audience? The astronauts wanted to present something spiritually significant and memorable, but not overtly religious, that would be relevant at Christmas to both Christians and the millions of non-Christians who would be tuning into the broadcast. It seems that the wife of a journalist (I’m sorry, I don’t know her name) suggested that they read from the opening of the Book of Genesis, which has meaning for many of the world’s religions and expresses concepts relevant to many other faiths. The crew liked this idea and planned to incorporate it into their broadcast. A view of the Moon seen by the audience on Earth while the crew of Apollo 8 read from the Book of Genesis

The fourth telecast from Apollo 8 began with the astronauts talking about their impressions of the Moon and the experience of being in lunar orbit. Following some views of the lunar terrain, described by the astronauts as they passed over, Major Anders said that the crew had a message for everyone on Earth. In turn, Anders, then Capt. Lovell and finally Col. Borman read the first 10 verses of Genesis, as we watched the Moon’s surface pass by, with a view through one of the CM windows. Borman then ended the broadcast with “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth.” I watched this transmission at lunch with my sister’s family: it left us all profoundly moved.

Families around the world gathered on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day (depending on where you were!) to watch Apollo 8's broadcast

Set Course for Earth
Two and a half hours after the end of the fourth television broadcast, on Apollo 8’s tenth lunar orbit, it was time to perform the trans-Earth injection (TEI). This manoeuvre was even more critical than the one which had brought the CSM into orbit around the Moon: if the SPS engine failed to ignite, the crew would be stranded in lunar orbit. Like the previous SPS burn, this critical firing had to occur above the far side of the Moon, once again out of contact with the Earth. Despite all the telemetry indicating that the SPS was in good shape, tension was high while the spacecraft was behind the Moon, but the burn was perfect and Apollo 8 re-emerged exactly on schedule 89 hours, 28 minutes, and 39 seconds after launch.

It was Christmas Day, and when voice contact was restored with Houston, Lovell announced to the world, “Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus” – apparently for the benefit of one his sons, who had asked before the flight if his father would see Santa while visiting the Moon.

A view inside the Command Module, during the fifth Apollo 8 television broadcast

At about 100 hours and 48 minutes after launch, Apollo 8 crossed back into the Earth’s sphere of influence and began gradually speeding up. After the astronauts carried out the only required midcourse correction at 104 hours into the mission, the crew had some time to relax before their fifth television broadcast. During this 10 minute transmission, they gave viewers a tour of the spacecraft, showing how they lived in the weightless environment. An image from the fifth broadcast taken directly from a monitor at the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station. It shows Bill Anders demostrating how to prepare a meal

A Christmas Dinner to Remember
After the broadcast, the crew were finally free to tuck into their Christmas dinner – and found a surprise in their food locker. It was a specially packed Christmas dinner wrapped in foil and decorated with red and green ribbons! A gift from Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton, the special meal included dehydrated grape drink, cranberry-applesauce, and coffee, as well as a new “wetpack” containing turkey and gravy. Also hidden with the surprise dinner, the astronauts found small presents from their wives.

Slayton also included three miniature bottles of brandy with the meal, although Borman decided that they should be saved until after splashdown!

The astronauts thought the food was delicious, more like a TV dinner, and much more appetising than the food they had been eating on the mission. In fact, the crew had found their meals so unappealing that they had been under-eating throughout the mission, so their turkey dinner was a real morale booster.

The new “wetpack” container is breakthrough in space food development: a thermostabilized package that retains the normal water content of the food, which can be eaten with a spoon. I’ll have to write more soon about space food, as the new meals and menus that are being developed for Apollo lunar missions are a real breakthrough in astronaut nutrition.

The Final Leg
The return cruise to Earth was the quietest part of the mission for the crew, giving them time to rest after an eventful historic mission. Around 124 hours into the flight, the astronauts broadcast their sixth and final telecast, showing the approaching Earth during a four-minute broadcast.



The crew also had time to take more spectacular photographs of the Earth, such as this image of Australia as they homed in towards their eventual splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Re-entry is the most dangerous phase of any spaceflight, and Apollo 8 marked the first time that a manned spacecraft had returned from the Moon, re-entering the atmosphere at 24,695 miles per hour! The spacecraft had to enter the Earth’s atmosphere at an angle of 6.5 degrees, with a safe corridor only 26 miles wide – there was very little margin for error! 

After jettisoning the Service module and turning the CM around so its heat shield was facing in the direction of flight, Apollo 8 entered the atmosphere, deceleration hitting the astronauts with forces up to 7 Gs, and temperatures outside the spacecraft reaching 5,000 degrees.

Apollo 8's re-entry, captured by one of NASA's Apollo Range Instrumented Aircraft that operate as airborne tracking stations

Ionized gases around the spacecraft caused a three-minute communications blackout period. But Apollo 8 came through and safely deployed its three main parachutes, splashing down in the dead of night local time, in the North Pacific Ocean, southwest of Hawaii, home safe after a momentous mission which even the crew had rated themselves as only having a 50% chance of a successful return!

Map of Apollo 8's splashdown area

Recovered by the USS Yorktown, Borman, Lovell, and Anders were in excellent health after a flight of 147 hours. They returned to Houston for several weeks of debriefing, but he success of their flight means it is now clear that the likelihood of meeting President Kennedy’s goal of a Moon landing before the end of the decade is much higher: Lt.-General Phillips, head of the Apollo programme, has already said there is a slim chance Americans could land on the Moon with Apollo 10 in May or June – one flight earlier than presently planned

After their recovery, the Apollo 8 astronauts addressed the USS Yorktown's crew, very glad to be home!

“You Saved 1968”
As I noted at the beginning of the first part of this article, 1968 was a year that saw much upheaval around the world. Yet Apollo 8 allowed the year to end on a hopeful note, with its technical triumph of the first manned mission to the Moon, its awe-inspiring views of the Earth from space, and the deeply moving “Genesis broadcast”. Its impact has been beautifully summed up in a telegram from an anonymous well-wisher to Col. Borman which simply said, “Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968.”

< For the influence and impact of their mission, Time magazine has chosen the crew of Apollo 8 as its Men of the Year for 1968, while Life has selected the post-TLI image of the Earth for the cover its 1968 retrospective issue.

The Apollo 8 astronauts have been honoured for their successful mission with ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C; they have spoken before a joint session of Congress, and been awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal by President Johnson. Has Apollo 8 won the Space Race for the United States? I think it's too early to say, especially in light of the recent Soyuz 4 and 5 missions. But NASA is certainly giving the Soviet Union a run for its money!
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Science / Space Race

[December 28, 1968] A Christmas Gift to the World – Part 1 (Apollo 8)

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by Kaye Dee

Commentators are already referring to 1968 as the most turbulent year of the 1960s. We’ve seen civil unrest and sectarian violence; uprisings and brutal repression; new wars and intensification of old ones; political turmoil and assassinations; drought, famine and natural disasters, just to note some of the tragedies and strife dominating the headlines.

 
Yet this “worst of times” has still ended on a high note, thanks to NASA’s Christmas gift to the world – the Apollo-8 mission to the Moon.

 
As I write, the first daring spaceflight to the Earth’s nearest neighbour was completed only a few hours ago, splashing down in the early hours of the morning here in Australia. I’m tired but elated at the successful conclusion of the mission and the safe return of the crew. This historic mission has taken another crucial step in turning the ancient dream of reaching for the stars into reality, vindicating the inspiration that readers of the Journey draw from science fiction.

Taking the World on the Journey
Thanks to the growing number of communications satellites now linking the world, almost three quarters of humanity has been able to participate vicariously in Mankind’s greatest space adventure to date. Apollo-8’s voyage has been vividly described to us through pictures, voice and the printed word by the world's journalists, and live from space by the astronauts themselves in their broadcasts during the mission.

The Earth seen through a window of the Apollo-8 Command Module during the second television broadcast en route to the Moon. I can't wait to see the much higher resolution, full colour pictures!

While we here in Australia may have missed out on some of the live broadcasts from space for technical reasons, people in Europe, the Americas, Asia and, it seems, even the nations of the Warsaw Pact have seen the view of the Earth from greater distances than ever before, live from the inside of the Apollo-8 Command Module. Around the world, spirits have been lifted and the public inspired by the courage of the Apollo-8 crew and the successful completion of their mission. I expect that, like me, many of you reading this will have been moved by the solemn reading from the Book of Genesis, a sacred text to three great religions, from lunar orbit on Christmas Day. It was a moment truly evoking “peace on earth and goodwill to men” – the spirit of Christmas – at the end of a fraught year for the world.

The Moon seen through a window of the Apollo-8 Command Module while the crew read the opening words of the Book of Genesis

I think that the full impact of Apollo-8’s mission will take some time to emerge, especially once the photographs of the sights that the astronauts described to us during their flight become available to the public in the coming weeks. For this reason, I have decided to break my coverage of Apollo-8 into two parts. The first, today, will describe the background to the mission. Once NASA begins to process and release the photographs and films taken during the flight, the second part of my mission coverage will explore the lunar flight itself in more detail, illustrated by what I’m sure will be the magnificent images captured by the crew.

From Earth Orbit to Lunar Orbit
Originally planned as an Earth orbiting mission to check out the Lunar Module (LM) necessary to land astronauts on the Moon, delays in that vehicle’s development resulted in a radical change to the Apollo-8 mission profile.

As early as August, Apollo Programme manager Mr. George Low, suggested the idea of converting the first crew-carrying flight of the mighty Saturn 5 rocket into a flight to the Moon without a LM. His initial circumlunar flight concept soon became transformed into an even bolder proposal for a lunar orbit mission, as a counter to a possible lunar flight by Soviet cosmonauts, for which the Zond-5 and 6 missions are thought to be a precursor.

  A telex sent to NASA's Manned Space Flight Network at the conclusion of the Apollo-7 mission, which refers to the future lunar mission

With the successful test flight of Apollo-7, the daring plan for Apollo-8 to orbit the Moon was publicly announced on 12 November. A successful flight around the Moon would demonstrate that a manned lunar landing was achievable, and hopefully beat the USSR to placing the first humans into orbit around the Moon. 

Swapping Crews
Director of Flight Crew Operations, Mr. Deke Slayton, planned early for the proposed change in the mission profile, bumping the original Apollo-8 crew to Apollo-9, since that crew had been training hard for the mission to check out the Lunar Module. Instead, the original Apollo-9 crew – Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell and Major William Anders, who had been training to test the Lunar Module in cislunar space, became the astronauts destined to fly the first manned mission to the Moon. While the new crew for Apollo-8 was announced on 19 August, the potential lunar flight plan was initially kept secret.

The Apollo-8 crew in front of the Command Module simulator. L-R Col. Borman, Major Anders, Capt. Lovell

40-year-old Col. Borman, the mission commander, and Command Module (CM) Pilot Capt. Lovell (only 11 days younger than Borman), had previously flown together on the Gemini-7 mission, during which they set a long-duration record of 14 days in space. Lovell went on to command Gemini-12, while Borman served as the astronaut representative on the Apollo-1 Fire Investigation Board. The combined space experience of these two seasoned mission commanders undoubtedly played an important role in the success of this critical NASA mission.

Rookie astronaut Major Anders, the third member of the crew, is a former US Air Force fighter pilot. He holds an advanced degree in nuclear engineering and was selected as part of NASA’s third astronaut group, with responsibilities for dosimetry, radiation effects and environmental controls. Despite its lack on this flight, Anders was designated as Lunar Module Pilot and assigned the role of flight engineer, responsible for monitoring all spacecraft systems.

Uniquely Symbolic
The unique design of the Apollo-8 mission patch has a simple elegance that perfectly symbolises the flight. The shape of the patch recalls the gumdrop shape of the Apollo CM, while the red figure 8 circling the Earth and Moon represents both the number of the mission and the free-return flight trajectory for a lunar mission.

Captain Lovell claims credit for the basic design of the patch, developing it during a flight from the Apollo spacecraft manufacturing facility in California back to Houston, after learning about the change in mission assignment.

However, he may have been inspired by earlier patch designs by Allen Stevens, who has previously been responsible for the Apollo-1 and Apollo-7 patches. Mr. Stevens used the CM shape on some of his early designs for Apollo-7. His design for the original Apollo-9 patch – that Col. Borman and his crew had apparently approved – also included a CM-shaped frame and was repurposed as an alternative Apollo-8 lunar mission design.

I’ve heard it suggested that the figure-8 design element, representing mission number and lunar trajectory, may also have been influenced by the similar use of an 8 symbol to indicate a circumlunar trajectory on documents from the Mission Planning and Analysis Division (MPAD) at the Manned Spaceflight Centre. 

This logo from NASA's MPAD may have inluenced the Apollo-8 patch design. What do you think?

Rumour has it that the Apollo-8 crew wanted to name their spacecraft, but –maintaining its long-held ban on such names – NASA would not allow it. Had they been given permission to do so, Columbiad (after the massive cannon that fires a projectile spacecraft to the Moon in Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon) might have been the name the crew selected.

Countdown to a Historic Flight
The un-manned Apollo-6 Saturn 5 test flight in April experienced major problems, including severe pogo oscillation while the first stage was firing, two second-stage engine failures, and the failure of the third stage to re-ignite in orbit. Resolving these issues was a priority before Apollo-8’s Saturn-5 launcher, AS-503, could leave the ground carrying human passengers.

Pogo oscillation was a serious concern: it could not only hamper engine performance, but the g-forces it created might even injure a crew. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre (MSFC) investigated the problems and determined the cause to be the similar vibration frequencies of the engines and the spacecraft, creating a resonance effect. AS-503 was therefore fitted with a helium gas system to absorb some of the vibration.

Similarly, MSFC engineers determined that fuel lines rupturing when exposed to vacuum and a mis-wired connection were the cause of the engine shutdowns. The use of suitably modified fuel lines on Apollo-8’s launch vehicle prevented these issues recurring.

The fact that the Saturn-5 thundered off Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Centre exactly as scheduled months earlier is a tribute to the 5,500 technicians and other personnel working behind the scenes to ready the launch vehicle and spacecraft for flight. Preparations for the launch were considered among the smoothest in recent years, although two equipment issues arising during the dress rehearsal countdown threatened to delay the commencement of the formal launch countdown on 16 December.

The historic first mission to the Moon was scheduled to launch at 12.51 GMT 21 December. This specific date and time would allow the crew to observe the site in the Sea of Tranquillity, where the first Apollo landing was planned to touch down, at the ideal Sun elevation of 6.7°, with shadows throwing the cratered lunar terrain into sharp relief.

As a precaution, the 103-hour countdown commenced a day early to allow time for the correction of any unseen snags and keep the lift-off on schedule. Computerised systems, now a feature of the need to support the incredible complexity of the Saturn 5 launcher, provided comprehensive data to the launch controllers giving the “go”/”no go” calls prior to launch.

The computerised Launch Control Room at Kennedy Space Centre, about three hours before launch

Avoiding the Flu – and Radiation Poisoning
With the so-called Hong Kong Flu epidemic sweeping the United States, NASA was taking no chances with the crew’s pre-launch health (especially following the issues created by astronaut Schirra’s head cold during Apollo-7). The astronauts were kept in isolation in quarters at the Kennedy Space Centre for more than a week before the flight and were immunised against the influenza virus – along with anyone likely to come into contact with them.

Emerging from pre-flight isolation into history, the Apollo-8 crew walk out to the astronaut transfer van, ready for their spaceflight

The astronaut’s pre-flight medical examination collected data for comparison with their post-flight examination. Since the Apollo-8 crew has been the first to pass through and beyond the protection of the Van Allen radiation belts, this comparison of pre- and post-flight medical data will reveal any physical changes or health effects resulting from the first human flight beyond Earth orbit.

Basic cross section of the radiation belts around Earth (not drawn to scale). The outer belt is composed of electrons, the inner belt comprises both electrons and protons.

Major Anders’ expertise in dosimetry and radiation effects has undoubtedly been relevant to this aspect of the mission, as each astronaut wore a personal radiation dosimeter which could return data back to NASA’s flight surgeons. The spacecraft also carried three passive film dosimeters recording the cumulative radiation to which the crew were subjected. Initial indications are that the radiation dosage received by the astronauts was at an acceptable level and should not preclude future missions to the Moon.

Apollo’s “Sun Screen”
Beyond the Van Allen Belts, the Apollo-8 crew was travelling in the realms of the intense and deadly radiations of deep space, particularly the streams of charged particles spewed out into the Solar System from solar flares. The astronauts would have been seriously at risk from radiation poisoning if a major solar event occurred during their spaceflight.

To ensure astronaut safety during lunar missions, NASA has established the world-wide Solar Particle Alert Network (SPAN). Stations in Houston, Texas, the Canary Islands, and Carnarvon, Western Australia, provide a 24-hour watch on the Sun, to spot dangerous solar activity. SPAN stations are operated by the US Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA), which also collects data from twelve satellites that monitor for deadly solar flares. This space-based early-warning system is comprised of four sun-orbiting Pioneer spacecraft (including Pioneers 6, 7 and 8 carrying cosmic ray detectors developed by Australian physicist Dr. Ken McCracken) and eight Earth-orbiting Vela nuclear test detection satellites.

The ESSA SPAN facility in Carnarvon, Western Australia, equipped with both optical and radio telescopes to observe the Sun

ESSA aims to give NASA at least 24 hours’ warning of major solar eruptions, providing enough time enough to delay a launch or alter an orbit to protect the astronauts. Fortunately for Apollo-8’s important flight, the Sun smiled kindly and there was no dangerous solar activity, but future Apollo missions may be grateful for the early warning provided by NASA’s “Sun screen”.

The Whole World was Watching
Television coverage of Apollo-8’s launch was the most extensive to date. The BBC, going “live” for the first time from Cape Kennedy, provided coverage to 54 countries, across Europe and beyond in 15 languages, in a broadcast whose complexity must have rivalled its role in the Our World satellite project. Seven television networks in Britain, the United States, Japan, Canada and Mexico, provided live coverage of the launch, with NASA’s ATS-3 satellite over the Atlantic providing transmissions to Europe and ATS-1 over the Pacific, serving Japan and the Philippines. Even the Communist nations of Eastern Europe were apparently able to watch the launch, although we in Australia could not.

All eyes were trained on the sky at the crowded press site at Kennedy Space Centre as Apollo-8 lifted off

To the Moon, Alice!
When Apollo-8 launched on 21 December, Gemini veterans Borman and Lovell found the ride “less demanding than Gemini from a ‘g’ standpoint, because it didn’t reach the high ‘gs’”, they had experienced on their earlier missions. However, the ride to orbit was still “powerful and noisy… and the stagings were really kind of violent.”

Apollo-8 entered Earth orbit with the third stage still attached, its engine needed for the Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burn to put the spacecraft on course to the Moon. For a little over two and a half hours every system of the Command Service Module (CSM) was thoroughly checked out in orbit, to ensure it was fully operational.

Staff at the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station in Australia mark the first time humans have ventured beyond Earth orbit. The fine print of their sign reads:“In space: Borman, Lovell, Anders. On the ground: Hicks, Cross, Holland.”

Then Mission Control gave Apollo-8 the crucial permission call “You are Go for TLI”. The S-IVB stage’s engine sent the first human mission to the Moon on its way out of Earth orbit, with the spacecraft reaching escape velocity (25,000 mph) in just five minutes! As it left the Earth, Apollo-8 was placed on a “free return” trajectory, that would ensure that lunar gravity would slingshot the spacecraft around the Moon and back to Earth in the event of a failure of the CCSM’s powerful onboard engine. An amazing voyage was underway!

I am going to pause my recap of Apollo-8 at this point, and will take it up again in January, when what I anticipate will be amazing photographic imagery from the flight to the Moon and back becomes available. Please join me then. In the meantime, let me wish everyone on the Journey a Happy New Year' looking forward to an exciting 1969 – knowing that the Moon is now within our grasp!

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Science / Space Race

[October 26, 1968] Phoenix from the Ashes (Apollo-7)

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by Kaye Dee

In early October Wernher von Braun said that he was “beginning to doubt” America's ability to land an astronaut on the Moon before the Russians, following the Soviet success with its automated Zond-5 mission. But speaking just a few days ago, General Sam Phillips, the Apollo Programme Manager, has described the recently completed Apollo-7 flight as “a perfect mission. We accomplished 101 percent of our objectives”. With both the United States and the Soviet Union finally back in space following the tragedies that struck their respective space programmes in 1967 (an article on Soyuz-2 and 3 is coming soon), NASA has risen from the ashes of the Apollo-1 fire and is once again on track to achieve its manned lunar landing goals.


A Critical Test Flight
Possibly no NASA mission has been more critical to the future of US spaceflight than Apollo-7. The main purpose of the mission has been to prove that the new Block II Apollo spacecraft, extensively redesigned after the Apollo-1 fire, is capable of performing the 480,000-mile round trip to the Moon. If Apollo-7 did not establish the overall safety and performance of the new CM design, von Braun’s pessimism would probably be proved right!

The four critical mission objectives were:

  • test the spacecraft’s navigation and guidance systems in the performance of an orbital rendezvous;
  • prove the Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine’s performance and reliability;
  • demonstrate the safety of the redesigned Command Module (CM) and the performance of its life support systems over the duration of a lunar mission; and,
  • carry out a precise re-entry and splashdown.


The Apollo-7 crew. L – R: LM Pilot Walter Cunningham, CM Pilot Maj. Donn Eisele and mission commnader Capt. Wally Schirra. They were rarin' to go!

The First Team
With a lot riding on their shoulders, the crew of the first successful manned Apollo mission unusually combined a seasoned veteran astronaut with two rookies. Originally the back-up crew for Apollo-1, the three astronauts of Apollo-7 all have US Navy connections.

Mission commander Navy Captain Walter (Wally) Schirra, 45, is the oldest man to make a spaceflight so far. One of the original Mercury astronauts (MA-8 Sigma-7, 1962), he was also the Command Pilot for the Gemini-6 mission in 1965. Apollo-7 makes Schirra the first astronaut to fly all three types of US manned spacecraft. Rumour has it that Capt. Schirra was not particularly interested in making a third spaceflight prior to the loss of Apollo 1 but stepped up to the challenge of ensuring that Apollo-7 was a success in honour of his lost friend, Apollo-1 Commander Gus Grissom. This seems to be borne out by the fact that he announced his intention to resign from NASA two weeks before the launch of his flight.

Apollo-7’s two rookie astronauts both come from Group 3, selected in 1963. 38-year-old Major Donn Eisele (USAF), designated Command Module Pilot, graduated from the US Naval Academy but was commissioned in the Air Force. Originally slated as a member of the Apollo-1 crew, he was switched to the back-up team due to a shoulder injury. Major Eisele has specialised in the CM’s new digital guidance and navigation computer, which is vital for conducting rendezvous during lunar missions.

Mr. Walter Cunninham, 36, is a civilian scientist with a military background. Nominally the Lunar Module Pilot (even though Apollo 7 did not carry a LM), he assumed the role of the crew’s general systems expert on this flight. With a Master’s degree in physics, Mr. Cunnigham spent three years as a physicist at the RAND Corporation before becoming an astronaut, but he is also a former Marine pilot who saw service in Korea and currently a Major in the Marine Corps reserves.

Symbolising a Test Flight
Apollo-7’s mission patch was designed by North American Rockwell artist Allen Stevens, who also created the Apollo-1 patch. Its similar design to the earlier patch depicts an Apollo Command Service Module (CSM) circling the globe trailing a tail of orange flame – a reference to the test firings of the CSM’s SPS engine. The navy-blue background symbolises the depths of space: it’s also a nod to the Navy background of the crew. Centred in the design, North and South America are flanked by blue oceans, with a Roman numeral VII appearing in the Pacific Ocean region. The crew’s names appear around the patch’s lower rim. 

Although refused permission by NASA, Capt. Schirra apparently wanted to name his ship “Phoenix”. I can’t help wondering what mission patch design we would have seen had the name been allowed. We do know, however, what the patch would have looked like (as envisioned by the daughter of backup Commander Tom Stafford) if Eisele's whimsical name "Rub-a-dub-dub" had been adopted…

 

A Safer Spacecraft
Apollo-1’s CM was a Block I type, designed for Earth orbital missions, while Apollo-7 has been a shakedown test for the redeveloped Block II Command Module specifically designed for lunar voyages and able to dock with a Lunar Module (LM). Following the fire, the Block II CM was significantly redesigned to reduce or eliminate fire hazards (especially the use of flammable materials) and increase astronaut safety: many of these modifications, particularly a fully-redesigned quick-opening crew hatch for emergency escape from the spacecraft, were tested on the unmanned Apollo-4 and 6 flights. Emergency breathing masks and a fire extinguisher were also added to the cabin.

Experiments with starting fires in the redesigned cabin have also led to another crew safety enhancement: NASA now uses a 60/40 oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere in the CM during launch, before switching to a lower pressure pure oxygen inflight environment about four hours after lift-off. The astronauts’ spacesuits, and their new casual flight suits, have also been redeveloped using fire retardant materials. 

Luxury Accommodation
Compared to NASA’s previous Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, the Apollo CM is a luxury suite, its greater interior volume allowing the crew to move around freely in zero gravity. Beneath the flight couches, where the crew sit for launch and re-entry, there is room for “sleeping quarters”, where two astronauts can zip themselves into sleeping bags underneath their flight seats to keep from floating around.

With ample water provided by its fuel cells, and new food preparation and packaging techniques, the Block II spacecraft finally gives NASA’s astronauts the opportunity to enjoy hot meals! The CM provides both hot and cold water dispensers to rehydrate food packages. Capt. Schirra, a coffee lover, enjoyed his first pouch of inflight instant brew just five hours after launch!

The expanded Apollo flight menu now offers some 60 different food choices, not all of which are dehydrated. Thermostabilisng techniques allow some foods, like frankfurters, to be eaten in their natural state, while small slices of bread, covered in a coating to prevent them crumbling, can now be enjoyed – although judging by the Apollo-7 crew’s complaints about crumbly food, this may not have been entirely successful.

Some of the new bite-size, possibly crumbly, foods available to Apollo astronauts

Bending the Rules
On 11 October (US time), almost four years to the day after the launch of the three-man Voskhod-1 spacecraft, Apollo-7 lifted off from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station's Launch Complex 34 on its crucial test flight. Since the LM is still not ready for spaceflight, and so could not be tested during this mission, a Saturn 1B lofted the mission into orbit.

High-altitude winds threatened to scrub the lift-off, as a post-launch abort might have seen the CM blown back over land, instead of splashing down in the ocean, potentially exposing the crew to serious injury. Mission commander Schirra disagreed with the decision by NASA managers to waive the wind restriction, but finally yielded. However, his unhappiness over this issue may have contributed to his further disputes with Mission Control during the flight.

Despite Schirra reporting the ride to space as “a little bumpy” a few minutes into the flight, ten minutes and 27 seconds after liftoff Apollo-7 was smoothly inserted into its elliptical low Earth orbit.

Coming Together
Rendezvous and docking practice, demonstrating that the CM’s navigation and guidance systems could successfully handle this vital technique for lunar missions, was a major element of the Apollo-7 flight plan, and the first major exercise began within three hours after launch.

Although Apollo 7 was not carrying a Lunar Module, the Spacecraft-LM adapter (SLA) that would normally house one was mounted on top of the Saturn 1B’s S-IVB second stage, carried into orbit to be used as a rendezvous target.

With the S-IVB still attached to the CSM, the astronauts manoeuvred as if conducting the necessary engine burn for Trans Lunar Injection. After separation from the S-IVB, Schirra put his Gemini rendezvous experience to good use, manoeuvring Apollo-7 towards the rocket stage and closing in as if to dock. This simulated the manoeuvre needed to extract the LM from the SLA. He then flew in formation with the stage for 20 minutes, before moving about 76 miles away to prepare for the first practice rendezvous. 

Apollo-7's S-IVB stage, with the SLA petals open to reveal the docking target. The target was designed by Royal Australian Air Force opthalmologist, Dr. John Colvin. (note that one of the petals did not quite open all the way, restricting some of the possible maneuvers)

Power and Precision
The initial rendezvous exercise, occurring about 30 hours after launch, included the first inflight test of the Service Module’s powerful Service Propulsion System engine. Although tested on the ground, the SPS had never yet been fired in space, despite being vital to the success of a lunar mission: its 20,000 pounds of thrust is needed to slow the Apollo spacecraft into orbit around the Moon and propel it on its way back to the Earth. The SPS has to be totally reliable – it must work, every time.

The purpose of the rendezvous itself was to demonstrate the CSM’s ability to match orbits with a LM returning from the lunar surface, or an aborted landing attempt, even without an operating onboard radar (which Apollo-7 lacked, though later missions will have one). The SPS rendezvous burns were computed at Mission Control, but the final manoeuvres to close on the S-IVB saw Major Eisele making observations with the CM’s telescope and sextant to compute the final burns using the onboard guidance computer.

When the SPS engine ignited for the first time, Eisele was apparently startled by its violent jolt, while Schirra yelled excitedly “Yabba Dabba Do! – That was a ride and a half!” The inaugural nine-second burn went perfectly, and Schirra completed the rendezvous using the ship's reaction control system (RCS) thrusters, bringing Apollo-7 to within 70 feet of its tumbling target. The exercise successfully demonstrated that, even without radar data, an Apollo Command Module pilot could effect a rendezvous in lunar orbit.

A (Mostly) Smooth Mission
For the most part, Apollo -7 could be described as a “smooth” mission, with few real technical problems. The flight plan was “front-loaded”, with the most important experiments and activities scheduled for the early part of the mission, in case problems forced an early return to Earth. By day five of the mission, Flight Director Glynn Lunney estimated that the astronauts had already accomplished 70 to 75 percent of the planned test objectives.

The SPS engine was fired eight times in total, working perfectly every time and proving its reliability. The crew tested the fuel cells and battery chargers and checked out the cooling capacity of the thermal control system, putting the CSM into “barbecue mode,” rolling slowly around its long axis to distribute the heat load evenly over the spacecraft skin. Major Eisele thoroughly tested the sextant, telescope and guidance computer: even when vented, frozen urine crystals obscured his star targets, he proved that the optical instruments could provide sightings accurate enough to steer a spacecraft to and from the Moon.

It obviously wasn't easy for Maj. Eisele to take star sightings during the rendezvous exercise!

But the mission did experience a few technical issues. A power failure briefly struck Mission Control abut 80 minutes after launch. A mysterious “fuzz” or fog partially obscured the spacecraft’s windows, blurring the external view, although it gradually eased as the mission progressed, enabling photographic observations of the Earth (there are early indications that this may have been due to window seals outgassing). Perhaps the most annoying problem was the difficulty of using the crew’s “solid waste disposal system” – bags taped to an astronaut’s buttocks into which he excreted. The process proved to be very messy and rather smelly! 

Despite issues with window fogging, the Apollo-7 crew has returned impressive images like these, showing the Gulf of Mexico (top) and Hurricane Gladys (bottom)

Grumpy Astronauts
About 15 hours into the flight, Schirra reported that he was experiencing a head cold. Unfortunately for him, a cold in space quickly becomes a miserable experience, because congested sinuses don’t drain in weightlessness. Cunningham and Eisele also developed stuffy noses and dry nostrils, but as they experienced colds a few days before the flight, flight surgeons believe that their condition may have been due more to breathing pure oxygen for long periods.

An astronaut with a head cold is not a happy man!

Despite the use of aspirin and decongestant tablets, the cold made Schirra tired and irritable and prone to sharp exchanges with Mission Control. When Houston suggested early in the mission to add some new engineering tests into the already busy flight plan and power up the TV system ahead of schedule to check the circuits, the mission commander testily refused, citing scheduling pressures and the need for the crew to eat. Over the first few days, Schirra repeatedly delayed the scheduled public television broadcasts, considering them non-essential.

Throughout the flight, the crew had difficulty sleeping, particularly as NASA insisted that at least one astronaut was always on duty to monitor the new spacecraft’s systems during the crucial test flight. Lack of sleep and exhaustion from working long hours on a packed flight plan undoubtedly contributed to the crew’s irritability throughout the mission.

Are You a Turtle?
Capt. Schirra has a reputation for playing practical jokes and "gotchas" and decided at one point to take out his frustrations on fellow astronaut and Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton. Both men are members of a private club, which has a joking requirement that if one member asks another "Are you a turtle?" the person so asked must immediately respond with a specific vulgar reply, or else buy drinks for everyone who heard the question.

Slayton had tried to catch Schirra out during his Mercury flight by publicly asking on an open communication if Schirra was a turtle. The Apollo-7 commander decided to "return the favour" during this mission by mischievously holding up a card during the second television broadcast from the spacecraft that said "Deke Slayton, are you a turtle?" Slayton avoided giving the rude answer in a public broadcast by recording it to be played to the crew after the mission.

The Mission Commander is in Command!
Perhaps the most serious disagreement between Schirra and Mission Control arose over the issue of whether or not the astronauts would wear their space helmets during re-entry. During the descent from orbit, cabin pressure rises from 5.9 to 14.7 psi (sea level pressure). Still suffering from his head cold Capt. Schirra apparently feared a sealed helmet would prevent him from pinching his nostrils to equalise the pressure, possibly leading to a ruptured eardrum. Although helmets protect the astronauts from cabin depressurisation and landing impact forces, Schirra stood on his right to make a decision as the mission commander and insisted that the crew would not wear their helmets for re-entry.

The discussion between Apollo-7 and the ground became quite heated on this point. Although Mission Control finally acquiesced to Schirra’s decision, comments suggest that they were exasperated and surprised by the astronauts’ testiness throughout the mission, which was definitely a departure from the usual respectful communications between space and the ground. While Capt. Schirra may have been prepared to speak his mind and have his way because he has already decided to leave NASA and has nothing to lose, I wonder if the clashes between the crew and Mission Control will impact upon the careers of Major Eisele and Mr. Cunningham?

“From the Lovely Apollo Room”
Despite Schirra’s early refusal to conduct television tests, the crew became TV stars when the first live television broadcast from an American spacecraft finally occurred on 14 October. Technical limitations with the television system meant that the live broadcast was restricted to the United States, but the audience was reportedly treated to a lively piece of entertainment, with Cunningham as camera operator and Eisele as MC.

Drawing from an old radio tagline, the “Apollo-7 Show” opened with a card reading “From the lovely Apollo Room high atop everything”. The seven-minute broadcast treated viewers to a look inside the spacecraft and showed views of Lake Pontchartrain and New Orleans, before closing with Schirra holding up another sign reading “Keep those cards and letters coming in folks”, another radio tag line re-popularised by Dean Martin.

For the rest of the mission, daily television broadcasts of about 10 minutes each took place, with the crew holding up more fun signs and describing how the Apollo spacecraft worked. Since the broadcasts seem to have been very popular with audiences in America, I wonder if television’s newest stars might find themselves in line for an Emmy Award next year? 

Back to Earth
Without the crew wearing helmets, Apollo 7 made a successful re-entry on 22 October splashing down about 200 nautical miles SSW of Bermuda, with a mission duration of 10 days, 20 hours, 9 minutes and 3 seconds. The conical CM landed upside down in the water, although it was soon righted with the use of floatation bags. However, the inverted position apparently interfered with communications, giving Mission Control an agonising 10-minute wait for contact to be established by search helicopters and aircraft.

The astronauts’ arrival by helicopter on the recovery ship USS Essex was carried live to the world on television, relayed via satellite – although we here in Australia were not able to see most of the broadcast due to technical difficulties. Despite the issues with colds and stuffy noses, the crew experienced no trouble during re-entry and are said to be generally in good health. They are now back in Houston, facing three weeks of technical debriefings and medical tests.

While the disagreements between the crew and Mission Control may have cast a shadow, Apollo-7 is being hailed as a technical triumph, with the mission successfully verifying the flightworthiness of the redesigned Command Module and SPS engine.

What comes next?
Even before Apollo-7 launched, Apollo Spacecraft Manager George Low proposed that, with the delays in the construction of the LM, Apollo-8 should be a manned circumlunar flight, to build programme momentum and pre-empt a possible similar mission by the USSR. This mission prospect was being openly discussed while Apollo-7 was in orbit. With its safe and successful return, let’s hope a decision will be made very soon on this ambitious and exciting next step in space exploration: Apollo-8 is already on the pad!

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Science / Space Race

[August 26, 1968] No time for a breath (Summer space round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

There are some months where the space shots come so quickly that there's scarcely time to apprehend them all, much less report on them!  Every other day, it seems, the newspaper has got a headling about this launch or that discovery, and that's before you get to the announcements about the impending moon missions.

So, in rapid-fire style, let's see how many exciting new missions I can tell you about on a single exhale (while you stand on one leg, no less…that's a Jewish joke).

A Pair of Yankee Explorers

On August 8th, a Scout rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base (the Western Test Range) in Southern California carrying the two latest NASA science satellites.  It was a virtual duplicate of the launch nearly four years ago of Explorers 24 and 25: a balloon for measuring air density in the upper atmosphere, and a more conventional satellite with an array of instruments for surveying the Earth's ionosphere.  Affectionately dubbed "Mutt and Jeff", these two craft were sent into polar orbit (hence the Pacific launch site).  If you're wondering why NASA is repeating itself, that's because the sun has a profound effect on the Earth's atmosphere.  It is important to measure its impact throughout the 11 year solar cycle, from minimum to maximum output, to better understand the relationship between the solar wind and the air's upper layers.

Not much can go wrong with a balloon, but Explorer 40, after deploying its spindly experiment arms, suffered a malfunction.  Its solar panels are not delivering as much power as they should.  NASA is confident, however, that this will not compromise the mission, which is planned to last more than a year.

Alphabet Soup

Time was, we gave proper names to our satellites.  Now it's all acronyms and arcane jumbles of letters and numbers.  That's all right.  I can decipher them for you!

Advanced Technology Satellite (ATS) 4

August 10 marked the launch of "Daddy Longlegs" ATS 4, the fourth of seven satellites in this series.

Some of you may remember ATS-1–you may recall that ATS-1 helped relay the first worldwide "Our World" broadcast last year. 

ATS-1 is actually still working, just like its two siblings.  ATS-2, launched April 5, 1967 was judged a failure since the second stage of its carrier rocket malfunctioned, stranding it in an eccentric orbit.  Still, the several science experiments onboard have returned information on cosmic rays and such in space.  ATS-3, which went up November 5, 1967, was the last to ride an Atlas Agena D rocket.  Armed with a panoply of experiments, including two transceivers, two cameras, and a host of radiation detectors, that satellite worked perfectly, returning the first color picture of the entire Earth!

ATS-4, unlike its predecessors, is a strictly practical spacecraft, carrying no science experiments, but makes up for it in engineering marvels.  One is a a day-night Image Orthicon Camera, a teevee transmitter that would provide continuous color coverage of the world from high up in geosynchronous orbit (i.e. orbiting at the same rate as the Earth turns, keeping it more or less stationary with respect to the ground).  Another is a microwave transmitter, turning ATS into a powerful communications satellite like its progenitor

ATS-4 also was to test out a gravity gradient stabilization system, basically using the subtle gradations of the Earth's pull on the satellite's arms to keep it oriented in orbit.  Finally, ATS-4 has an ion engine aboard.  These drives, perfect for space, work by shooting out Cesium electrons.  They are incredibly economical compared to conventional rockets, but their thrust is quite low, meaning they must be fired continuously to have an appreciable effect on velocity.

Sadly, as with ATS-2, ATS-4's Atlas Centaur failed on the second stage, stranding the satellite in a low, largely useless orbit.  Well, I guess that's why you launch lots of them!

ESSA 7

We haven't given the ESSA series of satellites much love, which I suppose is what happens when a technology stops being novel and instead becomes routine, even essential.  After all, who reports on every airplane that takes off anymore?

But it's worth talking about the latest satellite, ESSA 7, launched August 16, to summarize what the system has done for us over the last several years.

There were eleven satellites in the TIROS series of weather craft, the first launched in 1960.  In February 1966, with the launch of ESSA 1, the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) took over the cartwheel satellites, making the series officially operational.

All of them have worked perfectly, launched into sun-synchronous polar orbits about 900 miles up that circle the Earth from north to south as the planet rotates eastward beneath.  So perfect is ESSA 7's orbit that it will cross the equator at virtually the same time every day, drifting from that time table by only four minutes every year.

ESSA satellites have returned 3000 warnings of hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones, reporting not just on the existence but the intensity of these dangerous storms.  As of May 27 of this year, ESSA satellites had taken a million photos of the Earth's weather–that's $42 per picture, since the total launch cost of an ESSA is $6 million.


An image of Tropical Storm Shirley taken August 19, 1968

Up in the Kosmos

If we had to cover the launch of every Kosmos (Cosmos) satellite out of the Soviet Union, we'd have to go to a daily schedule.  There's such a thing as too much of a good thing, right?

But the Russkies are putting them up on the average of one a week, so it's worth sampling them occasionally to keep tabs on all the stuff they're putting in orbit.  Especially since the Kosmos is a catch-all designator, even more broad than our Explorer series.  It includes military satellites, science satellites, weather satellites, even automatic tests of the Soyuz spacecraft.

Here's a brief outline of the launches this last month:

Kosmos 230

This is a typical Soviet launch press release:

The Soviet Union launched another Cosmos satellite today and the Sputnik was reported functioning normally, Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said.  The device, Cosmos 230, is sending information to a Soviet research center for evaluation.

We know it was launched July 5 into a 48.5 degree inclined orbit, that it soars between 181 and 362 miles above the Earth, and that it's still in orbit as we speak, circling the Earth every 92.8 minutes.

As for what it's for… well, your guess is as good as mine.  That said, it's probably not a spy satellite.  How do I know?  Read on, and I'll show you what a spy sat looks like so you can spot them yourself!

Kosmos 231

The Soviet Union has launched another satellite in its program of exploring outer space, the official Tass news agency said Thursday.  It said Cosmos 231 was launched Wednesday [July 10] and is functioning normally.  The latest Cosmos is orbiting the earth once every 89.7 minutes in a low orbit from 130 miles to 205 miles.  Its angle to the earth was 65 degrees.

Seems innocuous enough, right?  Doesn't tell you anything more than the other one.  Except…

First tip-off: the angle.  A zero degree angle would be along the equator, never leaving 0 degrees latitude.  A 90 degree angle is polar, heading due north and south.  The lower the angle, the narrower a band of the Earth a satellite covers.

A 65 degree angle is sufficient to cover a wide swathe…including all of the continental United States.

The altitude is quite low, too.  The closer, the better–if you want to look at something from orbit.

But the real kicker is this: the spacecraft reentered on July 18, just eight days after launch.  Normally, when you send a science satellite up, you want it to stay in orbit as long as possible to get more back for your buck…er…ruble.  You only deorbit a spacecraft (and make no mistake–Kosmos 231 had to have been deorbited; its orbit wasn't that low) when there's something onboard you want to get back.  Like a person…or film.

We know there wasn't anyone onboard Kosmos 231.  The Soviets would have told us.  By the way, I'm not the only one who thinks the Kosmos was a spy satellite, taking pictures in orbit and then landing the film for processing.  There's a blurb in the July 15th issue of Aviation Weekly and Space Report which says the same thing.  And they reached that conclusion before the craft even landed, just based on the orbit!

By the way, if you're wondering what the Soviet spy satellites look like, we actually have a better idea of theirs than ours!  We're pretty sure they're based on the Vostok space capsules used to carry cosmonauts.  In fact, it's an open question whether or not the spy sat was evolved from the Vostok or the other way around!

Kosmos 232

Launched July 16, its orbital parameters were as follows: 125 to 220 miles in altitude, 89.8 minute orbit, 65 degree inclination.  The newspaper article I read noted that the satellite's path was a common one, and predicted the satellite would be recovered in eight days.

Sure enough, it was on the ground again on July 24.

Sound familiar?

Kosmos 233

Here's another oddball: launched on the 18th, the Soviets didn't release news of its orbiting until at least the 20th.  It's in a near polar orbit, soaring up to 935 miles, grazing the Earth with a perigee of 124 miles.

That's no spy sat.  In fact, I'd guess this one might be a bonafide science satellite, exploring the Earth's Van Allen Belts.  But it could just as easily be the equivalent of our Transit navigational satellites or something.  We won't know until and unless the Communists publish scientific results.

Kosmos 234

Launched July 30, it soared from 130 to 183 miles up with a period of 89.5 minutes and an inclination of 51.8 degrees.  Low orbit?  Check.  Cryptic announcement describing its purpose as "the continued exploration of outer space"?  Check.  But the inclination's a bit low.  Better wait for more information.

Oh wait.  It landed August 5.  Pretty sure we know what this one was!

Kosmos 235

Up August 9, down August 17.  Orbit went from 126 to 176 miles, period was 89.3 minutes, and the inclination was exactly the same as before–51.8 degrees.

I'm not sure the significance of the different inclinations.  Maybe it's a matter of the rocket or the launch location.  Generally, the higher the inclination, the more expensive the shot in terms of fuel since the rocket doesn't get the extra boost of the Earth's rotation.

Operator?

It's been a while since we covered the Molniya communications satellites, one of the few Soviet series we do know something about.  July 5 marked the launch of the ninth comsat in the series, zooming up to a high, not quite geosynchronous, orbit, where it has a nice vantage of the whole of Asia.

This launch comes less than three months after the orbiting of Molniya H, the eighth in the series.  Whether Molniya I is replacing its predecessor, which may have been faulty, or whether the ninth Molniya is simply acting as a backup, is not certain.  The latter seems unlikely, though.  When Molniya G went up just three weeks after Molniya F, it was widely believed that the Russians had sent up two to make sure they could televise their annual November Moscow parade to the other Communist countries.

That's all folks!

That's the big news for this month.  The rest of the year is going to be really exciting, what with the upcoming launch of Apollo 7 and Zond 5.  We're about to enter a new phase of manned lunar exploration.  That said, we promise to keep covering the significant shots closer to home, too.  For us, all space missions are out of this world!


The prime crew for Apollo 7 (l-r) Astronauts Donn F. Eisele, Command Module Pilot; Walter Cunningham, Lunar Module Pilot; and Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Commander




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Science / Space Race

[April 8, 1968] Ups, Downs and Tragedy: An Eventful Month in Space (Gagarin's crash, Zond-4, OGO-5, Apollo-6)

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by Kaye Dee

Despite the continued hiatus in human spaceflight on both sides of the Iron Curtin, March and early April have been a busy time in space exploration. But, sadly, I have to commence this review with the tragic news that Colonel Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, was killed in a plane crash during a training flight on 27 March. Very little is currently known about the circumstances surrounding Gagarin’s death, which has occurred just one month shy of the first anniversary of the loss of Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in the Soyuz-1 accident.

Loss of a Space Hero
There have long been rumours that the Soviet leadership refused to allow Gagarin to fly high performance jets or make another spaceflight due to his invaluable propaganda status as Cosmonaut No. 1. However, it seems that since Gagarin completed an engineering degree in February, he had finally been allowed to resume flight status and was undertaking training flights to regain his lapsed jet pilot qualifications.

According to an official government commission investigating the crash, Col. Gagarin was flying a two seat MiG-15 trainer with Colonel Vladimir Seryogin, 46, described as an experienced test pilot and instructor on the training flight. Taking off at 10 a.m., Gagarin and Seryogin apparently flew east 70 miles from Moscow. After completing the training flight, around 10.30, Gagarin radioed that he was returning to base. The plane was then at 13,000 feet. A minute later ground control could not establish contact.

A MiG-15UTI, the same type as the aircraft Gagarin was flying at the time of the crash

An air search began, and a helicopter found the wreckage in a forest. The plane had dived into the ground at an angle of 65 to 70 degrees and was destroyed, killing both men. No information as to the cause of the crash has so far been forthcoming, but a story has been circulated that Gagarin heroically sacrificed himself, refusing to bail out of his stricken aircraft to guide it away from crashing in a populated area. How much truth there is to this, or whether it is pure propaganda, cannot be determined at this time.

Cosmonaut No. 1 is “flying through space forever”
Following an autopsy, the bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated the day after the crash and the ashes returned to Moscow, where the urns lay in state for 19 hours in the Red Banner Hall of the Soviet Army. Thousands are reported to have filed past to pay their respects to the world’s first space traveller. Thousands more lined the streets as the flower-covered urns, borne on a caisson drawn by an armoured troop carrier, moved slowly to Red Square along a 2½-mile route. The funeral procession included the Gagarin and Seryogin families and the highest leaders of the Soviet state and Communist Party.

The funeral procession for Gagarin and Seryogin making its way towards Red Square

Gagarin and Seryogin were both interred in the Kremlin Wall, behind Lenin's Tomb in Red Square. In what is said to be a rare honour, car horns, factory whistles and church bells sounded in unison as the urn bearing Gagarin's ashes was inserted into a niche in the red brick wall. Then the nation fell still for a minute of silence, followed by a final salvo of cannon fire. A day of national mourning was also declared, the first time this has ever been done in the USSR for someone not a national leader. President Johnson, UN Secretary General U Thant and other world leaders sent messages of condolence. John Glenn sent a personal letter of sympathy to Col. Gagarin’s wife Valentina.

Seryogin and Gagarin buried side by side in the Kremlin Wall. Their various honours and awards are displayed before their portraits

Gagarin was just 34 years old when he died, leaving two young daughters, aged nine and seven. He was based at the cosmonaut training centre near Moscow, involved in training other cosmonauts when not engaged in official duties as a public figure. Little is known about Col. Seryogin, but he has been described as a Hero of Soviet Union and the commander of an air unit. It is unknown if he is also a member of the Soviet cosmonaut corps or has any other role in the Russian space programme.

Gagarin’s words upon landing after his space flight were “I could have gone on flying through space forever”. Though he never returned to space in this life, his spirit surely resides in the cosmos now.

Making up Lost Ground?
The somewhat mysterious Zond-4 unmanned spacecraft was launched on 2 March. A TASS news agency announcement of the launch described Zond-4 as an “automatic station”, “designed to study the outlying regions of near-earth space.”

Thanks to my friends at the Weapons Research Establishment, here is a photo of a Proton rocket, rumoured to be the type used to launch Zond-4.

TASS reported that Zond-4 was put into an initial 170-mile parking orbit, before being sent on a “planned flight” further into space, apparently reaching the environs of the Moon. According to my contacts at the WRE, Zond 4’s flightpath reached an apogee of 240,000 miles, “comparable to lunar altitude”.

No further information was released by TASS about the mission, which has occurred several years after previous launches in the Zond series: Zond-1 was launched in April 1964, Zond-2 in November that year, and Zond-3 in July 1965. “Zond” is the Russian word for “probe” and these earlier spacecraft were apparently planetary or lunar missions. Could Zond-4 actually have been an attempt by the Soviet Union to make up lost ground with a test of the new Soyuz spacecraft, presumably redesigned or modified following the failed Soyuz-1 mission last year?

Does this cutaway illustration represent mysterious Zond-4? My WRE friends think it might!

It would hardly be the first time that the Soviet Union has concealed real purpose of a space mission behind the name of a different spacecraft series. (paging Mr. Kosmos/Cosmos!). As the Soyuz vehicle is believed to be the USSR’s answer to Apollo, a test of an improved spacecraft out to lunar distance would certainly make sense at this time, with the Apollo 6 mission (see below) testing out the Apollo Command and Service Modules just a few days ago.

Whatever its mission, Zond-4 returned to Earth on 9 March, but there was no official communique on the conclusion of the flight. This silence suggests that the re-entry failed in some way and that the spacecraft was either destroyed on re-entry or crashed on landing. If Zond-4 was a test of the Soyuz vehicle, could its loss have been due to a repeat of the parachute failure that doomed Soyuz-1 last year? If this was the case, it does not bode well for the USSR getting its lunar programme back on track in time to challenge the United States in the race for the Moon.

Go, OGO-5!
Just two days after the launch of Zond-4, the United States launched the latest satellite in its Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (OGO) series of scientific satellites. OGO-5 soared aloft on 4 March, establishing itself in a highly elliptical orbit with a 170 mile perigee and a 92,105 mile apogee. The orbital inclination was 31.1 degrees, with the satellite taking 3796 minutes to complete one orbit. The 1,347 lb satellite carries more experiments than any other automated spacecraft to date.

OGO-5 First day Cover and informational insert, courtesy of my Uncle Ernie, the philatelic collector

OGO-5 is primarily devoted to observation of the Earth’s upper atmosphere and its interaction with conditions in the space environment. Like earlier OGO satellites, it carries instruments for studying solar flares (which can also detect cosmic X-ray bursts) and a gamma-ray detector. This will enable it to examine the hazards and mysteries of Earth's space environment at a time when radiation-producing flares on the Sun are intensifying. It will also chart magnetic and electric forces in space, measure gases in Earth's upper atmosphere, investigate the Aurora Borealis over the North Pole and listen for the puzzling radio noises that have been detected from the planet Jupiter.  Each of OGO-5’s predecessors is still operational at this time, so let’s hope the latest Orbiting Geophysical Observatory also has a long life ahead of it.

Apollo 6: NASA Keeps Moving Forward
If Zond-4 has been an un-announced trial of the USSR’s Soyuz lunar spacecraft, Apollo-6 has been NASA’s very public test flight of the Saturn-5 rocket and some of the modifications to the Apollo Command Module.

Launched on 4 April, Apollo-6 marked the second test flight of the massive Saturn-5 launch vehicle, crucial for reaching Moon. The primary objective of the mission was to test the performance of the Saturn-5 and the Apollo spacecraft, the first time that the Command and Service Modules (CSM) would be fully tested in space. In particular, the mission was intended to demonstrate that the Saturn-5’s S-IVB third stage could send the entire Apollo spacecraft (CSM and Lunar Module) out to lunar distances. Although things didn’t go quite to plan, Apollo-6 did accomplish its basic objectives.

An All-Up Test Flight
The Apollo 6 launch vehicle was the second flight-capable Saturn-5, AS-502, its simulated payload equal to about 80% of a full Apollo lunar spacecraft. The CSM it carried was a Block I (Earth-orbit mission) type, with some Block II (lunar mission) modifications. According to NASA “more than 140 tests since last October showed modifications of the Apollo spacecraft since the 1967 disaster had drastically reduced the hazard to life”.

Possibly the most important modification was a new crew hatch, intended to be tested under lunar return conditions. This new hatch incorporated the heat shield and crew compartment hatches of the original Apollo design into a single hatch, called the "unified" design. This has been in response to the Apollo-1 investigation board finding that the dual hatches were too difficult to open in case of emergency and had contributed to the deaths of the crew.

Apollo-6's redesigned unified hatch, photographed during a post-flight inspection of the Commend Module

Like the earlier Apollo-5 test flight, Apollo-6 carried a simulated Lunar Module (LM) which lacked the descent-stage landing gear. It also had no flight systems, and its fuel and oxidiser tanks were liquid-ballasted. While the LM remained inside the Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter throughout the flight, its ascent stage was instrumented to determine the craft’s structural integrity and the vibration and acoustic stresses to which it was subjected.

Apollo-6's "legless Lunar Module", formally called the Lunar Test Article LTA-2R

A few weeks prior to launch, NASA announced that, to further reduce fire hazards that contributed to the deaths of Apollo-1 astronauts, it intended to change to a mixture of 60% oxygen and 40% cent nitrogen in the Command Module, while the spacecraft and its crew are on the ground and during launch. Once their spacecraft left the launch pad, the astronauts would switch to pure oxygen. Since the gas mixture will be used in the spacecraft only during ground operations, NASA has not planned any change in the existing environmental control system, so the decision did not affect the Apollo 6 mission.

Apollo 6: What Was Planned
The original Apollo 6 mission plan intended to send the CSM and simulated lunar module into a trans-lunar trajectory. (That trajectory, although passing beyond lunar orbit distance, would not encounter the Moon, which was in another part of its orbit at the time.) The Saturn-5’s S-IVB third stage would be fired for trans-lunar injection, with the CSM separating from the S-IVB soon after. The Service Module engine would then fire to slow the CSM, reducing its apogee to 11,989 nmi.

NASA illustration showing the CSM and LM inside the Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter, as they would be at trans-lunar injection

The CSM would then return to Earth as if it had experienced “direct-return” abort during a Moon mission. As it returned, the SM engine would fire again, accelerating the CSM to simulate the conditions that an Apollo spacecraft would encounter on its return from the Moon: a re-entry angle of −6.5 degrees and velocity of 36,500 ft/s. The entire test flight was planned with a duration of about 10 hours.

Not Quite Going to Plan
After the launch was delayed for some days due to problems with guidance system equipment and fuelling, Apollo 6 made a smooth lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre. However, during the last ten seconds of first stage firing, the vehicle severely experienced a type of longitudinal oscillation known as “pogo”. Pogo occurs when a partial vacuum in a rocket’s fuel and oxidiser feed lines reaches the engine firing chamber, causing the engine to “skip”. The pogo phenomenon is well-known, since rockets have experienced it since the early days of spaceflight, and it occurred in launchers such as Thor and Titan II (used for the Gemini program).

While the Apollo-4 Saturn-5 also experienced a mild form of pogo, Apollo-6 was subjected to extreme pogo vibrations. It appears that these oscillations, travelling along the length of the huge Moon rocket, caused multiple problems with the vehicle. Two engines in the second stage shut down early, although the vehicle's onboard guidance system was able to compensate by burning the remaining three engines for 58 seconds longer than planned. The S-IVB engine also experienced a slight performance loss and had to burn for 29 seconds longer than usual. Intense vibrations were felt in the Command Module that could have caused injuries had a crew been onboard. There was also some superficial structural damage to the Spacecraft Lunar Module Adaptor (SLA). A chase plane image of the Apollo-6 launch, taken at approximately the time of the pogo oscillations. It shows an area of discoloration on the SLA indicative of superficial damage and what appears to be falling pieces of debris, perhaps a panel or two shaken lose by the pogo vibrations

The underperformance of the apparently pogo-damaged engines resulted in the third stage being inserted into an elliptical parking orbit, rather than the planned 100 nmi circular orbit. Although Mission Control decided that this did not prevent the mission from continuing, when the vehicle was ready for trans-lunar injection, the apparently damaged S-IVB engine failed to restart.

Repeating Apollo-4
Without the ability to continue with the original flight plan, Mission Control decided to complete some of the mission objectives by adopting a flight plan similar to that of Apollo-4. The SM's Service Propulsion System (SPS) was used to raise the spacecraft into an orbit with a 11,989 nmi apogee, from which it would re-enter. However, the SPS engine did not have enough fuel for a second burn to accelerate the atmospheric re-entry and the spacecraft was only able to enter the atmosphere with a velocity of 33,000 ft/s, instead of the planned 36,500 ft/s that would simulate a lunar return.

With the SM was jettisoned just before atmospheric re-entry, the CM splashed down 43 nmi from the planned landing site north of Hawaii, ten hours after launch. It was recovered by the USS Okinawa.

A Rocket's Eye View
Unlike earlier unmanned missions, the Apollo-6 Saturn-5 was fitted with several cameras intended to be ejected and later recovered. Three of the four cameras on the first stage failed to eject and were lost and only one of the two cameras on the second stage was recovered. Fortunately, this camera provided spectacular views of the separation of the first and second stages.

Two spectacular views of the interstage between the first and second stages falling away, taken from Apollo-6's second stage camera. How amazing that we can now see events happening during a launch that cannot be observed from the ground!

The CM also carried two cameras: a motion picture camera, intended to be activated during launch and re-entry and a 70mm still camera. Unfortunately, as the technical issues meant that the mission took about ten minutes longer than planned, the re-entry events were not filmed. However, the still camera, pointed at the Earth through the hatch window provided impressive photos of parts of the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, and the western Pacific Ocean. Advanced film and filters, improved colour balance and higher resolution have provided images that are a significant improvement on the photographs taken on previous American crewed missions and demonstrated that future imagery from space will be useful for cartographic, topographic, and geographic studies.

A view of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas, taken from the Command Module's 70mm still camera. Special thanks to the Australian NASA representative for providing me with rush copies of these incredible Apollo-6 images for this article

What’s Next for Apollo?
NASA announced in mid-March that its first Earth-orbiting Apollo mission will be launched on a Saturn 1 vehicle and spend as long as ten days in orbit. The flight, which could come as early as mid-August, will be crewed by astronauts Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham. If that mission goes well and the Saturn-5 is cleared for manned launchings, astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart will ride a Saturn-5 into Earth orbit two or three months later to conduct flight test of the lunar module.

Following the return of Apollo-6, Apollo Programme Director Samuel C. Phillips said, “there's no question that it's less than a perfect mission”, although the Saturn-5’s demonstration of its ability to reach orbit despite the loss of two engines, was “a major unplanned accomplishment”. However, Marshall Space Flight Centre Director Wernher von Braun has recognised that the “flight clearly left a lot to be desired. … We just cannot go to the Moon [with this problem],” referring to the extreme pogo experienced on the flight. This means that solving the pogo phenomenon is now a major priority for NASA in order to keep the Apollo program on track and bolster confidence in the Saturn-5 vehicle. Can they do it? 








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