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Science / Space Race

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

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by Kaye Dee

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

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

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

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

All Quiet on the Orbital Front

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

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

Crucial Rendezvous

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

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

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

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

Duelling Vehicles

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


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

Together Again

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

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

On Their Way Home

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

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

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

Pinpointing the Landing Site

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

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


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

The Apollo-11 Show

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

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

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


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

Greg Saves the Day

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

View of the Guam Manned Space Flight Network Station

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

A Thoughtful Final Broadcast

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


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

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


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

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

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

Returning to Earth

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

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

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

Skipping Home

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

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

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

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

Splashdown!

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

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

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

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

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

Returning Heroes – and Biological Hazards!

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

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

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


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

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

Mission Control Celebrates

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


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

The Last Leg of Columbia’s Journey

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


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


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

Moon Rock Movements

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

A Long Journey Home for the Astronauts

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


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


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


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

Instant Celebrities

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

The Price of Fame

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

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

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

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

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

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




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Science / Space Race

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

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

Into the Wild Black Yonder

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

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


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

The Next Generation

Despite the blow to morale given by Mariner 4, Mars still seemed like the most hospitable place for life to have arisen apart from Earth.  After all, are there not microorganisms living in the harsh environments of Antarctica and at the bottom of the sea?  Even though the Martian atmosphere is just 1% as thick as that of Earth, this is still plenty dense compared to, say, the Moon.  Moreover, Earth's atmosphere is just 1% that of Venus.  Who's to say when an atmosphere is "thick enough"?

So, just a few months after Mariner 4 flew past Mars, Mariners 6 and 7 were authorized.  At first glance, they look a lot like their predecessor, but the differences are profound—both internally and externally.


From top to bottom: Mariners 2, 4, 5, and 6/7 (note the family resemblance of the last three—Mariner 5 was actually a modified Mariner 3/4 backup!)

First, the insides: the new Mariners are the first spacecraft made only to examine their target planet.  All of the prior Mariners had experiments for monitoring the interplanetary environment—solar wind, magnetic fields, that sort of thing.  Mariners 6 and 7 carry two TV cameras (one narrow, one wide-angle), an infrared radiometer (to measure the temperature of Mars), and ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers (to determine the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere and surface).  That's it.

As for the outsides, since 1965, when Mariner 4 passed by the Red Planet, there has been a revolution in communications technology.  Not only do the new Mariners carry more powerful transmitters and antennas, but with the construction of the new 210 foot antenna at Goldstone, supplementing the old 85 footers, data can be transferred between the spacecraft and Earth at a rate more than 2000 times the 8.33 bits per second speed of Mariner 4.  It also helps that Mars is closer to Earth this time around, and that the rocket carrying Mariners 6 and 7 is the beefy new Atlas Centaur, which can loft more weight than the old Atlas Agena so the onboard electronics can be heftier and thus more capable.


The 210' "Mars Dish" at Goldstone, California

What this means for us on the ground is that instead of sending back just 22 images of Mars, the new Mariners could transmit hundreds of pictures, all while returning real-time spectrographic and radiometer data.  All of this aided by the installation of the first computer equipped on an interstellar probe, capable of remembering 128 "words" some 22 characters in length.  And that computer can be reprogrammed on the fly from Earth!

On their Way

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the same folks who built the other Mariners, assembled four spacecraft for the mission.  The first was a stay-at-home test model, the second a source of spare parts.  The other two were redundant probes—an understandable precaution given the loss of Mariners 1 and 3.  However, the twin ships weren't entirely redundant; Mariner 6 was targeted to fly over the Martian North Pole while #7 was aimed over the South Pole.

Problems with the spacecraft began before liftoff.  Mariner 6's Atlas rocket, which maintains its structure through internal fuel pressure, sprung a leak and began to deflate like a balloon.  It had to be replaced with Mariner 7's rocket, and a new one ordered from Convair.  This did not delay the launch, however (which had to go at a set time to reach Mars with a minimum of fuel use), and Mariner 6 blasted off on February 24th.  Mariner 7 took off on March 27, but because of its course, was set to reach Mars just five days after its sister.


The launch of Mariner 7

Both rockets performed beautifully, requiring only minor mid-course corrections early in the flight to ensure they zoomed close by the fourth planet.  There were some minor technical problems: The radio on Mariner 6, used to determine range from Earth, kept locking on its own signal rather than Earth's, making it useless.  It fixed itself later in the flight, however.

Similarly, the star tracker designed to keep Mariner positioned properly lost sight of Canopus.  After weeks of engineers scrambling to find an alternative guiding star (they even tried the Large Magellanic Cloud, but the galaxy was too diffuse to be useful), that system fixed itself, too.  Finally, the onboard solar sensors that told how much sunlight was hitting Mariner 6's power panels, began reading too low.  Was the Sun going out?  No.  The sensors had just drifted out of calibration.

Mariner 7's only issue was a radio receiver that dropped to about 20% of its sensitivity, apparently due to cold.  Ground controllers switched it to high power, which warmed the thing up and fixed it.

Thus, its vexing teething pains dealt with, NASA now had, for the first time, two fully operating probes with which to explore Mars.

The Great Galactic Ghoul

On July 29, even as Mariner 6 was finishing the transmission of 33 low-resolution approach images, Mariner 7 suddenly began spinning wildly, all of its scientific data telemetry channels scrambled.  Had an asteroid hit the spacecraft?  Had there been an instrument explosion or some kind of short circuit?  Was there some kind of Great Galactic Ghoul guarding the Red Planet?  No answer was quickly forthcoming.


Collage of Mariner 6 images as it approached Mars

Nevertheless, engineers raced to salvage the mission—with Mariner 7 arriving shortly after its sister, and from a more favorable angle, the JPL science team wanted the spacecraft's experiments all in working order. 

Cautiously, computer engineers went over every bit of code and methodically tested all of Mariner 7's instruments.  They were in working order, but because of the accident, uncalibrated and useless.  How to get real data points to use to base the radiometer and spectrometer data against?


Engineers at the Mariner control center at JPL

As it turned out, the two TV cameras on board were in good order and unaffected.  By pointing them at Martian targets and using the data they returned, it was possible to calibrate the other experiments.  And so, just in the nick of time, Mariner 7 was ready, come close encounter time, to do some real science.

Exploring Barsoom

So what did the two probes find as they whizzed past Mars, almost grazing it from a scant few thousand miles away?

Well, at first they seemed to confirm Mariner 4's findings.  There were all the craters in stark detail.  There was no evidence that there had ever been widespread water—absent was the erosion one would expect from oceans or even rivers.


A lunar landscape, courtesy of Mariner 7

On the other hand, if Mars wasn't Earth's twin, neither was it sister to the Moon.  As each Mariner went behind the planet, beaming radio signals through the Martian atmosphere, it was confirmed that surface pressure was around 7 millibar—a refinement rather than a revelation.  But they did determine that carbon dioxide makes up a greater percentage of the air than even on Venus.  Nitrogen was completely absent, which was a surprise.  So was ozone, which means that the surface is fairly baked by ultraviolet—again, a strike against life on the planet.

The Red Planet is not quite geologically moribund, however.  The vast Hellas region, smooth of craters, and a region of convoluted terrain akin to the American Badlands, suggests some kind of volcanic activity in comparatively recent times.

Unlike the Moon, clouds scud across the Martian sky, mostly composed of dry ice.  While it may not rain on the planet, it does frost, and maybe even snow ice and carbon dioxide.  The climate changes with the seasons, with polar (dry?) ice caps spreading and receding.  The tropical highs soar to a balmy 60 degrees, but the polar lows plunge to 240 degrees below zero.


A view of the Martian North Pole, snapped by Mariner 6—note the ice cap

Thus, Mars is an inhospitable place…but it if it lacks biological life, it is nevertheless an interesting living, breathing planet in its own right.

What's next?

Mariners 6 and 7 are still functioning, and their onboard systems should work until at least 1971.  Not only might they return pictures of any asteroids or comets that drift by, they will also constitute an experiment in and of themselves.  As they drift through the solar system, terrestrial scientists will measure variations in the timing of their telemetry signals and use them to prove General Relativity—something that requires great distances to detect subtle theoretical variations.

As for successors, a Martian orbiter is already in the works for the 1971 alignment, and in 1973, a probe will use the gravity of Venus to enable a probe to fly by and then visit, for the first time, Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

And also in 1973, the Viking orbiter/lander combo, successor to the overlarge Voyager project, will give Mars a real look.


The 1971 Mars Orbiter

If the 1960s were the dawn of interplanetary science, the 1970s will see its maturity.  I find this as momentous an achievement as footprints on the Moon.

I can't wait to rewrite all of the articles in our solar system series!




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Science / Space Race

[August 4, 1969] A Small Step and a Giant Leap (Apollo-11, Part 2)

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by Kaye Dee

The crew of Apollo-11 has returned home in triumph, splashing down safely in the Pacific Ocean on 24 July US time, at the end of their historic mission. The New York Times Editorial of 20 July has called their epic adventure “more than a step in history; it is a step in evolution.” Those footprints (well, bootprints, like Col. Aldrin's above) on the Moon mark the beginning of humanity's giant leap from its home planet into the cosmos.


Despite their hero status, right now the crew of Apollo-11 are pariahs – in quarantine to ensure that they have not brought home any nasty surprises from the Moon in the form of unknown pathogens. But alongside the treasure trove of Moonrocks, what they have brought home is a stunning visual record of Mankind's "greatest adventure", and I have waited a little to prepare this article so that it could be illustrated with many of the images taken during the flight (which had not been developed and distributed until now). I hope you’ll agree that it has been worth the delay.

The Apollo-11 mission has been epic in every sense of the word – so much so, that my intended two-part article has evolved into a three-part story, the final chapter to come after the astronauts are released from their quarantine.

A Smooth Cruise
At the end of Part 1, we left the Apollo-11 crew on their coast to the Moon, which was largely routine and uneventful. Despite the intrinsically dangerous nature of the Apollo-11 mission, the flight was, overall, probably the most trouble-free Apollo mission to date. Certainly, the Operations Supervisor at the Honeysuckle Creek Manned Space Flight (MSFN) Tracking Station has described it as “a very smooth mission from our perspective”, and I understand that Mission Control in Houston thought the same, despite the stresses inherent in such a historically significant undertaking as the first Moon landing. 

Coming to You in Living Colour
34 hours into the flight, Mr. Armstrong, Col. Aldrin and Col. Collins gave their first public television broadcast. Highlights of the 36-minute transmission (in colour for those countries with colour TV service) included views of the Earth, Lunar Module (LM) Pilot Aldrin demonstrating zero-g push-ups and “Chef” Collins dishing up a space food chicken stew. 

Compare the resolution of this photo taken by the crew with the television image of a similar view of the Earth at around 10,000 nautical miles

Another television transmission took place 55 hours after launch, with a 96-minute colour broadcast. Shown live in the US, Japan, western Europe and much of South America, this show again included views of the Earth, now 201,300 miles away. Viewers could see the removal of the probe and drogue docking apparatus and the opening of the spacecraft tunnel hatch to the LM, with Command Module (CM) Pilot Collins making jokes about his non-union “stagehands” (Armstrong and Aldrin).

Col. Aldrin entered the LM first, followed by Mr. Armstrong, providing a tour around the vehicle that would land the first human beings on the Moon. Aldrin also described the Moonwalking gear waiting to be used.


Aldrin in the LM during its first checkout. His sunglasses were specially developed by Australian ophthalmologist Dr. John Colvin

Into Lunar Orbit
On mission day four, Col. Collins swung the Command Service Module (CSM) around, so that the crew could look at the rapidly approaching Moon, its crater-pocked surface now filling their windows. As the spacecraft entered the Moon’s shadow, Mr. Armstrong noted “Now we are able to see stars again and recognise constellations for the first time on the trip. The sky is full of stars, just like the nights on Earth. But all the way here, we’ve only been able to see stars occasionally… but not recognise any star patterns.”

An eerie view approaching the Moon in its shadow, with the solar corona and dimly Earthlit craters appearing around the lunar rim

Like Apollo-8 and 10, the CSM engine burn required to place Apollo-11 into lunar orbit had to occur behind the Moon, with the crew out of direct contact with the Earth. Shortly before they disappeared behind the Moon, while in contact with the MSFN station near Madrid, the astronauts described the lunar surface they could see through their windows, with Col. Collins likening its colour to “Plaster of Paris grey.”


After a Trans-Lunar Coast that lasted for 73 hours, 5 minutes and 35 seconds, a 5 minute 57.53 second burn placed Apollo-11 exactly where it should be – in a lunar orbit of 195 by 69 miles. When reporting to Mission Control on the Lunar Orbit Insertion burn, once contact was re-established, Col. Collins could only say “It was like… perfect.”

Around the Moon
Orbiting the Moon, in their Columbia, like the heroes of Jules Verne’s “Autour de la Lune” (Around the Moon) in their Columbiad, at 78 hours and 20 minutes into the mission Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins offered viewers back on Earth a 40-minute live colour television transmission that showed spectacular views of the lunar surface and the approach path to the LM Eagle’s planned landing site. As the spacecraft prepared to go behind the Moon again, Aldrin quipped, “And as the Moon sinks slowly in the west, Apollo-11 bids good day to you,” paraphrasing Lowell Thomas’ famous travelogue sign-off to fit the occasion.


As Apollo-11 approached the Sea of Tranquility for the first time, it was early dawn on the surface below, with long, black shadows stretching across the cratered Moonscape.

Just over two hours later, CMP Collins initiated a second engine burn of 16.88 seconds, to place the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit, ready for the LM to depart for the lunar surface. This burn was critical, because if it was even two seconds too long it could put Apollo-11 on a collision course with the other side of the Moon!

Checking out the LM
A little over 81 hours after launch, during their fourth orbit of the Moon, LMP Aldrin entered the LM, to power up and checkout the spacecraft systems. Then Commander Armstrong and Col. Aldrin called Mission Control in Houston for the first time from the lunar landing vehicle, using the “Eagle” callsign.

A view of the approach to the Apollo-11 landing site, captured during the LM checkout period. It has been annotated with formal and unofficial names to show the approach path

Once this communications test was completed, the astronauts began to prepare for a sleep period. Collins suggested that Armstrong and Aldrin take the most comfortable sleeping positions in the Command Module, so they would get a good rest before the landing attempt. He was undoubtedly concerned about the possibility of an error due to overtiredness, which could have catastrophic consequences for the mission and the crew. The possibility of having to return to Earth alone if disaster should strike the lunar module crew seems to have weighed on Col. Collins’ mind, as he mentioned his understandable apprehension in several interviews prior to the flight.


Just before the sleep period, the astronauts captured another glorious vision of the Earth hovering above the lunar surface that is certain to become as iconic as Apollo-8’s Earthrise image

The Big Day Arrives
On 20 July (21 July in the eastern hemisphere, including Australia), astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin donned their spacesuits in the CM equipment bay, before entering Eagle for their descent to the lunar surface. After sealing the hatch and completing the final checkout of the LM, they extended Eagle’s landing gear and prepared to separate from the CSM.


This manoeuvre took place behind the Moon, during the 13th orbit, so as to place Eagle on the correct descent trajectory to touch down at the ALS-2 landing site. The LM moved away from Columbia and pirouetted around so that Col. Collins could inspect the vehicle and ensure that Eagle was totally ready for its historic descent to the Moon. “The Eagle has wings,” Armstrong assured Mission Control, as he and Aldrin put the craft through its paces. A nine-second Reaction Control System engine burn by the CSM then separated the two spacecraft to a safe distance apart

Meanwhile, Back in Mission Control
In focussing on the astronauts, it’s easy to forget the flight controllers and their support teams monitoring, guiding and approving every stage of a manned space flight.

Flight Director Kranz (second from right) in the MOCR

For the critical lunar landing phase of Apollo-11, the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR), better known as Mission Control in Houston, was staffed by the White Team of flight controllers, under Flight Director, Mr. Eugene Kranz, usually known as Gene. The space specialists now filling roles that did not even exist outside the pages of science fiction a decade ago, have an average age of just 26 years! Rookie astronaut Charles Duke served as CAPCOM, the direct contact with the astronauts.

CAPCOM Duke, with Apollo-8's Jim Lovell, the Apollo-11 backup commander, listening in

As the time for Apollo-11’s historic landing approached, every available audio outlet in Mission Control had a headset plugged into it, to listen to the spacecraft communications channel. Senior NASA officials and astronauts, including Alan Shepard and John Glenn, positioned themselves in the MOCR to be eyewitnesses to the fulfillment of President Kennedy’s bold challenge of 1961. The families of the crew were also present.

The Eagle Stoops to the Moon
The Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI) burn needed to land Eagle safely on the Moon, required a 30 second firing of the LM descent engine. All the telemetry data being received at Mission Control indicted that everything was going to plan, but the landing on the Moon’s surface was (aside from re-entry) the most dangerous part of the flight: within forty minutes, the Eagle and its crew would either “land, crash or abort”, determining the success of the mission.


At 102:33:05.01 GET (Ground Elapsed Time) Eagle fired its descent engine to commence the landing sequence. Unexpectedly, the burn placed the LM 4.6 miles further downrange than planned, resulting in the landing point being 4.6 miles beyond the designated ALS-2 site. It seems the cause of this discrepancy was some residual pressure in the tunnel connecting the CM and LM when the two craft undocked (the tunnel should have been in vacuum, but had not been fully decompressed). This pushed the spacecraft apart with more velocity than planned.

With the LM’s legs facing the flight path, the astronauts were essentially flying backwards and unable to see where they were going, although they could see landmarks passing by and knew where they were as they descended towards the Moon’s surface. 

Problems Arise
As the LM’s altitude decreased, the on-board radar data was critical for evaluation and comparison with altitude data from the tracking stations on Earth. But a potential electrical problem with the radar was just one of an increasing number of problems that began to arise as the LM dropped towards the lunar surface. Communications difficulties with Mission Control meant that Col. Collins in Columbia had to relay some messages between Houston and Eagle.

Nevertheless, when Flight Director Kranz polled his team, they were all prepared to give the “Go!” for powered descent. Guidance Officer Steve Bales had the only reservations, noting that the spacecraft was moving a little faster than planned. As a result, Eagle was going to land further downrange than planned, in what was expected to be a rockier area.

Abort?
At 102:38:22 GET the astronauts received a 1202 alarm, which meant their computer was overloaded by irrelevant data from the rendezvous radar (which should have been switched off) and couldn’t do all the tasks in the time available. Would the landing have to be aborted?

The backroom boys supporting Mission Control. They realised the alarms were minor issues

With the lives of Commander Armstrong and Col. Aldrin – and the success of the entire mission – in their hands, Guidance Officer Bales and his support team fortunately recognised the issue immediately and were able to give assurance that the computer would perform, nevertheless, and landing could proceed. When a similar 1201 alarm sounded, with Eagle just 2,000 ft above the lunar surface, they once again gave a positive response for the landing to continue.

Heading for Touchdown
With four minutes until touchdown, communications between the LM and Earth finally strengthened and stablised. Another rollcall of the flight controllers gave the landing the “Go!” to proceed.

At 9,000 ft, the LM began to drop its legs to point down to the Moon’s surface. Mission Commander Armstrong was trained to land the LM, controlling the spacecraft’s flight while looking out the window at the landing site. Col. Aldrin’s role was to concentrate on the display panel and provide Armstrong with the information he needed as he guided the Eagle safely down to the lunar surface. At this point, the flight control team back on Earth could do no more for the landing: everything now depended on the skill and teamwork of Armstrong and Aldrin.

Commander Armstrong flying the LM to touchdown in a training simulation

As an experienced test pilot, Neil Armstrong chose to fly the final landing phase (about the last ¾ of a mile to the touch down spot from a thousand feet) manually, like flying a helicopter. This enabled him to exercise his judgement to fly beyond the intended landing position, when it became clear that “a gigantic crater and lots of very big rocks” made it a very unfavourable position to touch down.

Time is Running Out!
Extending his downrange flight, Mr. Armstrong searched for a more suitable landing site, but time and fuel were fast running out. At around 250 ft altitude, an amber light warned that only 5 per cent fuel remained – there were only 94 seconds left to land! Approaching 100 ft above the Moon’s surface, the downblast of the LM’s descent engine began to stir up the dust, making it difficult for Armstrong to gauge their velocity, or sight a safe place to land, by observing surface features.

View from the LM window about 30 seconds before touchdown, with the shadow of an LM leg and contact probe against the lunar surface

Finally, with just 10 seconds of fuel left, as Armstrong saw the shadow of the LM stretching in front of him, Col. Aldrin called “Contact light!”, indicating that one of Eagle’s landing leg probes had touched the lunar surface. So gently that the crew barely noticed it, the first manned spacecraft from Earth touched down on the surface of the Moon! It was 102:45:40 GET, 15:17CDT on 20 July in the United States. (For us on the east coast of Australia, it was 6.17am on a cold winter’s morning!)

“The Eagle has Landed!”
Inside the Eagle, Mr. Armstrong and Col. Aldrin apparently looked across at each other and silently shook their space-gloved hands, celebrating the success of their flight in reaching the Moon’s surface. But as historic as that safe landing was, the astronauts had to immediately prepare the LM for a sudden abort ascent in the event the landing had damaged the Eagle, or some other emergency arose.

Eagle's shadow on the Moon's surface following the landing. This view was taken after the Moonwalk and the astronaut's bootprints can be seen on the surface

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed!” Apollo-11 Commander Armstrong announced proudly to Mission Control and the world, as soon as he was sure that Eagle had touched down safely. Since the descent stage of the LM will remain on the Moon (and presumably be designated as a historic monument in the future), it was an appropriate gesture to identify its landing site as Tranquility Base – Earth’s first outpost on another world.

In Mission Control, the flight controllers briefly celebrated, before Flight Director Kranz called for a “Stay/No Stay” decision from his team just one minute after landing. There were abort points at three and twelve minutes after landing – after that, the astronauts would have to wait for Columbia to go around the Moon again. At each decision point, flight controllers approved Eagle to stay on the lunar surface.

The Loneliest Man
While Eagle’s crew on the Moon were in constant communication with Mission Control, CMP Collins was orbiting the Moon, relying on events being relayed to him so that he knew what was happening. After forty minutes of complete isolation behind the Moon on each orbit, he could talk and listen to the Earth for seventy minutes, through either the Goldstone or Tidbinbilla DSN stations. However, he only had about eight minutes in direct contact with Eagle each time his orbit passed over Tranquility Base. Fortunately, Columbia was in the contact zone when Eagle was landing, so that he could hear the verbal exchanges of the touchdown, but his general communication isolation from the Earth, and from his crewmates, earned Mike Collins the nickname “the Loneliest Man”.

Where Did They Land?
Each time he passed over the Sea of Tranquility, Collins scanned the lunar surface for signs of the LM, hoping to spot the spacecraft (he never did) and any landmarks that would assist in identifying Eagle’s actual landing site: since Commander Armstrong had taken the LM further downrange than planned in search of a safe landing site, its exact position on the lunar surface was uncertain.
Annotated NASA image showing Collins' attempts to sight the Eagle's landing site. Very close, but no cigar!

Using huge lunar maps and data from the spacecraft and tracking stations, the Mapping Sciences Laboratory in Houston had narrowed the landing site down to a 5-mile radius, but Eagle’s crew could not identify anything of significance from their position. It wasn’t until Apollo-11 was halfway back to Earth that a chance remark by Mr. Armstrong finally helped the mappers to pinpoint the location of the landing site!

Going for a (Moon) Walk
Apollo-11’s flight plan called for a four-hour rest period after touching down on the Moon. However, as everything had gone according to schedule, the astronauts were eager to take their first steps on the lunar surface before their rest period. Two hours after landing, Armstrong requested Mission Control’s approval to postpone the scheduled sleep period and go out on the lunar surface straight away.


Mission Control concurred, and Armstrong and Aldrin began to carefully don their lunar Extravehicular Activity (EVA) spacesuits. In the cramped space of the LM’s cabin, surrounded by vulnerable switches and instrument panels, this took considerably longer than the expected preparation time of about two hours. Every move in the donning process had to be meticulously carried out and checked, ultimately taking around 3½ hours for the crew to be fully suited up and ready for Mankind’s historic first steps onto the Moon.

Preparing for the Moonwalk Broadcast
Like me, I’m sure you will be surprised to learn that NASA originally intended to provide only radio coverage of Apollo-11’s history-making first steps on the Moon! It was not until early this year that the decision was finally made to include television coverage of the lunar EVA! However, as a contingency, Westinghouse (which produced the colour television camera used in the Apollo 10 and 11 Command Modules) had been contracted to develop a compact television camera that could be used on the lunar surface. This slow-scan black and white camera has a vertical resolution of 320 lines scanned at 10 frames per second, designed to work with the small transmission bandwidth available from the LM on the Moon, which was not sufficient for a standard TV signal.


The Westinghouse Apollo-11 Lunar Surface Camera was initially mounted in the Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA), in the LM Descent Stage, positioned so that it could see the astronauts descending the ladder to step onto the lunar surface. Because of its design, and the limited space available within the MESA, the camera had to be mounted upside down. This meant that the transmitted view of Mission Commander Armstrong coming down the ladder was upside down, and a special switch had to be activated at the reception station on Earth to invert the image to the right way up. This step was not necessary when the camera was removed from the MESA and set up on the Moon’s surface itself to cover the activities of the lunar EVA.

On the Apollo-11 flight plan, the lunar EVA was scheduled so that the television transmission would be received at the Goldstone DSN station, where the 210 ft “Mars” antenna would provide maximum reception capability of the relatively weak television signal. However, should the Moonwalk should occur when Goldstone was unable to receive the television signals, NASA contracted the 210 ft Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia to act as a back-up to receive the astronaut telemetry and television broadcast from the Moon. As events transpired, it was fortunate that this arrangement was in place! The "Mars" DSN antenna at Goldstone, so called because it was developed to support space probes to Mars

Live from the Moon (via Australia)!
When Neil Armstrong finally backed gingerly out of the narrow LM hatch in his bulky spacesuit, he pulled a small ring to activate the television camera in the MESA. At 109:22:00 GET, the first television from the surface of the Moon was received at Goldstone. In Australia, where the Moon was just rising into their field of view, Honeysuckle Creek MSFN station (which was tracking the LM) and the Parkes Radio Telescope could also see the television transmission. 

The Honeysuckle Creek antenna, near Canberra, tracking Eagle on the Moon just as Armstrong stepped onto the surface

Although the picture quality received at Goldstone was good, the vision sent to Houston was extremely contrasty, due to incorrect settings on the scan converter that turned the slow-scan signal into one suitable for regular television broadcast. It was also initially upside down, as the camera operator forgot to flick the inversion switch. The images received at Honeysuckle Creek, though of lower resolution due to its smaller antenna, were clearer than Parkes, where the signal strength was very low. After a few moments switching between signals for the best picture, the broadcast controllers at Houston settled on the signals from Honeysuckle Creek for the initial global television transmission of Armstrong coming down the ladder and stepping onto the Moon’s surface.

About nine minutes later, when the Moon had risen high enough at Parkes to provide a much stronger signal, the quality of its images led the broadcast controllers to switch to the Parkes feed. This was used for the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour broadcast from the lunar surface.

The combined Australian and NASA team at Parkes were so dedicated to ensuring that the historic lunar television broadcast was made available to the world, that they kept the radio telescope in operation and stayed at their posts, even when a violent storm arose with windspeeds well in excess of the safe operating limit of the antenna.

“One Small Step for Man”
Moving carefully down the ladder on the leg of the LM, testing every phase of the descent to the surface, Mission Commander Neil Armstrong halted momentarily on the Eagle’s footpad to describe the lunar surface. At 109:24:15 GET, 21:56 CDT July 20 he then took Mankind’s first step onto another world, saying “That’s one small step for Man. One giant leap for Mankind”.

Armstrong about to take the First Step, as seen on the monitor at Honeysuckle Creek.

Armstrong had not shared with anyone what he planned to say as he stepped onto the Moon, and while his first words on the lunar surface will undoubtedly resound through history, they are, in fact, something of a non-sequitur. There’s already speculation that he may have slightly flubbed his intended line – understandable due to the stress and tension of the circumstances – and that he really meant to say “That’s one small step for a man (meaning himself). One giant leap for Mankind", which would be more logical (and indeed, later in the flight, Aldrin quoted Armstrong's utterance with the "a" included).

That First Step was watched around the world by an estimated 650 million viewers, potentially making it the most viewed television event in history (unless 700 million really did watch the Our World broadcast in 1967!). Millions more listened-in on the radio. There are estimates that 93% of televisions in the US were tuned the broadcast.

To watch the historic event, people gathered around television screens at home, or wherever they could find them. In Australia, where television ownership is still relatively low, crowds gathered around the shopfronts of any building displaying a television, like the bank shown below, since the Moonwalk occurred around lunchtime. School children spent the day in front of sets in the classroom or assembly hall. Seasoned newsmen around the world, like your famous Walter Cronkite, struggled to convey their emotions as the ancient dream of touching the Moon was realised in Armstrong's "small step".

On the Surface of the Moon
After ensuring that the Moon’s surface could bear his weight, Armstrong moved around a little, collecting a contingency sample of lunar soil – more correctly called regolith – and a couple of small rocks, in case he had to make a quick retreat to the LM. He also took a series of photographs. At least there would be something for the scientists if Eagle had to make an emergency departure! On the other side of the Moon at the time, Col. Collins was disappointed to miss the historic moment of Armstrong’s first step.


Sixteen minutes later, Col. Aldrin began backing cautiously out of Eagle’s hatch to join Armstrong, making a joke about not locking them out of the LM. On reaching the surface, an awestruck Aldrin described the vista before him as “magnificent desolation”.

As they inspected their spacecraft and their surroundings, both astronauts found their suits comfortable to walk around in, although they found it difficult to stand up again after bending down to pick up an object. 

Ceremonial Activities
As a momentous historic event, the Moonwalk included several ceremonial activities, commencing with the unveiling of a small commemorative plaque, marking the place that humans first landed on the Moon, that was attached to between the third and fourth rungs of the LM ladder. At 109:52:19 GET, the two astronauts gathered around the Eagle’s ladder and ‘unveiled’ this plaque by removing its cover. Armstrong then read the inscription aloud for everyone back on Earth.

Armstrong reading the plaque, with Aldrin beside him. You can almost see the astronauts' faces!

After this moving moment, Mr. Armstrong and Col. Aldrin removed the television camera from the MESA and set it up on a stand, so that it could view their field of operations as they went about performing the real work of their mission.

Although not listed on their procedure checklist, the astronauts' next ceremonial task was setting up a US flag, just as the polar explorers of the past have done on reaching their goals. Since the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty, established in 1967, prohibits any nation on Earth from claiming ownership of the Moon, the US Government has been very careful to state that the flag-planting is purely symbolic, recognising the United States as the first country to land on the Moon, but not representing territorial claim.

The astronauts found it difficult to insert the flagpole into the lunar surface and had trouble extending the arm designed to stretch out the flag to its full extent on the airless lunar surface. However, this worked to good effect, creating the impression that the flag was actually waving in a breeze.

Aldrin poses with the "waving" flag

When the astronauts planted the flag on the Moon's surface, an identical flag was raised in the MOCR.

As a symbolic act of international representation, a silicon disc about the size of a 50-cent piece was placed on the Moon's surface. It contains goodwill messages in the form of statements from leaders of 73 countries around the world, although the USSR and the People's Republic of China are not included.

A final symbolic event took place a little while later, at 110:16:30 GET, when President Richard Nixon made the first interplanetary phone call from the Oval Office in the White House directly to the astronauts on the Moon. Armstrong and Aldrin stood before the television camera to receive the call, so it could be telecast as a split-screen, showing both the astronauts and President Nixon in conversation. The President praised the astronauts for their historic achievement, adding “Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of Man’s world… For one priceless moment in the whole history of Man, all the people on this Earth are truly one.”

Down to Work
After the ceremonial activities, the real work of the Apollo-11 astronauts began. Aldrin conducted experiments to determine the extent of an astronaut’s mobility, attempting to run and hop like a kangaroo. He also took a core tube sample of the regolith, although he was not able to drive a core tube far into the surface.

Two more images destined to become iconic, I'm sure. Aldrin on the lunar surface, and a close-up of the impression his boot is making in the regolith!

Mr. Armstrong carried out geological observations and collected bulk samples of rock and regolith. He took a large number of photographs of the lunar surface, from close-ups of rock structures and regolith to panoramas and views of craters.

Because Armstrong was usually carrying the camera, the majority of Apollo-11 photographs of an astronaut on the lunar surface show Col. Aldrin. The picture above is one of the rare images – as distinct from television coverage or film – of Armstrong on the lunar surface.

Col. Aldrin set out the EASEP (Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package), the first set of scientific instruments to be placed on the Moon. EASEP instruments include: a seismic detector to measure Moonquake activity, a laser reflector that can be targetted from Earth to precisely measure the distance between our planet and its satellite; a solar wind particle collector; and even a tiny detector to measure the characteristics of lunar dust. Tracking stations on Earth are now collecting data from these instruments to continually monitor conditions around the landing site, even though the astronauts have departed (bringing the solar wind collector sheet back with them to Earth for analysis). 

Aldrin setting up the EASEP seismic detector

The solar wind particle collector

The lunar laser ranging experiment for making precise measurements of the distance between the Earth and the Moon

Back to the LM
After 2 hours 31 minutes and 40 seconds, Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin concluded their activities on the surface of the Moon, loading back into the LM some 47lbs of lunar rocks and regolith. They had taken 339 images of the lunar surface and their activities, and walked a total of 1100 yds, travelling a maximum of 67 yds from the LM. The extent of the Apollo-11 lunar excursions could be contained within a football field, but from this small beginning future missions will expand the range of their activities, exploring further away from the LM.


Back aboard Eagle, the astronauts’ first chore was to pressurise the cabin and begin stowing the rock boxes and film magazines. To allow for the weight of the lunar samples, the astronauts’ lunar overboots, life support backpacks, spacecraft trash, and any other gear no longer required, were jettisoned onto the Moon’s surface (proving that humans can leave litter anywhere!).


Elated but exhausted, Armstrong and Aldrin then took time to rest and get some sleep, Col. Aldrin curled up in the limited floor space of the LM, while Armstrong rigged up a sleeping place on the cover of the ascent engine. Neither of them slept well, though future lunar crews will have proper hammocks, I'm told.

After more than 21½ hours on the Moon, Mr. Armstrong and Col. Aldrin prepared their ship for lift off, firing their ascent engine just one minute behind the flight plan scheduled time at 124:22:01 GET. The blast from the engine appears to have knocked over the flagpole planted by the astronauts, but that didn’t dampen the crew’s spirits as the ascent engine worked as expected and set them on a trajectory to rendezvous with Col. Colins in Columbia! 

This article has been lengthy, but there has been so much to cover with such a historic mission. I'm going to pause at this triumphant moment in the story, and will continue with a final wrap-up later this month, when we will hopefully have even more information as the lunar samples are analysed and the Apollo-11 crew are released from isolation.




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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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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 20, 1969] Ad Astra et Infernum (June 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

To the Stars

Venus has gotten a lot of attention from Earth's superpowers.  Part of it is its tremendous similarity to our home in some ways: similar mass, similar composition, similar distance from the Sun (as such things go).  But the biggest reason why so many probes have been dispatched to the Solar System's second world (to wit: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Venera 1, Veneras 2 and 3, and Venera 4) is because it's the closest planet to Earth.  Every 19 months, Earth and Venus are aligned such that a minimum of rocket is required to send a maximum of scientific payload toward the Planet of Love.  Since 1961, every opportunity has seen missions launched from at least one side of the Pole.

This year's was no exception: on January 5 and 10, the USSR launched Venera (Venus) 5 and 6 toward the second planet, and this month (the 16th and the 18th), they arrived.

Our conception of Venus has changed radically since spaceships started probing the world.  Just read our article on the planet, written back in 1959, before the world had been analyzed with radar and close-up instruments.  Now we know that the planet's surface is the hottest place in the Solar System outside the Sun: perhaps 980 degrees Fahrenheit!  The largely carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere crushes the ground at up to 100 atmospheres of pressure.  The planet rotates very slowly backward, but there is virtually no difference between temperatures on the day and night sides due to the thick atmosphere.  There is no appreciable magnetic field (probably because the planet spins so slowly) so no equivalent to our Van Allen Belts or aurorae.

This is all information returned from outside the Venusian atmosphere.  Inference.  To get the full dope, one has to plunge through the air.  Venera 4 did that, returning lower temperatures and air pressures.  This was curious, but it makes sense if you don't believe the Soviet claim that the probe's instruments worked all the way to the ground—a dubious assertion given the incredibly hostile environment.  No, Venera 4 probably stopped working long before it touched down.

The same may be true of Veneras 5 and 6.  TASS has not released data yet, but while the two probes were successfully delivered onto Venus' surface, we have no way of knowing that they returned telemetry all the way down.  Indeed, the Soviet reports are rather terse and highlight the delivery of medals and a portrait of Lenin to Venus, eschewing any mention of soft landing.  The news does spend a lot of time talking about solar wind measurements on the way to Venus—useful information, to be sure, but beside the point.


The Venera spacecraft and lander capsule

Anyway, at the very least, we can probably hope to get some clarity on what goes on in the Venusian air.  It may have to wait until next time before we learn just what's happening on the ground, however.

To Hell

I bitched last month about the lousy issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Well, I am happy to say that the May issue is more than redeemed by this June 1969 issue, which, if not stellar throughout, has sufficient high points to impress and delight.


by Gray Morrow

Sundance, Robert Silverberg

Silverbob has a knack for poetic, evocative writing as well as rich settings.  He has successfully made the transition from '50s hack SF author to New Wave vanguard.  Which is why this rather forgettable tale is all the more disappointing.

It's about a Sioux spaceman named Tom Two Ribbons who is part of a terraforming contingent on a virgin planet.  Except what his compatriots call terraforming, he calls genocide, for the millions of indigenous Eaters that they are clearing out to make room for farms are, he claims, intelligent.  To prove his point, he goes out among the aliens, dancing their way and his way, hoping to avert catastrophe. 

But is any of it real?  Or is it all a figment of his traumatized mind?

I just found it all a bit hollow and affected, and also confusing.  Not bad, but nowhere near Silverbob's best.

Three stars.

Pull Devil, Pull Baker!, Michael Harrison

A Jewish dentist finds himself implacably hostile to an Aryan patient, and, to his dismay, finds himself wanting to cause him pain in the examination chair.  Turns out the two have a history that goes back centuries to another life, when the drill was in the other hand, so to speak.

So unfolds an age-crossing riddle, at the end of which lies a treasure of untold riches, if only it can be deciphered.

I dug this one.  Maybe I'm biased.  Four stars.

The Landlocked Indian Ocean, L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp offers himself up as a sort of half-rate Willy Ley, explaining why, for so long, the Indian Ocean was conceived of as a big lake rather than part of the world sea.  There's a lot of good information here, but it's not quite as compellingly presented as it could be.

Three stars.

A Short and Happy Life, Joanna Russ

Here's a great little prose-poem on ingenuity involving a barometer.  Good stuff.  Four stars.

A Run of Deuces, Jack Wodhams

Aboard a superluminary cruise ship, the bored passengers come up with a betting pool to relieve their ennui: the winner of the pot is whomever guesses at what distance from their destination the ship will pop out of hyperspace.

A lot of sex.  A lot of languour.  A predictable ending.  A low three (or a high two, if you're not in a good mood).

Operation Changeling (Part 2 of 2), Poul Anderson

Last month, we were (re-)introduced to the Matuchek family: Steve the werewolf, Virginia the combat wizard, Valeria the moppet, and Svartalf the familiar.  When Valeria was kidnapped by the agents of Hell, it was only a matter of time before her parents (and their cat!) would have to penetrate the perverse underworld to retrieve her.

Enlisting the aid of a pair of dead mathematical geniuses, in this installment, the trio warps into the infernal dimension, where they must face off against hordes of demons, baffling spatial topography, and the most evil of beings humanity has ever known.

There is good Anderson, there is boring Anderson, and there is middlin' Anderson.  This story is firmly in the "good" camp, with vivid descriptions, engaging (and often funny) characters, and the sort of light, fantastic adventure we haven't seen from Anderson since Three Hearts and Three Lions.  Poul does somber, dour, very well, so I think it's more work for him to keep things light—even as our heroes are arrayed against the forces of darkness!  It's never frivolous, but there's a fey quality that keeps things on the right side of horrific.

And that episode in Hell!  I've never read the like.  My only regret is that it's not longer, with a little more time for the Matuchek squad to come up with their novel solutions so that the reader can better follow along.  Perhaps it'll get expanded into a full length book at some point.  I hope so!

Four stars for this installment and the book as a whole.

The Fateful Lightning, Isaac Asimov

A boffo piece on the discovery of electricity.  It's good, although I found the explanation of how lightning rods actually work somewhat incomplete.

Four stars.

Repeat Business, Jon Lucas

A mom-and-pop boat charter take on a quartet of "travel agents" who are obviously (to the reader, at least) a bunch of aliens.  The E-Ts are sussing out the charterers and their sailing vessel to see if they might be a hit back home on Sirius or Spica or wherever they're from.

It's not a badly written tale, but it's so obvious, and the protagonists so clueless, that it feels sub-par.  Maybe this would have passed muster a couple of decades ago.  Now it's old hat.

Two stars.

Back to Earth

And there you have it: big news in the skies and in the SFnal pages of F&SF.  There's really no unpleasant reading at all in this month's mag, even if it isn't all novel or cutting edge, and the Anderson really ends with a bang—or a flash of brimstone, perhaps.  Combined with the exciting space news, and the recent launch of Apollo 10 (article to come!) I am really feeling over the Moon.

If you read this month's issue, and watch the ongoing Apollo coverage, I'm sure you will be, too!




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Science / Space Race

[March 16, 1969] Flight of the Space Spider (Apollo 9)

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by Kaye Dee

Riding on Apollo's Coat-tails
The Traveller recently referred to President Nixon’s 8-day European tour, but it would seem Mr. Nixon deliberately decided to pave the way by riding on the coat-tails of the general international applause accorded to the historic Apollo-8 mission. Shortly before he announced his own trip to Europe, the President personally dispatched Apollo-8 commander Colonel Frank Borman and his family on an eight-nation European goodwill tour. (The other Apollo-8 crewmembers, already in training as part of the Apollo-11 backup crew, were not available to participate in the tour.)


Departing on 2 February, Col. Borman, his wife Susan, and two sons undertook a 19-day tour, visiting the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, West Germany (including West Berlin), Italy (including Vatican City), and Spain (like Australia, home to an Apollo Manned Space Flight Network station and a Deep Space Network facility): an itinerary very closely paralleling that later followed by President Nixon!

The Borman family meets the Royal Family and Col. Borman presents a picture of the Moon to the Pope during his goodwill tour of Europe

Col. Borman said that he was particularly gratified to make the journey because of a conviction that space efforts “can be a very positive force for creating better relations among the people of the world”.

A Long-Delayed Mission
But while Colonel Borman was embarking on his diplomatic mission, the crew of the long-delayed first test flight of the Lunar Module (LM) in Earth orbit were in the final stages of preparations for the Apollo-9 mission, which splashed down just a few days ago with all its objectives successfully completed. Intended to be Apollo-8, the mission was bumped later in the sequence due to a succession of technical delays in the development of the LM, the first manned spacecraft designed solely for operations in space.


Apollo-9’s main task was to qualify the LM for manned lunar flight, demonstrating that the craft could perform all the necessary manoeuvres required for a landing on the Moon. The flight was therefore intended to be very much a mission of “firsts” that would finally fully test-out the entire suite of hardware needed to accomplish a Moon landing mission. It would see the first flight of the complete Apollo Saturn vehicle – Saturn V launcher (AS-504 for this mission), Command Service Module (CSM-104) and Lunar Module (LM-3) – as well as the first docking and extraction of a LM from the Saturn S-IVB stage.


 
Putting the LM through its paces would involve the first flight tests of its upper and lower stages, with the first firings of their engines in space, and include the first rendezvous and docking between with the CSM and LM. The mission would also undertake the first spacewalk of the Apollo programme, to test the reliability of the Apollo A-7L space suit and the Portable Life Support System (PLSS) backpack, essential for lunar surface operations.

The Crew Who Waited
Original 1966 crew photo of Astronauts Scott, McDivitt and Schweickart. Their training for the flight that eventually became Apollo-9 commenced in January 1967, even before the Apollo-1 fire

Probably the best prepared mission crew to date, the Apollo-9 crew originally came together in January 1966, as the back-ups for Apollo-1, before being assigned as the first crew to fly the LM. Their 1,800 hours of mission-specific training was equivalent to about seven hours for every hour of their eventual flight!

With so much riding on a successful LM test flight, Apollo-9’s crew comprised two veteran Gemini astronauts and one rookie. Mission Commander Air Force Col. James McDivitt previously commanded the Gemini-IV mission, during which the first US EVA was conducted. Command Module Pilot Lt.-Col. David Scott, also with the US Air Force, was Pilot of Gemini-VIII, its flight cut short by the first US in-flight space emergency, but for which he undertook considerable EVA training.

Finally Go for launch! Astronauts McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart in their official Apollo-9 pre-flight crew portrait

The new kid on the block for Apollo-9 was LM Pilot Mr. Russell Schweickart, originally selected in the third group of astronauts in 1963. An experienced fighter pilot, serving with the U.S. Air Force and the Massachusetts Air National Guard between 1956 and 1963, Mr. Schweickart joined NASA as a civilian, from a position as a research scientist at the Experimental Astronomy Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Mr. Schweickart is nicknamed “Rusty” for his red hair (but in Australia, with our sense of humour, we’d have called him “Bluey”!).

Introducing Gumdrop and Spider
Because Apollo-9 would have two spacecraft from the same mission operating independently for the first time (unlike the Gemini VI-VII rendezvous, in which the two spacecraft were separate missions with their own callsigns), they each required separate callsigns for easy communications identification. NASA Administrators therefore finally lifted the ban on spacecraft names, which has been in operation since the beginning of the Gemini programme, permitting the crew to select their own names for the CM and LM.

The Apollo-9 CSM and LM being prepared for launch at Kennedy Space Centre

The astronauts chose “Gumdrop” for the CM, based on the shape of the capsule, which resembles the popular sweet, and “Spider” for the LM, given the spider-like appearance of the lander, with its four spindly legs. Unfortunately, it seems that certain NASA officials were not happy with these choices, feeling they were not dignified enough, so I hope they will not place restrictions on the names that can be selected for future missions, or force the crews to revert to dull numerical callsigns.

Patching Up
North American Rockwell artist Allen Stevens seems to be quite a favourite with the Apollo astronauts as a mission patch designer. He has designed the patches for Apollo-1, 7 and Apollo-9, and seems to have had a strong influence on the design of the Apollo-8 patch.

Stevens’ Apollo-9 patch evolved from a design he originally developed when Apollo-9 was still anticipated to be Apollo-8. The relatively simple concept depicts all the vehicle elements of the Apollo mission – the Saturn V in launch configuration, with the CSM and the LM flying separately as they would do during orbital test manoeuvres. In the final version of the design they appear against a mottled blue background that could represent either the Earth’s oceans or orbital space. Rather than show the CSM and LM docked together in orbit, as we often see them in NASA illustrations, Stevens chose to depict them in their on orbit ‘station-keeping’ positions, with the CSAM and LM facing each other, although this does give the impression that the CM is attempting to dock with the front of the LM!

Completing the design, the names of the crew and mission circle just inside the red-bordered edge of the patch, with the “D” in McDivitt’s name also filled in red. This is a nod to Apollo-9 being originally designated as the “D” mission in the sequence of Apollo flights prior to the Moon landing.

A Busy Moonport
Due to the long delay with the LM, preparations for Apollo-9 initially overlapped those of Apollo-7 and 8. By February, while the astronauts were spending long hours in mission simulators preparing for their flight, Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) was a hive of activity with Apollo-9 in the final stages of pre-launch testing, and advance preparations for Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 also underway (Apollo 10 is currently due for launch in May and Apollo 11 in July).  

In addition to Apollo-9’s launch preparations, the Apollo 10 spacecraft was moved from the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (MSOB) to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for mating with its Saturn V launcher (above left); the first and second stages for the Apollo 11 Saturn V arrived, with the stacking of that launcher commencing in the VAB (above right); and the upper and lower stages of the Apollo 11 LM were also mated in the MSOB, in preparation for testing in the altitude chamber. NASA is really moving at a cracking pace to achieve a manned lunar landing this year!

An Unexpected Delay
The countdown for Apollo-9 commenced on 26 February, for a planned launch on the 28th. But fate stepped in to delay the crew’s trip to space just a bit longer! Ironically, despite their years of training for this mission, the astronauts pushed themselves so hard in their final weeks that, as launch day approached, they developed cold-like symptoms such as sore throats and nasal congestion.

Apollo-9's LM crew, McDivitt and Schweickart, training in the Lunar Module simualator

For NASA’s most complex manned mission to date, senior managers and flight surgeons wanted the crew to be in the best possible health for the 10-day flight. (They were probably also mindful of preventing a recurrence of the issues with the Apollo-7 crew, due to in-flight health problems). Consequently, the launch was rescheduled to 3 March to give the astronauts time to recover.

Finally on their Way!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once KSC medical director Dr Charles Berry finally cleared the crew for launch, Apollo-9 left the pad exactly on time at 16:00GMT on 3 March. Hopefully the smooth launch impressed Vice President Spiro Agnew (on right in the picture below), who was present in the Launch Control Centre in his new role as Head of the National Space Council, especially as President Nixon has asked his science adviser, Dr Lee Dubridge, to report on possible cost reductions within the US space programme.

To maximize the chances of accomplishing them, in case any problems forced an early return to Earth, the most critical mission tasks were scheduled for the first five days of the flight. So once the Saturn rocket’s S-IVB third stage and the CSM were safely in orbit, things moved quickly. During the second orbit, CM Pilot Scott turned the CSM and successfully docked with the Lunar Module, nestled in the Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter of the S-IVB stage. The linked spacecraft were ejected from the S-IVB, which was then remotely controlled to simulate Trans-Lunar Injection and eventually be sent into a solar orbit.

Demonstrating that the “probe and drogue” CM-LM docking assembly worked properly is another crucial step towards enabling the future Moon landing. If this system didn’t work, a lunar landing would not be possible.

Once the probe is inserted in the drogue it retracts and pulls the two spacecraft together so that a series of twelve latches locks them tight.

Burning Along
Six hours into the mission, the next task was to establish that the docked CSM-LM could be manoeuvred using the Service Module’s Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine. A five-second burn placed the CSM in an orbit of 125 by 145 miles, to improve its orbital lifetime. This short firing demonstrated the CSM guidance and navigation system’s ability to control the burn and showed that the LM’s relatively light structure could withstand thrust, acceleration and vibration.

Following the first sleep period on an Apollo mission during which all three astronauts slept at the same time, Apollo-9’s second day focussed on putting the SPS engine, and the CSM, to the test, through a series of three burns. The first burn, lasting 110 seconds, raised Apollo 9’s orbit to 213 miles and tested the structural dynamics of the docked spacecraft under conditions simulating a lunar mission. This involved gimballing (swivelling) the SPS engine to determine whether the spacecraft’s guidance and navigation autopilot could dampen the induced oscillations. The CSM remained very stable, with the oscillations damped within just five seconds.

Apollo spacecraft diagram key. CSM (right) and LM (launch configuration) docked. I – Lunar module descent stage; II – Lunar module ascent stage; III – Command module; IV – Service module. 1 LM descent engine skirt; 2 LM landing gear; 3 LM ladder; 4 Egress platform ("porch"); 5 Forward hatch; 6 LM reaction control system quad; 7 S-band inflight antenna (2); 8 Rendezvous radar antenna; 9 S-band steerable antenna; 10 Command Module crew compartment; 11 Electrical power system radiators; 12 SM reaction control system quad; 13 Environmental control system radiator; 14 S-band steerable antenna

The second SPS burn lasted 280 seconds, changing the orbit to 126 by 313 miles, while the short third burn, just 28.2 seconds, changed the plane of the spacecraft’s orbit. These orbital changes were designed to position Apollo-9 for better ground tracking and lighting conditions during upcoming mission activities.

Space Sickness Strikes
Entering the LM and checking out its systems was scheduled for flight day three, but planned operations were initially disrupted when space sickness reared its head. Flight surgeons still know little about this condition, which seems to affect some astronauts but not others, and some more than others.

A view inside Command Module Gumdrop

Both Col. McDivitt and Mr. Schweickart were affected, with McDivitt apparently experiencing some mild nausea. Mr. Schweickart, however, vomited in the CM and again later in the LM. When Col. McDivitt contacted the flight surgeons from the LM to report the medical situation, they were less than happy that the earlier incident had not been initially reported, as they could have treated Schweickart’s symptoms sooner.

Opening Up the LM
Although the initial bout of space sickness delayed the start of operations to clear the docking tunnel and access the LM, the astronauts were able to continue with the day’s activities, and both Commander and LM Pilot used the docking tunnel to make the first ever transfer between manned spacecraft without needing to spacewalk. With Lt.-Col. Scott remaining in the CM, and hatches between the Gumdrop and Spider closed, the LM’s communications and life support systems demonstrated that they were operating independently from the CM. Schweickart also deployed Spider’s landing legs (which had been folded for launch) into the position they would assume for landing on the Moon, giving the LM the appearance of its namesake!


A Jumping Spider!
During the nine hours they inhabited Spider, still docked to the CSM, Col. McDivitt and Mr. Schweickart conducted a major test of the Lunar Module’s descent engine, firing it for 367 seconds to simulate the pattern of throttling planned for a descent to the lunar surface. For the final 59 seconds of the burn McDivitt controlled the throttling, varying the thrust from 10 to 40 percent and shutting it off manually, marking the first manual throttling of an engine in space.

This burn, which demonstrated that the LM descent engine could manoeuvre the combined LM-CSM stack, was followed by an additional SPS firing after the LM crew returned to the CM. Together, these burns placed Apollo 9 into an orbit of 142 by 149 miles, ahead of the rendezvous exercises to be performed on day five.

Red Rover (Doesn’t Quite) Cross Over
The step-by-step testing program for Apollo-9 earmarked the fourth day of the mission for a spacewalk to test the reliability of the Apollo EVA suit and the PLSS backpack, necessary because it would be impractical and dangerous for astronauts to move across the Moon’s surface trailing umbilical lines connected to the LM. As the only EVA scheduled before the Moon landing, it was the single opportunity to test the PLSS operationally in space.

Astronaut Schweickart training for his planned EVA

Using the call sign “Red Rover”, “Rusty” Schweickart was originally scheduled to perform a two-hour EVA to simulate a space rescue technique in the event that a CM-LM docking could not be made, crossing from Spider to Gumdrop. This would have involved him exiting the hatch on the LM and making his way along the outside of the spacecraft to the CM hatch, where Lt.-Col. Scott would be standing by to assist access to the CM. However, the LM Pilot’s bout of space sickness led Col. McDivitt to initially cancel the EVA, due to the flight surgeons’ concerns about the dangers of vomiting in a spacesuit. This also meant the cancellation of a planned TV broadcast of the spacewalk itself, which would have been another first.

Wearing Golden Slippers
But with Mr. Schweickart feeling somewhat better by day four, a modified short EVA was substituted to enable the EVA equipment test to be carried out. After McDivitt and Schweickart again transferred to Spider, Mr. Schweickert climbed out onto the LM porch for a 37.5-minute EVA, exclaiming “Hey, this is like spectacular” as he stood in the void. For much of this time, the astronaut’s feet were held in gold-coloured restraints, nicknamed the “Golden Slippers”, but he was also able to move around the LM’s exterior using handholds to retrieve some experiments.

At the same time, David Scott, wearing a bright red helmet, made a stand-up EVA in Gumdrop’s hatch and both astronauts photographed each. Scott, too, retrieved experiments from outside the CM. Mr. Schweickart has said that he found moving around easier than it had been in simulations and was confident that he could have completed the spacewalk to the CM had it gone ahead.

The Spider Takes Flight

The key event in Apollo -9’s programme was the undocking and rendezvous tests scheduled for the fifth day of the mission. These manoeuvres would simulate all the activities required for a successful lunar landing and return to lunar orbit. With McDivitt and Schweickart in Spider, and Scott remaining in Gumdrop, the two craft undocked to commence a complex set of manoeuvres and burns of both the LM descent and ascent engines. These tests also carried a new element of danger. The Lunar Module has no ability to return to Earth on its own, since it lacks a heatshield: if something went seriously wrong its crew could end up stranded in space with no way home.

After 45 minutes separated but station keeping, an initial 24.9-second LM descent engine burn placed Spider into a 137 by 167 mile orbit; a second 24.4-second firing circularized the orbit around 154 by 160 miles, approximately 12 miles higher than Gumdrop. Over the next four hours, McDivitt fired the LM’s descent engine at several throttle settings, before lowering Spider’s orbit to begin a two-hour ‘chase’ to catch-up with Gumdrop. The LM descent stage was then jettisoned, and the ascent stage engine fired for the first time, lowering the LM’s orbit still further and placing Spider 75 miles behind and 10 miles below Gumdrop for the rendezvous manoeuvre.

Although it is planned that in future Moon missions, the Command Module pilot will conduct the rendezvous with a returning LM, for Apollo-9 Spider carried out the rendezvous, to demonstrate that the manoeuvre could be performed by either craft. Apart from this difference, the approach and rendezvous hewed as closely as possible to the current plans for lunar missions. Mission Commander McDivitt flew the LM close to Gumdrop, manoeuvring Spider so that CM Pilot Scott could see each side of the vehicle and inspect it for any damage. As he photographed the ascent stage, Scott joked “You’re the biggest, friendliest, funniest looking Spider I’ve ever seen.”

McDivitt then docked to the CM, guided by Scott, as Sun glare was interfering with his vision. Once Spider’s crew returned to Gumdrop, the ascent stage was jettisoned and remotely commanded to fire its engine to fuel depletion, simulating an ascent stage’s climb from the lunar surface. With the approach and rendezvous operation complete, the only major LM system that had not been fully tested during Apollo-9 was the lunar landing radar.

A Bit Camera Shy
Unlike the previous two missions, Apollo 9’s packed programme restricted the television broadcasts made by the astronauts. Spider was equipped with a Westinghouse b/w Lunar Surface Lunar TV Camera, identical to the one taken to be carried to the Moon’s surface on the first landing, as another equipment trial. This low-light “slow scan” camera produced a 320 line, 10 frames per second non-interlaced picture.

Only two broadcasts were from Spider. The first, seven minutes’ long, occurred on day three and showed Mr. Schweickart and Col. McDivitt working in the confined space of the LM. The second broadcast occurred shortly after the end of the EVA on the fourth day, with Spider’s crew still wearing their spacesuits.

The quality of this 15-minute transmission was much better than the previous day, and the crew treated viewers to a scene of Col. McDivitt eating. The camera was then pointed out the LM’s top window to show Gumdrop, then through one of the forward windows to glimpse one of Spider’s attitude control thruster quads and a landing leg. Finally, the view switched back into the cabin to show the LM’s instrument panel and a radiation detector. Once the LM ascent stage was jettisoned, on day five, there were no further broadcasts as the CM did not carry a television camera.

Cruisin' in Orbit
Once the crowded test schedule of the first five days was complete, the second five days of Apollo-9’s flight, intended to test the endurance of the CSM for the total length of a Moon landing mission, were quiet and relaxed by comparison.

Col. McDivitt thanked the Mission Control team for their work during the hectic first half of the mission and jokingly mused: “Might give you the impression that it might work, huh?” The crew sang a belated “Happy Birthdays” to Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., Director of Flight Operations at the Manned Spacecraft Centre, and Apollo 9 crew secretary Charlotte Maltese.

There were additional SPS burns on days six and eight to change the spacecraft’s orbit, with no major activities scheduled for the ninth day, although the astronauts made observations of the Pegasus 3 satellite, passing within 1,000 miles and 700 miles of Apollo 9 during two successive orbits. They also observed the LM ascent stage from about 700 miles away.

Observing the Earth
The main activity of the second half of the Apollo-9’s flight was the mission’s only formal scientific investigation, a programme of multi-spectral terrain photography, using four Hasselblad 70 mm cameras pointed out the CM’s round hatch window. This allowed photographs to be taken in four specific wavelengths of the visible and near infrared spectrum simultaneously.

Multi-spectral images. The same view of San Diego and parts of California in four different wavelengths

This experiment was designed to determine whether multi-spectral photography can be effectively utilised for earth resources programmes such as agriculture, forestry, geology, oceanography, hydrology, and geography. The results will help to refine the instruments for the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS), due for launch in 1972, Landsat, and techniques for multi-spectral photography to be conducted aboard the Skylab space station in the early 1970s.

Altogether 127 complete four-frame sets of photographs were taken over California, Texas, other areas of the southern United States, Mexico, the Caribbean and the Cape Verde Islands. Astronauts also took more than 1,100 standard Earth observation photographs of targets around the world, using colour and colour infrared film and a handheld Hasselblad camera.

Apollo-9 astronauts' colour photograph of the North Carolina coast and a colour infra-red view of California's Salton Sea

Coming Home
Apollo -9 returned to Earth on 13 March (the 14th for us here in Australia), the tenth day of the mission. Re-entry was delayed by one revolution due to heavy seas in the primary recovery area, but Gumdrop splashed down safely in the Atlantic, within three miles of the recovery ship, the USS Guadalcanal, after a mission totalling 241 hours, 53 seconds – just 10 seconds longer than planned!

On board the recovery ship, the crew were treated to a share of a 350-pound cake baked in their honour. Now safely back in Houston for their flight debriefings, NASA’s attention – and the world’s – is already turning to Apollo-10, due to fly in May to test the LM around the Moon!

Ready for the Next Steps
While Apollo-9 might not have seemed as exciting a mission as Apollo-8’s epic lunar voyage, it was critical because it has simulated in Earth orbit, as far as possible, many of the conditions that the astronauts and their equipment will face when the lunar landing attempt is made. Beyond that first landing and its successors, there is the Apollo Applications Programme, and other developments such as the Skylab manned earth orbiting workshop. Everything that has been learned in space with Apollo-9 will be useful sooner or later in future space activities!

And you can bet we'll be covering each and every one of them here on the Journey…

Apollo-9 view of the Moon

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Science / Space Race

[February 16, 1969] Triumph, Tough Luck and Turmoil (European Space Update)

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by Kaye Dee

The accelerating pace of the US and Soviet space programmes over the past few months has drawn our attention away from space developments in other parts of the world, especially with the excitement of the historic Apollo 8 lunar mission so recently behind us and Apollo 9’s in-orbit test flight (finally!) of the Lunar Module next month. But there have been many developments on the European space scene since I wrote about it in May last year, so I think it’s time for an update!

Triumph: ESRO 1A Finally in Orbit
My previous European space report noted that the European Space Research Organisation’s (ESRO) first satellite, ESRO 2B, reached orbit ahead of ESRO 1A, the latter satellite delayed due to difficulties in the development of its instrumentation payload. But ESRO 1A was finally launched on 3 October 1968 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, using a Scout launch vehicle.

ESRO 1A mounted on its Scout vehicle ahead of its launch at Vandenberg AFB

Fired into a 90° polar orbit, with an initial apogee of 930 miles and a perigee of 171 miles, ESRO 1A is designed for a nominal lifetime of six months. However, it is already looking likely that the satellite will survive much longer and possibly still be in orbit when its follow-up twin ESRO 1B is launched later this year (presently planned for some time in October).

The ESRO1 missions were first outlined in 1963 at scientific meetings of COPERS (Commission Préparatoire Européenne de Recherche Spatiale, which is the French name for the European Preparatory Commission for Space Research, a predecessor of ESRO), but the programme has been developed as a joint venture between NASA and ESRO. NASA provided the Scout vehicle for ESRO 1A, although ESRO will purchase the Scout launcher for the ESRO 1B flight.

Designed by ESRO, the construction of both ESRO 1 satellites is all-European: Laboratoire Central de Telecommunications (Paris) is the prime contractor, with assistance from Contraves AG (Zurich), and Antwerp-based Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company, with final testing taking place at ESRO’s ESTEC facility. Weighing about 187 pounds, the cylindrical, non-stabilised ESRO 1 satellites are 30 inches in diameter and 36.6 inches tall (specifically designed to fit within the Scout vehicle fairing) and powered by solar-cells.

ESRO 1A (‘Aurora’) and ESRO 1B (‘Boreas’) have been designed to study how the auroral zones respond to geomagnetic and solar activity. Their payloads are directly derived from earlier sounding rocket experiments measuring the radiation characteristics of the upper atmosphere. In orbit, the satellites’ axis of symmetry is magnetically aligned along the Earth's magnetic field. They can make direct measurements as high-energy charged particles from the Sun and deep space plunge from the outer magnetosphere into the atmosphere (ESRO 1B will be placed in a lower orbit that 1A to provide comparative data at different altitudes). The satellites can also investigate the fine structure of the aurora borealis and correlate studies on auroral particles, auroral luminosity, ionospheric composition, and heating effects.

ESRO 1A carries seven scientific experiments chosen to measure a comprehensive range of auroral effects. Identical or similar experiments will be carried on ESRO 1B.

Tough Luck: Another ELDO Launch Failure…
Unfortunately, the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) has yet to taste the same success as ESRO, with repeated failures in its Europa satellite launcher test flights, which I've covered in detail in previous articles.

Despite the loss of both Europa F6/1 and F6/2 due to failures of the French ‘Coralie’ second stage, the Europa F7 flight was scheduled for a November launch last year, as the first vehicle to fly with all three of the rocket’s stages active. This eighth firing in the ELDO test programme marked the beginning of Phase 3 of the Europa test flights. It would be the first attempt to launch ELDO’s Italian-built STV (Satellite Test Vehicle) satellite into orbit, as well as the first time that the ELDO down-range guidance and tracking station at Gove in the remote Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory (primarily developed by Belgium) would actively participate in a Europa launch.

View of the ELDO downrange tracking station, near Gove in the Northern Territory. The area is also known by its Aboriginal name of Nhulunbuy

The failure of the Coralie stage to separate during the F6/2 launch, due to an electrical fault, meant that modifications had to be made to prevent a recurrence of the issue. So there was plenty of tension (and frustration) in the air when last-second delays halted two attempts to launch F7 on 25 November. Both aborts occurred just 35 seconds before the rocket was due to lift off, and were caused by the discovery of a fault in the Coralie staging system between the first and second stages – nobody wanted a repeat of F6/2!

A Coralie second stage engine being checked out at Woomera prior to stacking the Europa vehicle for launch

A launch attempt on 27 November was cancelled due to another fault, as was a fourth attempt on the 28th, which was caused by a faulty indication in a pressure switch system in the engines of the British Blue Streak first stage.

Finally, on the fifth attempt, Europa F7 lifted off on 30 November (Australian time; still 29 November in Europe), but this flight, too, was doomed to be short-lived. The second stage separated and functioned perfectly: this time it was the West German ‘Astris’ third stage that caused the failure.

The Astris stage separated and ignited as expected but burned for just seven seconds (instead of the planned 300 seconds) before it exploded. Investigations as to the cause of the failure are ongoing, but at present there are three possible causes under consideration: rigid pressurisation pipes that may have fractured; an explosive bolt, part of the WREBUS flight safety destruct system, that may have been inadvertently been triggered by a stray electrical current; or a rupture of the tank diaphragm in the third stage, which separates the fuel and oxidiser. The diaphragm may have been weakened during pre-flight preparations. At present we can only await the outcome of the investigations and hope that they do not delay the launch of Europa F8, currently scheduled for June or July this year.

…And a Satellite Lost
While it was not the main objective of the F7 flight, it is particularly disappointing that the Italian test satellite did not reach orbit, as it would have become the second satellite launched from Woomera, exactly one year after Australia’s own WRESAT.

The first flight-ready STV satellite being checked out following its arrival at Woomera

The octagonal prism-shaped STV satellites (successors will be flown on Europa F8 and F9) have been built for ELDO by Fiat Aviazione. The 472 pound satellite carries instruments to characterise the launch environment of the Europa vehicle, providing information on the conditions and stresses that future satellites launched on Europa vehicles will need to be capable of surviving.

Despite the loss of both the rocket and the satellite, ELDO has been referring to Europa F7 as a “successful trial”, as it has enabled its engineers to acquire data about the performance of the Coralie second stage in flight and came close to placing a satellite into orbit. ELDO representatives are saying that, the Europa vehicle has “emerged for the first time as a practical proposition.”

Turmoil: the State of European Space Policy
Last May, I asked whether Britain had lost its way in space, and whether European space plans would flourish or wither, due to changing views on the future direction of Europe’s space activities and reductions in funding. Since then, the outlook has become even more uncertain, with disagreements over juste retour project work allocations and the ELDO budget creating turmoil.

In November last year, Ministers, space organisation representatives and space experts from 16 European countries, as well as Australia and Canada, met for the third European Space Conference, held in Bonn, West Germany. At this meeting, a proposal was put forward to merge ELDO and ESRO to form a pan-European space authority by early 1970, which would be known as the European Space Agency.

This idea proved popular with many of the attending nations, but less so with Britain, which expressed the view that it was unlikely that Europe could launch satellites economically. As noted last year, Britain has already announced its intention to withdraw from ELDO, although it has committed to continue supplying Blue Streak first stages for the Europa II vehicle.

However, the British Government has offered to back a revised European space programme designed to yield “practical results”. Britain wants Europe to concentrate on developing applications satellites for weather forecasting, telecommunications, and scientific research, giving up the development of independent European launchers in favour of using American vehicles.

The British proposal includes an offer to contribute to a project for an “information transfer satellite” to be completed by 1975, providing a point-to-point television relay service between London and Paris for the European Broadcasting Union. In addition, Britain would participate in a long-term applied research programme to improve European industrial space capability, in conjunction with funding an immediate economic study of the market for applications satellites. The quid-pro-quo for British support for this ambitious “practical space programme” is that the UK must be released from its present financial commitment to ELDO. This is certainly ironic, given that Britain was the driving force behind the original creation of ELDO!

ELDO's Budget Crisis
After the failure of Europa F7, the ELDO Council met on 19-20 December to vote on the organisation’s 1969 budget, with Britain again the fly in the ointment, declaring that it would not support the new “austerity plan” compromise budget proposed by West Germany to cover the final two years of the Europa-1 development programme.

Using a loophole in the ELDO Convention to characterise the German proposal as a “further programme” (ie: it was not part of the original ELDO programme that it had signed up to), Britain declared that it had “no interest” in the plan and so was not obliged to contribute to it financially. It would only support the 1969 budget if its outstanding contribution to ELDO was reduced to £10 million for the years 1969, 1970 and 1971.

Italy took a similar line, supporting the British view and declaring itself “not interested”, and would not vote for the 1969 budget. In addition, Italy formally rejected as inadequate an offer to become the prime contractor of the apogee motor in the Symphonie communications satellite programme.

This recalcitrance on the part of Britain and Italy has plunged ELDO into a budget crisis, and the organisation has been operating on a contingency funding basis since 31 December. Practical considerations, and the terms of the ELDO Convention, indicate that the impasse needs to be resolved within three months, at which point a budget must be approved or the original treaty becomes invalid.

An excerpt from the journal Nature, reporting on ELDO's budget crisis

A meeting of the relevant Ministers from all seven ELDO member states is currently scheduled for 26 February to seek a political solution to the problem and find a way forward for Europe’s space ambitions before they fragment. What’s that Chinese proverb? “May you live in interesting times”!

An Australian Postscript: No WRESAT-2
In my article on the launch of Australia’s first satellite at the end of November 1967, I mentioned that the Weapons Research Establishment was planning to put a proposal to the Australian Government for the establishment of an Australian space programme, managed by the WRE. This proposal went to the Cabinet for consideration last year, but was rejected by the Government on the basis of cost, despite the modest budget it was proposing. This is not the first proposal for an Australian space programme that has been rejected by Cabinet, which seems to have little appetite for funding Australian civil space projects. To the frustration of all those involved, it looks like WRESAT-1 will not, after all, be followed by WRESAT-2.

Signing off
Well, in the vernacular of your beloved Walter Cronkite, "That's the way it is." I'm sorry I haven't happier news to report just yet, but you'll hear it here first when I have it!

(And my thanks to my Uncle Ernie, the philatelic collector, for providing the selection of space covers (envelopes) that I have used to illustrate this article.)

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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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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 22, 1968] What wonders await? (January 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Where'd you get those peepers?

Few things excite the imagination more than adventures in space.  In particular, we love to hear about doings in the cosmos that can't be done on Earth.  And one of the main things we can't do on Earth is see the sky.

Oh sure, when you look out at the starry night, you think you're witnessing infinity.  In fact, your eyes barely apprehend a tiny fraction of the electro-magnetic spectrum.  We are blind to radio waves, to ultra violet, to X-rays, to infrared.  Our sophisticated telescopes are similarly handicapped.  Even the mighty 200 inch telescope on Mount Palomar can't see in most of light's wavelengths, for they are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere.  In the X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, and cosmic ray bands, the glass seeing-eye tubes are as sightless as we are.

Which is why the launch of the Orbiting Astronomy Observatory (OAO) on December 7, 1968, was such an exciting event.  Dubbed "Stargazer", it is the very first space telescope.

Well, technically, it's the second.  The first one went up on April 8, 1966, but its power supply short circuited shortly after launch, and it never returned any data.  This is a shame, as there were some nifty experiments on board, including a gamma ray experiment similar to the one carried on Explorer 11, another gamma ray counter supplied by NASA's Goddard center, and a Lockheed-made X-ray counter.  But, the main experiment, a set of seven telescopes designed to look in the ultraviolet spectrum, provided by the University of Wisconsin, was duplicated for OAO-2.

This telescope cluster will be used for long-term observation of individual stars, something that only recently became possible with the perfection of star tracking technology.  In addition, the Smithsonian has provided an additional package of four telescopes for the investigation of large masses of stars, up to 700 per day, to get an overall UV map of the sky.

Think of how revolutionary it was when the first radio observatories began mapping the heavens.  We learned about the existence of quasars and weird storms on Jupiter and also a lot more about the stars we had been observing visually for centuries.  Stargazer is about to give us a whole new view of the universe.

That's exciting—truly science fiction made fact!

Jeepers Creepers

While we wait to see what excitement OAO 2 returns from the heavens, let's turn to the latest F&SF to see what terrestrial treasures await us this month.


by Gahan Wilson

A Meeting of Minds, by Anne McCaffrey

We return to the world of "The Lady in the Tower", one of my favorite McCaffrey stories, for the lead story this issue.

Damia, the daughter of that first story's protagonist, is 20 and humanity's strongest telepath.  As tempestuous as she is beautiful and brilliant, she has refused the attentions of men, holding out for something…better.

That's when she meets Sodan, an alien inexorably approaching the Terran sphere from far, intragalactic space. Thus ensues a completely mental courtship, and Damia becomes infatuated with the foreign entity.  But Afra, an experienced mentalist, who has been secretly in love with Damia for ages, is suspicious.  What if the being is simply manipulating Damia so that Earth's greatest defense will be neutralized?

The stage is set for a cosmic battle, and a realignment of Damia's priorities.

I really wanted to like this story.  I was anticipating an "Is There in Truth no Beauty?" romance where two beings find love despite fundamental physical differences.  Instead, the viewpoint shifts from Damia's to Afra's early on, and all we get is his certainty that Sodan is up to no good, which is vindicated.  Then, after the battle, Damia realizes the worthy that's been under her nose this entire time and, of course, gives him her love.

Of late, there has been a shallowness to the emotion displayed in McCaffrey's writing that just puts me off.  Also, a sort of petty volatility.  All of her characters snipe at each other constantly.  But the real nadir of the story comes at the end:

Shyly, her fingers plucking nervously at her blanket, Damia was unable to look away from an Afra who had altered disturbingly. Damia tried to contemplate the startling change. Unable to resort to a mental touch, she saw Afra for the first time with only physical sight. And he was suddenly a very different man. A man! That was it. He was so excessively masculine.

How could she have blundered around so, looking for a mind that was superior to hers, completely overlooking the fact that a woman's primary function in life begins with physical submission?

I feel like if Piers Anthony had written that, we'd have given him the Queen Bee.  Two stars.

A Brook in Vermont, by L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp muses poetically on the Carboniferous, and what future beings, millions of years hence, will burn the coal being formed today.

I think the author missed a real opportunity to imply that we would be the anthracite mined in the far future, suggesting that we run the very real risk of leaving nothing to the ages but our combustibility.

Three stars as is.


by Gahan Wilson

Black Snowstorm, by D. F. Jones

This is nothing more, nothing less, than an extremely well-told story of a plague of locusts. There's no satire, no metaphor, no literary experiments. Both shoes drop simultaneously, though slowly, gradually, rivetingly.

Five stars.

Unidentified Fallen Object, by Sydney Van Scyoc

One day, a small UFO falls with the snow, and a precocious teen boy picks it up to examine.  As he handles the small craft, flakes of it come off, perhaps sliding into his very pores.  Soon, he begins to radiate a frightful miasma, inciting hatred in all approach him.

Including his teacher, who has also touched the fell ship…

"Object" is a chilling, effectively written little horror.  It's not particularly to my taste, and it's a bit one-note, so it's just a three-star story for me.  Others may find more to like (for those who enjoy a sense of dread).

How I Take Their Measure , by K. M. O'Donnell

In the future, everybody's on relief…or administering it.  This is a little slice-of-life story about a sadistic relief worker, who gets off on the tenterhooks he hangs his relief applicants on.  No Brock, George C. Scott's kindhearted social worker from East-Side, West-Side; this guy is a real bastard.

This is my favorite story about terminal unemployment that I've read since one in IF a decade ago (the one about the guy who gets a job tightening all the screws on the buildings in the cities—which have been systematically unscrewed by some other schnook the night before…).

Four stars.

Santa Claus vs. S. P. I. D. E. R., by Harlan Ellison

Here's St. Nick like you've never seen him before.  In the style of Ian Fleming's James Bond series (though not Edward S. Aaron's Sam Durrell, Harlan offers up Agent Kris Kringle, a hard-stomached, oversexed, lean killer whose red suit is filled with every lethal device known to Elfkind.  His nemesis is S.P.I.D.E.R., an international organization devoted to evil.  This time, their nefarious scheme involves mind control: they have brainwashed LBJ, HHH, Nixon, Daley, Reagan, and Wallace into doing the most horrid deeds, and only the jolly agent from the North Pole can defeat them.

Okay, it's a bunch of silly fluff, probably written between bonafide adventure yarns Ellison probably writes under another name like "Rod Richards" or "Length Peters".  I did appreciate how every cruddy thing in the world is ultimately attributable to S.P.I.D.E.R.—humanity is basically good and cuddly.  Only the nefarious "them" subvert our goodness.

I've often noted that comic books and spy novels offer an easy way out for readers.  It's tough to deal with everyday problems, with economic malaise, with systemic issues that cause crime and misery.  How much easier to topple the goon of the week to get our cathartic kicks.  Ellison lets us know he understands the flavor of his own cheek with the subtlety within the broadness.

That said, it's a one-note joke, and once you've gotten the punchline, I don't think the story bears much rereading, especially since it is so very much of a very specific moment in our history (as Judith Merril notes in her book column, August 1968 already feels like an age ago).

Three stars.

The Dance of the Satellites, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor continues his examination (see last month's piece) of what the Galilean moons of Jupiter might look like from the innermost moon, Amalthea.  This time, he focuses on eclipses, the appearance of the moons in Jupiter-shine, and more.

Interesting cosmic data, of use to writers and laymen alike.  Four stars.

The Legend and the Chemistry, by Arthur Sellings

The 3607th (or was it 3608th) interstellar exploration mission from Earth seems like it will be yet another humdrum operation.  In all the expeditions, though many aliens have been found (most humanoid), all have been planetbound, none of them having reached our space traveling level of technology.

This latest planet is no exception, its humaniform denizens possessing a primitive tribal culture.  But they have no less pride than any other race.  What happens when the very existence of far superior beings constitutes an unpardonable affront?  And who is responsible for the catastrophe that ensues?

A decent, moralistic yarn from the late, great Arthur Sellers.  This may well be his last work published (unless he has a posthumous career like Richard McKenna) as he died recently.  While Legend is not the best thing he's ever written, it has its own kind of power.

Three stars.

Wild ride

There are a lot of vicissitudes in this first F&SF of the year.  The strong points cancel the weak points, and the magazine ends in positive territory, but because the lack of consistency makes things a bit sloggish.

Well, that's why I do this, right?  To be your guide to ensure you only get the highlights!




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Science / Space Race

[November 18, 1968] Pioneers and Protons (a space round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Interplanetary Pioneers

When you think "outer space", you don't usually think of weather.  In fact, weather in space is a bit like weather on Earth: there's wind, turbulence, a steady rain, and occasional storms.  Except that the wind and rain are the sun's ceaseless spray of charged particles along with their attendant magnetic fields.  The storms are the result of solar flares, those sudden unsettled periods when fiery prominences reach out from the sun's surface.

These phenomena can even be sensed by humans—as aurorae where the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, and as the crackle of static on a shortwave radio.  For satellites and space travelers, the solar radiation, particularly during flares, can damage electronics and internal organs.  There are thus a lot of reasons it would be practical to have a space weather report, just as we have a daily weather report down here on Earth.


Northern Lights, 1921, by Sydney Laurence

This is why the Pioneer series of solar weather satellites, the first launched December 16, 1965 and the latest launched on November 8th of this year, was created: to serve as long-term weather sentinels in space, the interplanetary equivalent of our TIROS weather satellites.

Prior to the launch of Pioneer 6 (no relation to Pioneer 5 or its predecessors save for the name), the mapping of the solar wind had been a strictly local affair.  The Interplanetary Monitoring Platform satellites, Explorers 18, 21, 28, 33, 34, and 35, have all been launched in high Earth orbits to survey the solar wind between the Earth and the moon.  This is in service of the Apollo program.

The aforementioned Pioneer 5 and interplanetary probes like Mariner 2 have made preliminary forays into true interplanetary space beyond the Earth/moon region, but those missions only lasted a few months.  The interplanetary Pioneers will be on station for years.

Launched on Delta rockets (the direct descendants of the Thor-Able rockets that launched the first Pioneers toward the moon), Pioneers 6-9 (and eventually #10, next year), were hurled into orbits that parallel our own, but further out in the case of Pioneers 7, 8, and 9; a little closer to the sun in the case of Pioneer 6.  The outer ones orbit a little more slowly while P6 zooms a little faster.  As a result, they all spread out, making a necklace of stations around the sun.

Pioneer 6 was launched in 1965 during the lull in the sun's 11 year cycle called "the solar minimum".  The hope was that we would get continuous data as the sun increased in activity, flaring more and more often.  We have not been disappointed.  On July 7, 1966, a big shock front from a solar flare enveloped Explorer 33.  45 hours later, Pioneer 6 was hit.  Interestingly, because of the time delay, even though both probes were similar distances from the sun (but far apart in orbit, of course), it is believed those might have been the result of two different flares, or perhaps two disturbances from the same one.

When the Pioneers were launched, scientists had a basic idea of that the solar wind looked like the spiral spray of a sprinkler head, this caused by the 28-day rotation of the sun.  But the instruments onboard the sophisticated Pioneers afforded much more detailed analysis of these streams and fields.  The Pioneers have found that the local magnetic fields will suddenly flip every so often.  Their microstructure is like woven filaments, far more complicated than we had previously conceived.


High-level view of the "sprinkler" spray of the solar wind

Pioneers 7 and 8 sailed through the Earth's magnetosheath, that magnetic shadow formed as the sun's wind interacts and deflects around the Earth.  Comparing their results to the closer-in Explorer 33, they found that this shadow tail gets more diffuse, more like the background interplanetary wind at greater distances, which is what one would expect.


The Earth's magnetic field (you can see the figure 8 Van Allen Belts) and the long, trailing, magnetosheath.

The Pioneer satellites are well-placed for more than just solar science.  Pioneers 8 and 9 are equipped with cosmic-ray telescopes designed to measure the chemical composition and sprectra of the galactic wind—the higher-energy rain of particles from beyond our solar system.  But the coolest use of the Pioneers so far (to me) is when Pioneer 7 was used to measure the lunar ionosphere.  On January 20, 1967, the moon "occulted" (blocked) the space probe, as seen from Earth.  Radio waves were beamed from a 150-foot dish run by Stanford past the edge of the moon.  They found that the scattering that resulted can't be explained just by the physical rocks of the lunar surface.  There must be a tenuous "atmosphere" above the moon, at least on the sunlit side, created at high altitudes by interactions between the solar wind and the surface of the moon.

There's actually a lot more, esoteric stuff that's way above my head.  And there will be plenty more as the Pioneers will probably keep going for many more years.  Though they haven't gotten much press, I think these are some of the most exciting missions to date.  Stay tuned!

My, what big…rockets you have!

Three years ago, I made a brief announcement about the launch of a new Soviet probe, one so enormous that its size alone had ramifications for the future of the Communist space program.  Proton, launched July 16, 1965, massed a whopping twelve tons, making it the biggest single object put in orbit until the November 1967 launch of Apollo 4.  That means that the USSR has a Saturn-class rocket in its stable, which is why the concerns about an imminent moon mission have grounding.

Since Proton 1, three more Protons have been sent into orbit, the latest just two days ago on November 16th.  Proton 4 weighs seventeen tons, which will beat all records—at least until Apollo 8 goes up in December. 

Why are they so heavy?  Because they carry heavy instruments.  Protons 1 and 2 included a gamma-ray telescope, a scintillator telescope, and proportional counters.  These counters were able to determine the total energy of each super-high energy cosmic particle individually, a capability no prior satellite had possessed, measuring cosmic rays with energy levels up to 100 million electron volts.

In addition to the above equipment, the fourteen ton Proton 3 was also equipped with a two-ton gas-Cerenkov-scintillator telescope.  Its goal was to attempt to detect the "quark", a brand new theoretical sub-particle that, according to theory, makes up all atomic particles.  Presumably, Proton 4 mounts a similar device with refinements.

Unlike most Soviet satellites, whose missions are shrouded in secrecy, data from the experiements onboard the first two Protons have produced at least five scientific papers on cosmic rays.  I haven't seen anything on Proton 3, but astronauts on Gemini 11 managed to snap a picture of it in September 1966!

Will the advanced experiments on Proton 4 produce a scientific bonanza to rival that of the Pioneers?  Only time will tell.  For now, the papers are more obsessed with the rocket than the satellite.

Apparently, it's all about size.  Who knew?




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