NASA orbiter returns first shots of Apollo moon sites

By Austin Modine

Posted in Space, 17th July 2009 21:50 GMT

NASA's lunar orbiter has returned its first pictures of the Apollo moon landing sites. The images — showing the missions' lunar module descent stages accented by their shadows from a low sun angle — may at least prove to die-hard conspiracy theorists that NASA went to considerable lengths to relocate its secret movie studio in the Nevada desert.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) was able take pictures of five of the six Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. The yet un-depicted Apollo 12 site is expected to be photographed in coming weeks.

The initial pictures are somewhat lacking in detail because they were taken before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. NASA says future images of the Apollo sites will have two to three times greater resolution.

Apollo 11 landing site, courtesy NASA/Arizona State University

"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said LROC chief investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill — and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."

NASA explains that LRO's elliptical orbit made the image resolution for each site slightly different but were all around four feet per pixel. With the deck of the Apollo decent stage at about 12 feet in diameter, they fill a total of about nine pixels. But because the sun was low to the horizon at the time, small variations to the Moon's topography create long shadows, allowing the relics to better stand out.

The Apollo 14 landing site had particularly advantageous lighting conditions at the time, allowing details such as the astronaut footpath between the module and instrument package to be visible.

Apollo 14 landing site, courtesy NASA/Arizona State University

To view the complete collection of the first Apollo landing site images, check here or here. ®

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Details about the landing

Several books indicate early mission timelines had Buzz Aldrin rather than Neil Armstrong as the first man on the Moon.^[1]

Armstrong claims to have said "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" when he first set foot on the lunar surface. The "a" is not clear in NASA recordings but the audio and video links back to earth were somewhat intermittent, partly because of storms near Parkes Observatory. More recent digital analysis of the tape by NASA revealed the "a" may have been spoken but obscured by static.^[2][3]

Neil Armstrong's PPK (Personal Preference Kit) carried a piece of wood from the Wright Brothers' 1903 airplane's left propeller and a piece of fabric from its wing,^[4] along with a diamond-studded astronaut pin originally given to Deke Slayton by the widows of the Apollo 1 crew. This pin had been intended to be flown on Apollo 1 and given to Slayton after the mission but following the disastrous launch pad fire and subsequent funerals, the widows gave the pin to Slayton and Armstrong took it on Apollo 11.^[5]

In Aldrin's book Men from Earth he wrote, "We discovered during a long checklist recitation that the ascent engine's arming circuit breaker was broken off on the panel. The little plastic pin (or knob) simply wasn't there. This circuit would send electrical power to the engine that would lift us off the moon...We looked around for something to punch in this circuit breaker. Luckily, a felt-tipped pen fit into the slot."

 Presidential telephone call during moonwalk

LISTEN FOR YOURSELF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVmsCR2RmJU

President Nixon spoke to Aldrin and Armstrong during their first walk on the surface of the moon.

Houston: ...We'd like to get both of you in the field-of-view of the camera for a minute. (Pause) Neil and Buzz, the President of the United States is in his office now and would like to say a few words to you. Over.

Armstrong: That would be an honor.

Houston: All right. Go ahead, Mr. President. This is Houston. Out.

Nixon: Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. I just can't tell you how proud we all are of what you (garbled). For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world, I am sure they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one; one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth. (Pause)

Armstrong: Thank you, Mr. President. It's a great honor and privilege for us to be here representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations, and with interests and the curiosity and with the vision for the future. It's an honor for us to be able to participate here today.

Nixon: And thank you very much and I look forward....All of us look forward to seeing you on the Hornet on Thursday.

Aldrin: I look forward to that very much, sir.

Apollo 11 goodwill messages

Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages were statements from leaders of 73 countries around the world on a disc about the size of a 50-cent piece made of silicon that was left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Contingency television address

William Safire prepared a speech called In Event of Moon Disaster for President Nixon to read on television if the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the Moon.^[6] According to the plans, Mission Control would "close down communications" with the LEM and a clergyman would have commended their souls to "the deepest of the deep" in a public ritual likened to burial at sea. Presidential telephone calls to the astronauts' wives were also planned. The speech originated in a memo from Safire to Nixon's chief of staff H. R. Haldeman in which Safire suggested a protocol the administration might follow in reaction to such a disaster.^[7][8] The last line of the prepared text contained an allusion to Rupert Brooke's First World War poem, The Soldier.^[8]

Acknowledgments and monuments

The United States of America (U.S.) acknowledged the immense success of Apollo 11 with a national day of celebration on Monday, July 21, 1969. All but emergency and essential employees were allowed a paid day off from work, in both government and the private sector. Ironically the last time this had happened was the national day of mourning on Monday, November 25, 1963 to observe the state funeral of President John F. Kennedy who had set the political goal to put a man on the moon by the end of sixties.

A replica of the footprint left by Neil Armstrong is located at Tranquility Park in Houston, Texas. The park was dedicated in 1979, a decade after the first moon landing.

 Portrayal in media

News

During the mission, another major news story in the US media was the Chappaquiddick incident.

 Movies and television

On September 16, 1962, the date Armstrong's selection as an astronaut was announced, his parents were flown to New York to appear on the television game show I've Got A Secret. After their secret was guessed, host Garry Moore commented "Wouldn't it be something if your son were the first man on the moon?" The episode has been shown on Game Show Network although Armstrong himself never saw it until his biographer brought him a copy of the tape.

The Australian movie, The Dish (2000), tells the (slightly fictionalised) story of how the images of the moon-walk were received by the radio telescope at Parkes Observatory, New South Wales.

The 1996 television movie Apollo 11 depicted the mission.^[9]

Portions of the Apollo 11 mission are dramatized in the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon episode entitled "Mare Tranquilitatis". In that episode, Michael Collins made the following suggestion as to what Armstrong should say upon stepping onto the lunar surface: "If you had any balls, you'd say 'Oh, my God, what is that thing?' then scream and cut your mic."

In the British sitcom My Hero, the son of George and Janet chooses the name Apollo 11 (or Ollie for short) for himself because "It shows a link between two worlds," his father George being an alien on the show.

In the American animated television series Exosquad, the Able Squad briefly visits Tranquility Base during and after the Battle for the Moon.^[10]

The opening scenes of the 1996 movie Independence Day^[11] show an alien mothership passing low over the Apollo 11 landing site. The vibration of its passing erases the famous bootprint left on the soft lunar surface. (This is a scientific error, as the the Moon's atmosphere, so thin it is often considered nonexistent, is unable to transmit sound, vibration or pressure waves.)

The 2008 animated film Fly Me to the Moon in centered around a fictional story of three flies that stow away on the Saturn V Rocket and manage to land on the moon.

Folklore

Soon after the mission a conspiracy theory arose that the landing was a hoax but this notion is widely discounted by historians and scientists. It may have gained more popularity after the movie Capricorn One (1978) portrayed a fictional NASA attempt to fake a landing on Mars.

An urban legend suggests that they were being 'watched' while on the Moon and had seen alien vehicles in space. This grew in popularity after the book Someone else is on our Moon was published.^[12] Aldrin did spot an unidentified object travelling relative to them late in the third day of the mission. After learning from Mission Control that it couldn't be the S-IVB stage, since that was 6,000 nautical miles away, they concluded that it was most likely one of four panels that had linked the spacecraft and the upper stage.^[13] Later popular accounts often described this as a "UFO sighting" or claimed the widely reported incident had been "covered up."

At age 76, astronaut Buzz Aldrin said in a television documentary, "There was something out there, close enough to be observed, and what could it be?... Now, obviously the three of us weren't going to blurt out, 'Hey, Houston, we've got something moving alongside of us and we don't know what it is, you know?... We knew that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and somebody might have demanded we turn back because of aliens or whatever the reason is."^{[14] [15][16]} They may have seen the Luna 15 spacecraft which the Soviet Union had launched at about the same time as Apollo 11.^[17]

There is a humorous and ribald urban legend that when Armstrong was a child, the wife of a neighbour named Gorsky, when asked by her husband to perform oral sex, had ridiculed him by saying "...when the kid next door walks on the moon!" and then decades later whilst walking on the moon Armstrong supposedly said "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" but nothing about this anecdote is true. In 1995 Armstrong said he first heard the story in California when comedian Buddy Hackett told it as a joke.^[18] This urban legend quote has been used in a humorous reference at the opening scene of Watchmen (film).

References