APOLLO 8 Modern doc

by Acer

  The definition of the pictures is determined by the spacecraft window through which they are shooting – one of the two rendezvous windows with the flat sides and the round top.

  Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8

  That’s a better picture now, and we can make out the crater Brand.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  The color of the Moon looks like a very whiteish gray, like dirty beach sand with lots of footprints in it.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  We are now pointing the camera at what I believe to be the crater Basset. I’ll try flipping the polarizing filter in front of the lens to see if that improves the picture quality.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  We’re about to pass over the crater Borman. I can see crater Anders out there, and Crater Lovell is just south of it.

  Bill Humphries @BHNewcastleUNI

  Crater Borman? Crater Anders? Anybody else think the astronauts are just making up the names of some of these craters as they go along?

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  We will hear soon from Dr. Eugene Shumaker from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Perhaps he will tell us something about those apparently newly named craters we have been seeing and how they got named.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  I don’t see those crater names on my Moon map here – names like Carr, Miller, Borman, Houston, Collins, etc. They sound like they’re named after a bunch of people at the Houston Manned Space Center.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  I wonder if these fellows are naming a few mountains and craters for the first time. We have heard that Jim Lovell intends to sight a peak that has been unnamed so far and, when he does, he’s going to name it Mount Marilyn after his wife.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  It’s very difficult to make out the craters until the spaceship gets closer to the terminator (the sunrise line on the Moon) where the shadow gives greater definition to the features of the craters.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  If you look out along the horizon, you can see crater rims and with our references we can calculate the height of those rims and the low mountains that are right on the terminator as we see it right now from the spacecraft.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  The astronauts are talking about seeing small craters with white rays spreading out of them. I wonder exactly what that is they are describing.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  Those white rays show up very nicely under full moon conditions, or under the conditions the astronauts are now observing the Moon. The rays themselves show very prominently on the full moon, although the craters themselves do not.

  Dr. Eugene Shoemaker (1928 – 1997)

  Dr. Shoemaker at Meteor Crater, Arizona

  Gene Shoemaker was a highly respected geologist and one of the founders of the field of planetary science. He pioneered the field of astrogeology and was heavily involved with the training of the Apollo astronauts. He was a possible candidate for an Apollo mission himself before being diagnosed with Addison’s disease. During the Apollo missions, he was a CBS news television commentator appearing with Walter Cronkite during live TV coverage of those flights. Following the Apollo missions, he became best-known for co-discovering the comet Shoemaker-Levy-9.

  One year after his death in 1997, his ashes were carried and deposited on the Moon by the Lunar Prospector Mission alongside an image of the comet he discovered, an image of Meteor Crater and a passage from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  We think the rays consist of fresh material, fresh rock, thrown out of these craters – craters which we believe to be impact craters – the fresh, white material being thrown out as a result of strikes by large meteorites.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  Jim Lovell was talking about the dark center of some of the larger craters there. Those craters are filled in with material which we now believe to be basalt – volcanic rock. Lovell also mentioned there was dark material in some of the smaller craters.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  There is still a puzzle as to what that dark material is in some of those small craters. It has been suggested that those craters were dug down into something that was darker. That might be the right explanation, but we simply do not know what it is at this point.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  We’re getting a lot of fogging up out of the window, and Houston tells us our TV picture is too bright and is breaking up. Pity.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  The right side of the camera is now pointing retrograde, and we are now passing abeam of the crater Houston. I’ll move the camera over there for the folks watching in Texas.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  A lot of the craters the astronauts are observing right now have no formal names yet since they cannot be seen from the Earth, although they have been recorded on the unmanned lunar orbiter photographic missions.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  I was a little puzzled too at the crater names I was hearing – I didn’t know what those names were. But it soon became apparent that they were names the astronauts were inventing as the mission progressed.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  Even though those craters have not yet been formally named, the astronauts still have to have some sort of ‘handle’ so they can talk about them. So they just give them names, and it’s fun to use names that are more familiar – the names of their comrades.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  So I wonder how it is decided how to formally name locations such as craters and mountains on the Moon. Who decides these things and what considerations are taken into account?

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  Actually, there’s a very formal procedure for naming extraterrestrial geographic locations. There’s an organization known as the International Astronomical Union.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  The various countries that participate in this union send members – astronomers – to the union. There are various commissions. One of these – Commission 17 – has the responsibility of assigning names.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  These names are brought forward as formal proposals and are adopted by an action of the Union as a whole. There are major plans now for formally naming features on the back side of the Moon which will be in about two-and-a-half years from now.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  The commission usually names craters after distinguished and deceased scientists. However, we expect that many features on the back side will eventually be named for the living Apollo astronauts slated to visit the Moon in the next couple of years, since those men these days are indeed scientists themselves.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  The International Astronomical Union, I guess, doesn’t work on a 40-hour week, 50 weeks a year when they are deciding on these names of extraterrestrial objects and features.

  Dr Eugene M Shoemaker @EMSCalifIoT

  The Union only meets once every three years currently, so I’m afraid this is a long, drawn out procedure to adopt names of craters, mountains and other lunar features.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  The Apollo 8 astronauts are now continuing across the face of the Moon as we see it from here on Earth. They have just about reached the point where they will pass over the preferred landing site on the Moon for the first manned landing.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  That manned landing is, of course, what this flight of Apollo 8 is preparing the way for. That manned landing could come as early as Apollo 10 which goes up in May.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  We’re coming up now on the crater Collins. Collins is right on
the edge of Spice Sea which we are about to pass over.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  A lot of these small impact craters have dark spots in the center where it seems like some new material was exposed after they were hit.

  Frank Borman @CDRApollo8

  We are about to roll the spacecraft to the left in order to come over the target landing area with the TV. There we go. Hope they could make it out back in Houston.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  Some of the ice on the center window is beginning to melt and I’m starting to be able to see through it.

  Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8

  We have just passed over the Sea of Fertility. Bill has the 16 mm camera going for us. We’ll try to get TV on this at a later time.

  Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8

  There we go! There’s Mount Marilyn – now named by yours truly for my lovely wife.

  Frank Borman @CDRApollo8

  We are going to terminate our program for this pass now in order to get on with the preparations for the second lunar orbit insertion burn (LOI-2).

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  Before this mission, we asked the lunar module pilot, Major William Anders, what he hoped to take pictures of as they circle around the Moon. Here’s what he said:

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  As much as our operational requirements will permit, we will try to capture as much of the significant parts of the Moon as we can.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  Particularly, we will attempt to produce a continuous strip mapping from the relatively well-known sections on the front side to the relatively not well-known sections on the back side.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  These photos will have both astronomical value and operational value. A lunar landing vehicle coming in on a landing approach will need to have very good knowledge of a ‘lunar grid’ so that they can cut down their landing error as much as possible.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  Part of the approach to landing will be while the lunar lander is on the far side of the Moon and the topographical features around there are not well known as yet.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  A great deal of lunar photography has been accomplished already. These have, of course, always been carried out by unmanned orbiters up to now. So I wonder what the difference is.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  The unmanned orbital photography was very good, particularly on the near side of the Moon where we have been able to study the surface in detail and pick out possible landing sites that are relatively smooth and offer a good chance of a safe landing point.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  However, where the orbital photography was not so good was when the orbiters were in a high elliptical orbit approximately 1,000 miles away on the back side of the Moon.

  Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

  Those pictures were not good enough for our navigational purposes. We hope to greatly improve on those pictures with our own photography when we are in a low circular orbit much closer to the lunar surface.

  3 days 0 hours 29 minutes mission time

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  Transmissions between the Apollo 8 spacecraft are going on now. But it’s all a set of figures – engineering data they must have before they fire their engines for a second time on the far side of the Moon to ‘circularize’ their orbit.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  That engineering data is of course meaningless jargon to those of us on Earth who don’t have a spacecraft in our backyard and don’t intend to make a flight to the Moon at any time in the immediate future.

  Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8

  We do need to explain the naming of the lunar features that the astronauts have been doing. Our geology groups here decided to give certain key landmarks real-life names instead of numbers and code.

  Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8

  These are in no way officially-named craters and other features and have not (yet) been submitted to the international body that must pass on those kinds of official names.

  Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8

  Lovell and Anders distinctly talked about craters that were named for themselves. Historically, craters have been named for astronomers and geologists who discovered them, but we do hope that some of these lunar features will be officially named for NASA personnel.

  Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8

  In future passes, we may hear names like Schmitt, named for Jack Schmitt; Gilruth - the director of this center; Debus – the head of the Kennedy Space Center; Paine and other past and present directors of NASA.

  Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8

  Many past and present astronauts will, we hope, also be honored by having their names temporarily attached to key features on the lunar landscape. Prominent among these are Grissom, White and Chaffee – the three astronauts who died in the fire on Apollo 1.

  Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8

  The three craters we are hoping to have officially named to honor astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are clustered fairly close together just south of the ground track we have just been hearing about.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  Of course, a very big part of the incentive for President Kennedy in setting in motion this remarkable Apollo Moon program was to beat the Soviets in what has now become known as the ‘Space Race’.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  We expect to shortly hear from Bill Cole, our Moscow correspondent, on the Soviet reaction to the continued success so far of the Apollo 8 mission.

  William Cole @BillColeCBSNews

  There’s a fair amount of praise here in the Soviet Union for the courage of the Apollo 8 astronauts, but also there have been very serious doubts placed by Soviet commentators on the outcome of the Apollo mission.

  William Cole @BillColeCBSNews

  Soviet official sources have stated that it is much too risky and premature for the United States to be attempting this mission at this point. They stressed that Soviet lunar spacecrafts have already made the trip around the Moon with automatic control systems.

  William Cole @BillColeCBSNews

  Yesterday, Boris Petrov who is a leading space expert here, said in the first official Soviet report that a main feature of the Apollo program is that it requires human hands to guide it. The implication being that the Soviet program is much more technically advanced.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  I wonder if Dr. Petrov’s statement was reported or translated correctly since it seems that he should know that the Apollo spacecrafts could also have been automatically guided. We put men aboard because that is the essential concept - leading, eventually, to landing men on the Moon.

  William Cole @BillColeCBSNews

  As far as the general public and the Soviet press are concerned, only very brief and even “cold” accounts of the mission are being published in the press and on radio and TV. But in all fairness to them, that is more news than they release of their own space missions.

  William Cole @BillColeCBSNews

  A Soviet cosmonaut is only declared a hero AFTER he returns from a successful flight. We suspect, but do not know for certain, that if a Soviet cosmonaut does not return, news of his failed mission will never be released to the public.

  William Cole @BillColeCBSNews

  However, we understand that many of the satellite countries, I mean the other Communist countries, are getting very regular reports on the Apollo 8 mission and some are tuning into the Eurovision TV reports.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  There had been some reports earlier that the Soviet Union might be prepared to go on some kind of manned lunar mission when their window to the Moon opened earlier this month.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  We don’t know, of course, exactly what stage the Soviet M
oon program is at, but we do know what they have the same ambition as us – to land a man on the Moon.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  For now, if all goes well around the far side of the Moon, Apollo 8 will fire the engine once more and, if all goes well, emerge in a circular orbit at an altitude of about 69 miles above the lunar surface.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  Jim Lovell reported a moment ago that the ice on the windows seems to be melting. I suppose we will get some engineering data from Houston on that shortly.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  It may indicate that the heat that is being reflected from the Moon, as well as the Sun’s considerable heat (around 250 degrees), with the spacecraft holding a stable attitude, is such that the heat is greater than anticipated and is causing this melting.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  This increased temperature would be in addition to the high temperature recorded earlier in the spacecraft’s cooling system.

  Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

  During Apollo 8’s passage from Earth out to the Moon, the spacecraft was set in what was called the ‘barbeque mode’, meaning that the spacecraft was rotated once every hour.