Transcription
Okay, we can see you coming down the ladder now.
In July 1969, people landed on the moon. That's the story we all know. But there's so much more to the Apollo program than that one giant leap. What many people don't know is that NASA accomplished six Apollo moon landings in just 3 years' time. Think about that for a second. Six crude lunar landings in 3 years. Something that would be unfathomable by modern standards. So, what were all of these guys doing up there?
Apollo 12, the second crude mission to the moon, came just months after Neil Armstrong's first giant leap. It was November 1969. Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean strapped into their Saturn 5 rocket for humanity's triumphant return to the moon. But it was going to be a bumpy ride. There were big plans for Apollo 12. The crew brought along a state-of-the-art color television camera to broadcast live from the moon in a massive upgrade over the grainy black and white images of Apollo 11. This mission was also an important technical demonstration for NASA. The first moon landing had been successful, but just barely. What most people didn't realize was that Neil and Buzz had been flying off course for the entire time their spacecraft was descending down to the moon. They ended up overshooting the target landing zone by several miles and they touched down in what was essentially just some random location. So what NASA had to do with Apollo 12 was prove that they could land a spacecraft on target. This was going to be critical for achieving scientific exploration goals on the moon. So NASA picked a familiar target, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft. It was a robotic lander that had touched down on the lunar surface just 3 years earlier in 1967. And the mission of Apollo 12 would be to go and pay Surveyor 3 a visit.
Unfortunately for the crew of Apollo 12, this mission encountered trouble right from the start. Their Saturn 5 lifted off in the middle of a thunderstorm. This was not ideal launch conditions, but NASA was under pressure to make it happen. President Nixon and his wife had come down to Florida to watch this launch. And everyone knew that if they didn't take off now, then it would be months before the next opportunity to go to the moon. So, the rocket disappeared into the clouds above the launchpad. And just 36 seconds into flight at an altitude of over 6,000 ft, Apollo 12 was struck by lightning. The thunderbolt immediately threw the electrical systems on board the spacecraft into chaos. Warning lights lit up across the instrument panels. Mission control lost contact with the rocket and the three men on board held their breath. Then they got struck by lightning again just 16 seconds later. Now at an altitude of 14,000 ft, the rocket had lost its main power supply, lost guidance and navigation, and was flying straight into disaster at incredible speed. It was one quick-thinking commander that saved the day. A flight controller on the ground had experienced a similar electrical failure during a training simulation, and he radioed to Apollo 12, "tryce to ox." That's now a famous line among moonlanding nerds. And what it did was switch the signal conditioning equipment or SCE to auxiliary mode which restored power and allowed the mission to continue. And that was the last time NASA launched a rocket in a thunderstorm.
Following that brush with disaster, Apollo 12 went on to achieve a near pinpoint landing on the edge of the Surveyor crater just 180 m away from where the Surveyor 3 spacecraft was waiting. Back on Earth, millions of people were tuned in to watch the first color TV broadcast from the moon. And what they saw must have been an awe-inspiring view of the second men to set foot on the lunar surface. But this would be short-lived. Just a few minutes into their moonwalk, Alan Bean accidentally pointed the TV camera directly into the sun. And because there's no atmosphere on the moon, sunlight is incredibly intense up there. It instantly destroyed the fragile vacuum tubes inside the camera and that was the end of the television broadcast. But it was far from the end of Apollo 12. The astronauts completed their mission to the surveyor spacecraft and extracted a few components that they would bring back to Earth. The first man-made objects to ever return from a long duration stay in outer space. The Apollo 12 astronauts also deployed a very important piece of technology on the moon. The Apollo lunar surface experiments package, a sophisticated collection of geophysical instruments designed to monitor the lunar environment continuously after the astronauts' departure. This package included something called the lunar seismic experiment, essentially a seismometer to measure earthquakes on the moon or moonquakes. And NASA decided to test this experiment by causing a moonquake of their own. After the astronauts had lifted off from the surface and returned to the Apollo command module in orbit, their lunar spacecraft was then intentionally crashed into the moon. The lunar seismic experiment measured the vibrations created by the impact and scientists were shocked to see that the reverberations from the crash actually lasted for nearly an hour. It was said that the moon rang like a bell, and that was a pretty big first step in learning that the moon was a lot more strange than anyone had imagined.
Apollo 13, an unlucky number for an unlucky crew on the first failed mission to the moon. About halfway into their journey, an electrical problem inside the Apollo 13 service module caused an oxygen tank to explode, and this left the crew in a life-threatening situation. For the third time, millions of people on Earth were glued to their televisions, watching a dramatic story unfold in space. But this one was different. Every mission to the moon had been dangerous. But Apollo 13 made that danger all too real. The crew ultimately survived, but there was a definite change in how the public and the government viewed the moon landing program. But that didn't stop Apollo 14 from going forward. This would be America's triumphant return to the moon coming almost one year after the events of Apollo 13. And to lead this critical mission, NASA would call on an American hero of the space era, Alan Shepard. The first American to reach outer space was now set to walk on the moon. At the age of 47 years old, Shepard was the oldest Apollo astronaut, but his experience would play a critical role in the success of Apollo 14.
As was tradition at this point, the crew experienced a crisis on their way to the moon. When the Saturn 5 rocket is launched, the lunar lander rides along inside a payload fairing below the crew capsule. But to get the lander into position for the crew to transfer over and descend to the moon, the command module needs to separate from the lander, turn around, and dock the nose of the capsule into the airlock of the lander. This had to be done manually by the command module pilot with some electronic assistance from a docking probe. When Apollo 14 attempted the docking maneuver, the command module failed to latch onto the lunar lander. They tried again six times and were unsuccessful. This problem might have cost them the moon, but Commander Shepard kept a cool head. He switched off the electronic probe and had the pilot eyeball the docking like Luke Skywalker flying through the Death Star trench, and it worked. The Apollo 14 moon landing would be the most accurate touchdown yet, just 87 ft away from the intended target. Alan Shepard might not have been the first man to walk on the moon, but he would be the first to play golf. Prior to the mission, Shepard had the head of a six-iron club fastened to the end of his lunar sampling tool. Then he managed to bring two golf balls with him all the way to the surface of the moon and standing right in front of the live TV camera, Shepard wound up and took his first swing. The space suit prevented him from using both arms, and after one slice, he managed to connect with the second ball and send it flying across the surface of the moon. Shepard claimed that the ball carried on for miles and miles. Realistically, it traveled about 40 yards. That moment of levity was exactly what America needed at the time. Apollo 14 restored confidence in NASA's ability to land on the moon and it would set the stage for a massive upgrade in lunar exploration that was soon to come.
Apollo 15 was a transformative mission when it comes to exploration of the moon. NASA had taken everything they learned from the first three lunar landings and upgraded their technology for longer duration stays on the moon and enhanced geological investigations. Astronauts could now spend a full 3 days exploring the surface thanks to an enhanced life support system on board their lunar lander. And to make the most out of that extended stay, NASA equipped them with the new lunar roving vehicle, a battery-powered electric dune buggy with a top speed of 15 km/h with a range of about 90 km on one charge. Using the LRV, Apollo 15 astronauts explored mountain ranges and ancient lava flows on the surface of the moon, collecting an item that would come to be known as the Genesis rock, a stone that dates back 4.1 billion years to the early days of our solar system. The crew also took their opportunity on the moon to demonstrate Galileo's theory of gravity by dropping a feather and a hammer at the same time. Back in the 16th century, the astronomer Galileo used to drop stuff from the leaning tower of Pisa to show that objects of different weights will fall at the same speed because the force of gravity is constant. The only variable in how fast things fall is air resistance. So on the moon, in the absence of air, the feather and hammer fell at the exact same speed.
10 months later in April 1972, Apollo 16 would arrive on the moon, carrying with them the now proven lunar roving vehicle on a mission to explore the lunar highlands, thought to be the site of intense volcanic activity in the moon's ancient past. Notable crew members of Apollo 16 would include Charles Duke, who had flown on the very first moon landing, but remained in the Apollo capsule while Neil and Buzz went down to the surface. Now it was Charles' time to pilot the lunar lander and make his own footprints on the moon. Ironically, what the crew discovered was that the highland area wasn't formed by volcanoes at all. Their investigation found that the land had instead been pushed up by massive asteroid impacts. This was a huge milestone in developing our understanding of the moon and how it formed. Another fascinating takeaway from Apollo 16 was the crews' report back about the taste and smell of moondust. They said that it felt greasy against their skin and had a smell that reminded both men of gunpowder.
In December 1972, it was finally time for the ultimate moon landing, Apollo 17. Unfortunately, by this point, both the public and the politicians had lost interest in exploring the moon. But that didn't stop NASA from putting together the most scientifically and technologically advanced human space flight ever conducted. And that stands to this day. Apollo 17 marked the first and only time that a scientist would set foot on the moon. Every Apollo landing had conducted scientific investigations, but every previous astronaut had been an Air Force jet pilot who had been trained to do science. Harrison Schmidt was a professional geologist who had been trained to become a lunar module pilot. Apollo 17 touched down in a region of the moon known as the Taurus Litro Valley. The landing site was surrounded by low mountains with steep cliffs that exposed ancient rock from inside the lunar surface. This mission stayed on the moon longer than any other with Schmidt and his commander spending 75 hours on the surface. Of that, 22 hours were spent doing extra vehicular activities. Again, the rover played a key role in exploring the moon. The astronauts would travel over 36 km of the lunar surface and reach distances over 7 km away from their landing site. One of the more interesting discoveries they made was that the moon isn't entirely gray and colorless. Schmidt uncovered what appeared to be orange soil hiding beneath the outer layer of dust. When the orange soil was examined on Earth, they found that it was actually full of brightly colored spheres of volcanic glass that had formed 3.6 billion years ago. In total, Apollo 17 was able to return 741 individual rock and soil samples, totaling 110 kg, the largest sample return of any moon mission. These samples would form the backbone of our current understanding about the moon's volcanic history and the formation of the early solar system. By this point in history, NASA was well aware that the Apollo program had reached an end. While there was still optimism that human beings would return to the surface of the moon at some time in the not-so-distant future, it was understood that Apollo 17 was the end of an era. Mission commander Eugene Cernin would be the last person to stand on the surface of the moon. And in his final words before returning to the spacecraft, he said, "With peace and hope for all mankind."