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Image enhancement techniques have been used to reveal life aboard Nasa's stricken Apollo 13 spacecraft in unprecedented detail.
Fifty years ago, the craft suffered an explosion that jeopardised the lives of the three astronauts aboard.
Unsurprisingly, given they were locked in a fight for survival, relatively few onboard images were taken.
But imaging specialist Andy Saunders created sharp stills from low-quality 16mm film shot by the crew.
One of the techniques used by Mr Saunders is known as "stacking", in which many frames are assembled on top of each other to improve the image's detail.
NASA released a series of panoramic images of the Apollo landing sites for the 50th anniversary of the moon mission.
With data from NASA's LRO mission, researchers have recreated what the Apollo 13 astronauts saw on their trip around the moon.
On 11 April 1970, the Lovell family watched their husband and father, Jim Lovell, blast off on Nasa's third mission to land on the Moon.
But this was to be an ill-fated mission, and in the six days that followed, the Lovells found themselves facing intense agony.
As the 50th anniversary of the mission approaches, we hear Jim's wife, now 89, and his daughter and son, now in their 60s, relive their incredible story.
Buzz Aldrin
@TheRealBuzz
·
Aug 2, 2015
Yes the #Apollo11 crew also signed customs forms. We brought back moon rocks & moon dust samples. Moon disease TBD.
The successful rescue mission was thanks to superb Nasa organisation //
After a torrid hour of failed troubleshooting, a new shift of flight controllers arrived, as well as a new flight director, waiting to take their turn. They were at this point still in the thick of the fight and the temptation for Kranz to keep going and refuse to relinquish control must have been enormous. Nevertheless he passed the baton to the incoming team, recognising that fresh eyes and minds were what was needed. This is the true spirit of teamwork – the ability to know when your part is done, when someone new can bring something better than you can. //
That ability to relinquish control and delegate authority didn’t stop there. The Apollo missions were complex endeavours. Nobody could be across it all and Nasa knew that in mission control it had a team of people who, as a whole, were far greater than the sum of their individual parts.
In approaching this crisis, their delegation of authority and deference to expertise is almost total. In the face of high-stakes scenarios, it is tempting to wrest control from more junior colleagues. But in 1970 the approach of mission control was quite different. They empowered their most junior team members, giving them total ownership of their specialist stations. They would interrogate their recommendations but not second-guess them. It is a lesson that industry and wider society has largely failed to heed. //
But what surprised me was how little of the response to the accident demanded improvised solutions. Nasa had learned to be wary of creativity and inventiveness in the heat of the moment. That doesn’t mean it refused to improvise, nor that it wasn’t capable of doing it well – only that it knew plans hatched in the heat of battle often harbour hidden flaws. //
Incredibly, Nasa had already rehearsed many of the contingency and fallback plans required to rescue Apollo 13. In earlier missions, it had experimented with using the lunar module’s engines to drive both it and the command module. It had a checklist ready to manage the sudden powering down of the command module that was required to save dwindling battery power. Nasa even had a procedure for flying the spacecraft without their primary navigation and guidance computer. And then, when finally it had no choice but to improvise, it did it with same obsession and attention to detail it brought to everything else.
She mapped Apollo 11’s path to history. Now, her legacy lives on in the trajectories of future spaceflights—including the moon landing planned for 2024. //
SOPHIA CHEN02.28.20 8:00 AM
SCIENCE
Katherine Johnson’s Math Will Steer NASA Back to the Moon
She mapped Apollo 11’s path to history. Now, her legacy lives on in the trajectories of future spaceflights—including the moon landing planned for 2024.
Katherine Johnson looking at paper with data being printed
PHOTOGRAPH: NASA
Katherine Johnson blazed trails, not just as a black female mathematician during the Cold War, but by mapping literal paths through outer space. Her math continues to carve out new paths for spacecraft navigating our solar system, as NASA engineers use evolved versions of her equations that will execute missions to the moon and beyond.
The retired NASA mathematician, who died Monday at the age of 101, calculated the trajectories of the agency’s first space missions, including John Glenn’s 1962 spaceflight in which he became the first American to orbit the planet, and the first moon landing in 1969. But Johnson’s contributions to spaceflight extend beyond such historic moments, several of which are dramatized in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. Her work forms part of the mathematical foundation of NASA’s missions today. “She had a big contribution to trajectory design in general,” says NASA aerospace engineer Jenny Gruber. //
These missions are not unlike trying to hit a rotating bull’s-eye with a dart while jumping off a carousel, the dart being the astronaut, the Earth the spinning carousel, and the bull’s eye a spot on the moon. As Johnson told a PBS interviewer in 2011, “It was intricate, but it was possible.” //
So just as Johnson's team did in the 1960s, Gruber and her team are trying to calculate and plan for all possible scenarios on the way to the moon. “If you get it wrong, people die,” she says. “And then people see it on TV.” //
SOPHIA CHEN02.28.20 8:00 AM
SCIENCE
Katherine Johnson’s Math Will Steer NASA Back to the Moon
She mapped Apollo 11’s path to history. Now, her legacy lives on in the trajectories of future spaceflights—including the moon landing planned for 2024.
Katherine Johnson looking at paper with data being printed
PHOTOGRAPH: NASA
Katherine Johnson blazed trails, not just as a black female mathematician during the Cold War, but by mapping literal paths through outer space. Her math continues to carve out new paths for spacecraft navigating our solar system, as NASA engineers use evolved versions of her equations that will execute missions to the moon and beyond.
The retired NASA mathematician, who died Monday at the age of 101, calculated the trajectories of the agency’s first space missions, including John Glenn’s 1962 spaceflight in which he became the first American to orbit the planet, and the first moon landing in 1969. But Johnson’s contributions to spaceflight extend beyond such historic moments, several of which are dramatized in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. Her work forms part of the mathematical foundation of NASA’s missions today. “She had a big contribution to trajectory design in general,” says NASA aerospace engineer Jenny Gruber.
At NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Gruber works on the Artemis mission, which plans to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in 2024. Gruber plans trajectories for Artemis, just as Johnson did for the first lunar landing. Gruber’s basic task remains essentially the same as Johnson’s was in 1962: to calculate the speed, acceleration, and direction required to lob a spacecraft of certain size and fuel capacity to hit a moving target, without a lot of room for extra maneuvering.
These missions are not unlike trying to hit a rotating bull’s-eye with a dart while jumping off a carousel, the dart being the astronaut, the Earth the spinning carousel, and the bull’s eye a spot on the moon. As Johnson told a PBS interviewer in 2011, “It was intricate, but it was possible.”
Once launched, astronauts have limited means for adjusting their trajectory, and small errors committed either by trajectory planners or the astronauts themselves can result in dire consequences. For example, Scott Carpenter, who replicated Glenn’s flight and was the sixth human in space, overshot his target landing spot in the Atlantic Ocean by 250 miles because he fell behind preparing for re-entry. (A US Navy team safely recovered him about three hours later.) So just as Johnson's team did in the 1960s, Gruber and her team are trying to calculate and plan for all possible scenarios on the way to the moon. “If you get it wrong, people die,” she says. “And then people see it on TV.”
The job has always had crazy high pressure. One of the most important aspects of Johnson’s mathematical prowess is that her calculations involved real people, real objects interacting at the limits of human engineering. During these missions, human lives were at stake, and so was the outcome of the space race between the US and the former Soviet Union. “The space program was in overdrive, trying to get ahead of the Russians,” says NASA historian Bill Barry. And, of course, the whole world was watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on television.
Although the basics of space missions have remained the same, much has evolved in mission planning since Johnson’s time. In ’60s, NASA employed so-called “human computers”—mostly women like Johnson—to perform the calculations. “The main reason women were hired to be computers was that it was drudge work,” says Barry. “The engineers didn’t want to do it.”
But even if the public didn’t know much about these mathematicians, the astronauts relied on them. While preparing for the 1962 Friendship 7 mission, Glenn famously did not trust NASA’s “new” electronic computer, the multimillion-dollar IBM 7090, to plan his trip. He specifically requested that Johnson, who worked at NASA’s Flight Research Division, double-check the IBM’s computations with pen and paper. “‘Get the girl,’” Glenn said, according to Barry. “Everyone knew which ‘girl’ he meant. Katherine Johnson was the premier mathematician doing this type of work.” //
Today, it’s a cliché that “space is hard.” But in Johnson’s time, it wasn’t just hard—up until then, it had seemed impossible; Johnson helped make it possible. Barry credits her work, in part, for enabling current ventures such as commercial rocket companies like SpaceX. “So much of what she did is buried in the mathematical DNA of how to do spaceflight,” says Barry. Thanks to Johnson's pioneering math, spaceflight is now routine. “It’s well-known rocket science now.”
"Anything that could be counted, I did." //
Katherine Johnson, a trailblazing mathematician best known for her contributions to NASA's human spaceflight program and who gained fame later in life due to the movie Hidden Figures, died Monday. She was 101 years old.
"At NASA, we will never forget her courage and leadership and the milestones we could not have reached without her," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "We will continue building on her legacy and work tirelessly to increase opportunities for everyone who has something to contribute toward the ongoing work of raising the bar of human potential." //
Most notably, in 1962, she performed the critical calculations that put John Glenn into a safe orbit during the first orbital mission of a US astronaut. NASA engineers had run the calculations on electric computers, but when someone was needed to validate the calculations, Glenn and the rest of the space agency turned to Johnson. “If she says they’re good,” Johnson recalled the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go." //
NASA named a new building after her in 2016, the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility //
What an amazing lady - her work will live on for centuries, as we explore further out into the solar system. RIP Katherine
From another article, but appropriate-
Quote:Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian:
“If we go back to the moon, or to Mars, we’ll be using her math.”
In the new children's book "How We Got to the Moon: The People, Technology and Daring Feats of Science Behind Humanity's Greatest Adventure" (Random House Children's Books, 2020), award-winning author and illustrator John Rocco beautifully recounts humanity's journey to the moon.
Although he admits the charger might not survive the trip to space. //
Fly me to the Moon, and let me... charge... among the stars
Can someone find the descent rate profile that Duke is referring to here? Did LMPs look at a cheat sheet during the descent, or would they memorize key altitude-versus-ROD reference points?
I think what you are looking for is on page 11 of the Apollo 16 LM Timeline Book. This is the checklist used by the crew during landing.
The numbers in the 200 ft box agree with the quote in your question.
In the 1960s, NASA commissioned Grumman Aircraft to build 15 space-worthy lunar modules, or LMs, for its Apollo program.
The fate of 14 modules is well-documented, but the last - LM-14 - is harder to account for in historical records. We attempted to track down and piece together the mystery of the seemingly missing moon lander.
Most experts we contacted weren't sure where it had gone, but we finally got a convincing answer (with documentation) from one space historian and artist.
- He believes the lander was scrapped and its aerospace-grade metal possibly reused in jet fighters.
Q: It appears from this question that Apollo missions carried Duct Tape and used it for in-flight fixups. Did they carry the other half of the "Universal Repair Kit" - WD40 (or similar)? If so, was it used?
Answers relating to other crewed space missions also welcome.
Universal Repair Kit: This page and many many other pages on the internet. //
A: It's hard to prove a negative, but the answer seems to be NO.
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It's not in D-7434 Stowage and the Support Team Concept, which has tables by location of the typical inventory stowed in the cabin.
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It's not in D-6737 Crew Provisions and Equipment Susbsystem, which describes in detail each of the items in the cabin.
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It's not listed in the actual stowage manifests by mission.
I searched for the terms oil, wd, and lubrica*. There were plenty of false positives such as screWDriver and fWD. Apollo 17 did carry LUBRICANT,HAND in the commander's suit pocket, but that's not WD-40.
I would be highly surprised to find it onboard. Equipment was designed to avoid in-flight maintenance such as lubrication or waterproofing. An important part of WD-40 is a volatile hydrocarbon which evaporates after application; you don't want that in the cabin air. Also, WD-40 is quite flammable, and after the Apollo 1 fire NASA did everything to avoid combustibles inside the cabin.
Ever wanted your own Saturn 1 rocket? For anyone with the means to transport it, it can be yours. //
Mint condition. Only $250k to transport it...
Technology, People, Equipment, Missions
Here's how they did it.
The heart of the engine was the thrust chamber, which mixed and burned the fuel and oxidizer to produce thrust. A domed chamber at the top of the engine supplied liquid oxygen to the injectors, which directed fuel and oxidizer into the thrust chamber for mixing and combustion. An incredibly volatile chamber that had to be tested to perfection. While the Apollo 6 launch was a bit shaky, when they launched the rocket again with its first human crew on Apollo 8, they had fixed the pogo problem.The crew of three made it safely to the moon and back. By the time Apollo 11 launched to the moon in July of 1969, the Saturn V was flying smoothly. During the remaining Apollo missions and subsequent launches the Saturn V and F-1 engines never experienced a failure. It was perfect, and the F-1 engine still holds the record as the largest single-chamber, single-nozzle liquid fuel engine ever flown.As NASA looks to manned missions to the moon and mars, they are developing a new rocket called Space Launch System (SLS). It will require a modern version of the F-1 and NASA engineers have even pulled an old F-1 engine out of storage to learn how to build the next big thing even better by studying this incredible engine with a perfect flying record.
Most astronauts were pilots before being recruited into the space program, but their piloting skills might not have cut it in space when their maneuvers had to be so precise because one small slip could mean crashing into the moon or spinning out into the void with no way to get home. The MIT Instrumentation Lab was selected by NASA to develop the guidance, navigation, and control system for Apollo—the first completely digital fly-by-wire system.
A digital fly-by-wire system meant that a computer controlled all aspects of the spacecraft. In the past, pilots used an analog system, a combination of pulleys and levers and cables to manually manipulate the components of an airplane, but fly-by-wire got rid of all the redundant, clunky parts. Basically, the pilot uses a small joystick—also known as a "pickle-stick”—to fly the craft. The stick movements are translated into electronic signals and transmitted by wires to the flight control computer which then tells the aircraft what to do. Before digital fly-by-wire, astronauts for the Mercury and Gemini programs had complete control over their ship, but now they were expected to put their faith in a digital computer, something they weren't comfortable with. But after years of testing and training, the fly-by-wire system proved itself and they learned to trust the computer. Apollo 8 became the first manned space mission to test the digital fly-by-wire system, going around the moon and back. Without it, Neil Armstrong, would never have landed on the moon.
After the success of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong worked for NASA as the Associate Administrator for Aeronautics. He was asked by the Air Force to help them with their efforts to update their old school military jets that still used analog fly-by-wire flight systems. Armstrong suggested they use the same system he used on Apollo 11. That idea hadn't even occurred to them. While some engineers were wary of putting their lives in the hands of computer, just like past astronauts, Armstrong said, “I just went to the moon with one.” The Air Force eventually agreed and MIT was brought on to modify an F-8 fighter jet, which, in 1972, became the first aircraft to use a digital fly-by-wire system. Its success paved the way for all military and commercial planes to be outfitted with the same revolutionary system and there isn't a single plane today that doesn't use a digital fly-by-wire system, thanks to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo legacy.
they needed a way to hardwire their computer programs and coding so it could not be erased during a loss of power. The system they devised was called rope memory, with software being carefully woven through wire ropes to create physical distinctions between "1s" and "0s," as in the binary computer code.
"Informally, the programs were called ‘ropes’ because of the durable form of read-only memory into which they were transformed for flight, which resembled a rope of woven copper wire,” said MIT engineer Don Eyles. “For the lunar missions, 36K words of ‘fixed’ (read-only) memory, each word consisting of 15 bits plus a parity bit, were available for the program.”
These tiny ropes allowed NASA to store an insane amount of data needed for basic flight procedures without taking up too much room on the already packed ship. The process to weave the software into the ropes was so tedious and slow, it would easily take months to create just one program.
Eyles says that with core rope memory, plus the Apollo’s on-board RAM (erasable) memory, NASA landed the lunar module on the moon with just about 152 kilobytes of memory with running speeds of 0.043 megahertz.