One of the most widely known photographs of Earth, this image was taken by the crew of the final Apollo mission as the crew made its way to the Moon. Dubbed the “Blue Marble,” Earth is revealed as both a vast planet home to billions of creatures and a beautiful orb capable of fitting into the pocket of the universe.
Some astronauts didn’t want to bring TV cameras on board – but the footage captured has gone down as some of the most memorable in human history.
Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 – Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders – were about to get their first glimpse of the far side of the Moon.
“We fired the spacecraft engine something like four minutes to slow down enough to get into lunar orbit,” says Borman. “We’re about halfway through when we looked down and there was the Moon.”
“The lunar surface was terribly distressed with meteorites, holes, craters, volcanic residue,” he says. “But one of the things that struck me was there's absolutely no colour, it was either grey or black or white.”
“It was a very interesting first view
But the most captivating view came as they swung back around on the fourth orbit and Anders spotted the Earth in the command module window.
“Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!” he exclaimed. “You got a colour film, Jim? Hand me a roll of colour, quick, would you?”
These cartridges containing reels of 70mm film could be easily swapped on the crew’s Hasselblad cameras.
“Take several, take several of them,” said Lovell. “Here, give it to me!”
Once the film was developed back on Earth several weeks later, Nasa image 2383 (and the frames either side) would become one of the most famous pictures of all time.
The picture, showing the Earth in the context of the barren Moon, was one of the unexpected achievements of the Apollo programme.
“I think it's probably one of the more significant pictures that humans have ever taken,” agrees Borman. “The Earth was the only thing in the entire universe that had any colour – a beautiful sight, we're very fortunate to live on this planet.”
In the run-up to the Apollo missions, there was tremendous resistance among many Nasa engineers and astronauts to the idea of carrying TV cameras for live broadcasts from space. It was frivolous and would interfere with the mission, they argued.
The formidable head of mission control, Chris Kraft, thought otherwise and insisted that TV was a way of showing American taxpayers how their money was being spent.
The first astronauts to carry a TV camera into orbit were the crew of Apollo 7 – Wally Schirra, Don Eisele and Walt Cunningham. After a shaky start, they soon got the hang of adding a little showbiz to the space programme.
Despite their shortcomings, these first TV broadcasts from space – a total of seven – nonetheless won an enthusiastic global following. They gave the missions an immediacy that wasn’t possible with film or photography.
When the Apollo 7 crew returned to Earth, they were rewarded with an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for their efforts.
Later missions would push the boundaries of TV technology, with improved cameras, transmitters and content. Apollo 8 broadcast live from lunar orbit for the first time and, during Apollo 10, the crew produced the first colour TV shows from the Moon.
Broadcasting from the relatively bright and controlled conditions of the Apollo spacecraft was very different from transmitting the first images from the surface of another world. But Nasa realised it was essential to broadcast mankind’s first footsteps on the Moon.
Nasa wasn’t taking any risks with ensuring the live video reached the Earth and arranged for the transmissions to be received by 64-metre wide dishes in Goldstone, California and at Parkes in New South Wales, Australia.
Engineers at Parkes spent months working with Nasa to prepare the giant radio telescope to receive the first TV pictures from the lunar surface. On the 21 July 1969, everything was ready for the big event but then the weather suddenly changed.
“Just minutes before the Moonwalk was due to begin, a violent squall hit the telescope with winds that were over the safe operating speeds,” says Parkes operations scientist John Sarkissian. “The astronauts may have been on the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon,” says Sarkissian, “but it was the ocean of storms here.”
During the later Apollo missions, a TV camera was fixed to the lunar rover to give viewers a drivers-eye view of the Moon. The camera was remote-controlled from Earth, which also enabled operators to capture one of the coolest shots in TV history. As Apollo 17 blasts-off from the Moon, the camera tilts to follow its trajectory
Around 600 million people watched as Neil Armstrong took his first tentative small step on the lunar surface. At that time, it was the world’s largest-ever TV audience.
But by the time of Apollo 13, just nine months later, the world had already lost interest. As Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise travelled to the Moon, none of the national US TV networks carried their broadcast.
28,000: Distance the Blue Marble image taken from, in miles
As the Apollo 17 crew headed to the Moon for the final time in 1972, they were instructed to take a picture looking back at the Earth. The image – known as the Blue Marble – gives a unique perspective of the whole Earth hanging in the blackness of space. Not only does it show the South Pole but it puts Africa – not the USA – at the centre.
Even when we return to the Moon, these first images – particularly those of Earth – will have a special place in the history of humankind.
In the words of Apollo 8 commander, Frank Borman: “I don't think any of us paid any attention to the fact that we would be going all the way to the Moon and be more interested in looking at the Earth.”
The Apollo programme pushed space and computing technology to its limit. Cutting edge at the time, some of the tech used seems alarmingly simple today.
74: Memory (ROM) of Apollo guidance computer, in kilobytes
Computer technology was one of the greatest – and long lasting – achievements of Apollo. From the solid-state microcomputer fitted to the lunar lander, to mighty IBM mainframes, with their flashing lights and banks of magnetic tape.
Although the 74 KB ROM and 4 KB RAM memory of the AGC sounds puny today – the equivalent of a 1980s home computer such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 – it was an impressive machine. Designed for the rigours of spaceflight, its software was hard-wired into coils and, crucially, it was set up so it couldn’t crash.
22: Diameter of Saturn V computer, in feet
If the Apollo Guidance Computer was impressive for its miniaturisation, then the computer controlling the Saturn V Moon rocket must rank as the largest ever launched.
Fitted within a ring above the top of the upper (third) stage of the rocket, the Saturn V instrument unit was massive. As well as digital and analogue computers, the unit contained all the electronics to control and monitor the rocket that would get men to the Moon.
Designed by Wernher von Braun’s rocketry team in Huntsville, Alabama, the computer was built by IBM. It was practically the equivalent of flying a mainframe computer into space and then abandoning it.
When Apollo 12 was struck by lightning during launch, knocking out power in the command module, mission controllers believe the circular design of the rocket’s computer saved it from the power surge.
It's nearly 50 years since the US became the first country to land men on the Moon.
The Apollo 11 mission was a huge moment in US and world history, but what exactly happened and why does it matter?
Nasa has released new images of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon, taken from an orbiting spacecraft.
They show scientific equipment, the lunar rovers and a trail of footprints left by astronauts 40 years ago.
Director Tom Jennings and engineer Poppy Northcutt reflect on seminal era in space flight
A set of original videotape recordings of the Apollo 11 Moon landing that were bought for $217.77 at a government surplus auction by a former NASA intern in the 1970s could raise up to $2 million when they are auctioned this month. //
Viewed only three times since they were bought directly from NASA at the auction in 1976, the tapes are the only surviving first-generation recordings of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon, according to Sotheby’s. In a statement, Sotheby’s explains that the tapes are “sharper and more distinct” than the few tapes that survive from network television broadcasts of the Moon landing.
The videotapes are from the collection of Gary George, who purchased them while serving an intern at NASA. In June 1976, George attended an auction at Houston’s Ellington Air Force Base where he bought a single lot of some 1,150 reels of magnetic tape whose “Owning Agency Or Reporting Office,” was listed as NASA.
“Among the reels were about sixty-five boxes of 2-inch, reel-to-reel videotapes of the type used by television stations,” explains Sotheby’s in a statement, noting that George planned to sell the used tapes, which could be re-recorded, to local TV stations.
However, after selling some of the tapes and donating others to Lamar University and a local church, George’s father noticed that three of the boxes were labeled: “APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1 [–3]” and “VR2000 525 Hi Band 15 ips.”
Thinking that these particular tapes may be worth hanging on to, George saved the three boxes, giving them little thought until early 2008 when he learned that NASA was attempting to locate its original slow scan videotapes of the Apollo 11 EVA (Extravehicular Activity) in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing,” explains Sotheby’s.
It took two years and cost $5 million—but the results are absolutely spectacular.
HOUSTON—Following the completion of a multi-year, multi-million-dollar restoration, NASA's historic Apollo Mission Operations Control Room 2 ("MOCR 2") is set to reopen to the public next week. The $5 million in funding for the restoration was partially provided by Space Center Houston, but the majority of the money was donated by the city of Webster, the Houston suburb where the Johnson Space Center is located. Another half-million in funding came from the general public via a Kickstarter campaign (disclosure: your humble author was a backer).For the past two years, historians and engineers from the Kansas Cosmosphere's Spaceworks team have been lovingly restoring and detailing the 1,200-pound (544kg) historic sage green Ford-Philco consoles that populated the control room—repairing damage from decades of casual neglect and also adding in the correct control panels so that each console now correctly mirrors how it would have been configured for an Apollo flight.
Ars was invited to view the restored MOCR 2 last week as the final finishing restoration touches were still being applied. We conducted some interviews and shot some photos while technicians and construction workers bustled around us, hammering and screwing the last bits and bobs into place. The room's lighting system was in the process of being worked on, and the room flickered several times between fully illuminated daytime lighting and dim twilight—providing an even more accurate glimpse of what it might have looked like during an actual mission.
The Lunar Ascent Engine was used during the Apollo missions to ascent from the lunar surface back to the Command and Service Module. There was one risky aspect of that engine: it was not possible to fire it repeatedly. Each ascent engine used on the Apollo missions was fired for the first time on the Moon. //
Why was the engine manufactured like that? //
According to a Boeing document titled "Apollo Spacecraft Engine Specific Impulse Part II dated October 1968 (bold mine):
the injector and valve assembly are first calibrated and then acceptance test fired in a water cooled steel chamber with an ablative liner. A single compatibility test of 460 second duration is then carried out. Finally, the injector and valve assembly are then assembled with their flight chamber and the complete engine is acceptance tested...
The description of the acceptance tests for the complete engine includes:
The engine and its thrust measuring rig are mounted horizontally in a capsule. Altitude pressure is obtained by a steam ejector and maintained during engine firing by an exhaust driven diffuser. Propellant tanks are pressurized with helium. There is provision for both temperature conditioning and helium saturating the propellants. A minimum of two satisfactory engine acceptance tests of 15 second duration have to be carried out. ... Throat and exit area measurements are taken prior to the first test and after the last in each test series.
The Insider.com article 'We could have lost the Apollo 11 crew:' A once-classified anomaly nearly killed NASA's first moon astronauts, a new book reveals describes a problem during reentry of several Apollo missions where the Service Module jettison did not execute properly and so it remained dangerously close to the Command Module.
There is a lot of technical information in the NASA links. There seems to have been some sort of problem with sloshing that prevented the Service Module from continuing to move away from the Command Module, and this was addressed by a Service Module modification implemented for Apollo 14.
Question: How did sloshing prevent the Apollo Service Module from moving safely away from the Command Module and how was this fixed? //
...the service module, upon being jettisoned on a lunar return flight, should have entered the earth's atmosphere, then skipped out into a highly elliptical earth orbit. Thus, the risk of recontact with the command module during entry would have been eliminated. However, on Apollo 8, 10 and 11, the service module did not skip out as expected. //
they reduced the roll burn time to get the proper roll rate and simply commanded the -X thrusters to burn for only 25 seconds instead of burning to propellant depletion. The service module would still tumble due to the sloshing, but without the thrusters firing, it wouldn't accelerate back toward the command module. The shorter separation burn would not be enough to prevent prompt reentry of the service module, but apparently that wasn't a necessary feature of the operation.
I think the article greatly overstates the seriousness of the anomaly, by the way; it didn't "nearly kill" the crew of Apollo 11.
How the first moon landing was saved. The story of the people who made Apollo 11 happen
Download 13 Minutes to the MoonDon't expect a huge structure like the International Space Station.
Mission control might never have witnessed Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon if it weren't for the vision of men like Eugene Shoemaker
On the Moon right now, there lies an aluminium sculpture of an astronaut with a beautiful message.
Engineers on Friday released preliminary data about what they believe went wrong in the last moments of Beresheet’s flight, a day after the Israeli spacecraft crash-landed on the moon.
Engineers believe a technical glitch — likely in the component that measures the spacecraft’s altitude in relation to the surface — triggered a chain reaction of events that caused the main engine of the spacecraft to stop.
Without the main engine running as a braking mechanism, it was impossible to slow Beresheet’s speed from 1,700 kilometers per hour (1,000 mph) to 0 just above the moon’s surface. Engineers were able to restart the engine, but by this time the spacecraft was too close to the surface to slow down sufficiently.
No private company has ever achieved what SpaceIL is trying to do.
Thursday 3:35pm ET Update: The Moon remains a harsh mistress.
On Thursday, SpaceIL's lunar lander attempted to make a soft landing on the surface of the Moon, but it apparently crashed instead into the gray world. Although a postmortem analysis has not yet been completed, telemetry from the spacecraft indicated a failure of the spacecraft's main engine about 10km above the Moon. Thereafter, it appears to have struck the Moon at a velocity of around 130 meters per second.
“We have had a failure in the spacecraft," Opher Doron, general manager of the space division at Israel Aerospace Industries, which built the lander, said during the landing webcast. "We have unfortunately not managed to land successfully.” Israeli engineers vowed to try again.
The failure to land is perhaps understandable—it is extremely hard to land on the Moon, Mars, or any other object in the Solar System. In this case, the private effort to build the lunar lander worked on a shoestring budget of around $100 million to build their spacecraft, which had performed admirably right up until the last few minutes before its planned touchdown.
Original post: It has been 48 days since the Beresheet spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket and began a spiraling series of orbits to raise itself toward the Moon. Last week, the 180kg vehicle fired its engines to enter into lunar orbit, and now the time has come for it to attempt a soft landing on the Moon.
"What it means to me is that the responsibility is very high."