Antares on the Moon

Apollo 14's LM, Antares, landed at Fra Mauro on February 5, 1971. It seemed doubtful for a while that the landing would happen. A loose piece of solder in a switch kept signaling an 'abort' condition. Even though everyone knew it was a small and intermittent hardware problem, there was concern that the flight computer would get the erroneous signal during powered descent and abort the landing. MIT software engineers hastily wrote a patch to work around the condition. They radioed it up and Ed Mitchell, LM Pilot, entered the changed software by hand on the DSKY keypad.

Unfortunately, the software patch contained a bug which caused the landing radar not to lock on. Flight rules called for an abort if the radar did not lock on. Mitchell reset the circuit breaker, and that did the trick. There was a lot of speculation later on as to whether Shepard, intent on making a Moon landing, would have proceeded with the landing even without the radar. As it was, he made the closest landing to the designated landing spot of any of the Apollo commanders.

So, this was yet another nail-biter to listen to as we followed the TV coverage. Pete Conrad and Al Bean in Apollo 12 had the only trouble-free touchdown to this point.

I'm looking forward to meeting Ed Mitchell at Spacefest in San Diego in two weeks! I can't wait to hear from him what it was like to work with Al Shepard in such close quarters. I can only imagine that one would have to give Shepard plenty of leeway.

This booklet, "Science at Fra Mauro," was put out by NASA shortly after the mission ended. I picked up this copy at NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs in June 1971.

Beep Beep, My Ass!

Less than a year after the Apollo 13 near-disaster, NASA was sending another crew on its way to the Moon. Apollo 14 launched on January 31, 1971 and headed toward Fra Mauro, which was Apollo 13's intended target.

The official crew patch designates the NASA Astronaut Pin headed toward the Moon, and lists the name of its three crewmen. Alan Shepard, the first American in space, commanded the flight. He had been grounded for an inner-ear disease since the early 1960's, and following an operation that cured the problems, he demanded to be put back into the flight rotation. Some say that he stole command of Apollo 14 from Gordon Cooper, although the semi-official word was that NASA management pulled Cooper for his somewhat lackadaisical approach to training.

In any case, Shepard was at 47 the "old man" of the program, the oldest astronaut on flight status. The backup crew of Gene Cernan, Joe Engle, and Ron Evans, secretly had a patch made for themselves. They stowed the patches in every compartment of the Command Module, so that one would drift out every time someone opened a locker. The patch depicts an aged Wile E. Coyote heading toward the Moon, to which the Roadrunner 'B Team' has already beaten him.

Whenever Shepard encountered one of these patches on the flight, he is reported to have radioed to the ground, "Tell Cernan, 'Beep beep, my ass!'"

Missing Columbia

Six years ago today, Space Shuttle Columbia was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere following a 15-day research mission. It disintegrated over Texas less than 20 minutes from its scheduled landing at Kennedy Space Center.

I was leaving a church choir rehearsal that Saturday morning when I turned on the car radio and heard the heartbreaking news. I raced home to turn on the TV. The video of Columbia breaking apart into multiple streaks was devastating to watch. Debris rained down across Texas and Louisiana, and people were recovering pieces of the spacecraft for weeks afterward.

I couldn't believe that we had lost a Shuttle during re-entry; that part of flight seemed almost routine at this point. However, it made me recall Columbia's maiden flight, the very first Space Shuttle mission in 1981. When the payload bay doors opened and the cameras pointed aft, we saw to our horror that several thermal tiles were missing from the left OMS pod. There was serious concern about if and how the loss of this thermal protection might impact re-entry. Fortunately, she made it home safely that mission. Unfortunately, that helped start the perception that the Shuttles were able to take punishment to their thermal protection system and still make it back home okay.

Columbia's loss grounded the Shuttle for a year and a half until safety could be improved. Although the Shuttle is flying again, next year is scheduled to mark the end of its missions.

I've lived to see three fatal accidents on US spacecraft as well as several on Soviet capsules. I know that there will be more someday...but I hope not for a long, long time.

Beginning NASA's toughest week

January 27 begins a sad week for NASA. We observe the anniversaries of the Apollo 1 fire, the Challenger explosion, and the loss of Columbia this week.

January 27, 1967 was the date of the launch pad fire that killed the crew of what became known as Apollo 1. The crew died of asphyxiation in a fire that swept through the pure oxygen atmosphere inside their capsule while they were performing a test. America had lost several astronauts before in jet aircraft accidents, but never in an actual space vehicle

This badge is from the "Mission Failure Investigation Team," which was charged with finding and correcting the cause of the fire. The team quickly learned that, in the rush to get the mission into orbit, NASA and its contractors had allowed a horrible collection of stripped wire, 34 square feet of flammable Velcro, and nearly 70 pounds of other flammable materials to creep into the design. In a high-pressure, pure oxygen environment, the slightest static spark could have been enough to start a raging inferno.

I remember hearing the news of the fire on the radio. We were riding in our Ford Econoline van that morning in Naha, Okinawa, where my dad was stationed. We were completely stunned at the news. As much as a 10-year-old boy could understand the situation, my feelings were disbelief that something like that could happen to a US space capsule, and a deep fear that the Apollo program would be cancelled. I was particularly sad at the loss of Ed White, who had been very much a personal hero and a source of fascination for me after his Gemini IV spacewalk.

As horrible as the tragedy was, the prevailing opinion is that NASA would never have gotten man to the Moon by 1969 had the accident not occurred. It focused NASA on doing things right rather than rushing ahead blindly, making for much safer spacecraft. It also forced NASA to rethink its strategy for incrementally testing the Apollo hardware in Earth orbit, helping NASA instead focus on "all-up" testing that began with Apollo 8 in December 1968.

In memoriam Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee...

Opportunity on Mars - 5 years and counting

On January 24, 2004 (US time), the Mars rover "Opportunity" joined her twin sister, Spirit, on the surface of Mars. Spaceflight fans from around the world were once again able to follow the evens of entry, descent, and landing via live broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

When Opportunity sent back its first images shortly after landing, we were astonished to see what appeared to be cliff faces in the distance with outcrops of layered rock, the very thing Opportunity was sent to look for. It looked like a totally alien landscape compared to that in which Spirit landed. Spirit's landing site was strewn with volcanic rocks and looked very much like what we saw with the two Viking landers and the Mars Pathfinder. Opportunity's environs, on the other hand, showed no rocks at all on the surface around her, just sand, and what appeared to be cliff walls all around.

My first impression on seeing the first panorama from Opportunity was, "Gee, it landed in a crater!" Much to my delight, that turned out to be correct. The distant cliff walls were in fact only a few dozen feet away and were not much bigger than a roadside curb on Earth. Opportunity was able to drive over to the outcrop and explore it thoroughly in a couple of weeks.

With a 'warranted' lifetime of 90 sols and a couple of hundred meters of driving, Opportunity has really shown its mettle. It has lasted 5 Earth years on Mars and has driven 14 kilometers away from the crater in which it landed. It proved the past existence of surface water on Mars, spent much of a year inside Endurance Crater, photographed the wreckage of its own heat shield up close, returned the first images of a meteorite sitting on the surface of another planet, got stuck several times in sand dunes, survived a crippling dust storm, and most recently spent more than a year exploring Victoria Crater. It has now embarked on a multi-year, 12 km journey to Endeavour Crater. I hope she gets there!

I'm eternally grateful to JPL for giving the public immediate access to the photos from the rovers. Talented image specialists on sites such as unmannedspaceflight.com can quickly turn these into full-color or amazing 3D images for the world to see. With Spirit and Opportunity on the move, we get an unprecedented chance to "be there" on Mars while sitting in the comfort of our own homes.

These two launch team patches were produced before Spirit and Opportunity were given their names. MER-A became Spirit and MER-B was Opportunity.

NASA tests the Lunar Module

On January 22, 1968, NASA launched the Apollo 5 mission, the first - and only - unmanned test of the Lunar Module. The Saturn I rocket used for the launch was the one originally intended to launch the Apollo 1 crew into space in 1967. It was undamaged by the capsule fire and was available for this flight.

Nothing like this had ever flown before - a spacecraft with an engine that could be throttled, and which would by itself not be capable of returning its crew to the Earth.

The LM was already 8 months behind schedule in its development. To prevent further delays, NASA decided to launch the LM without its landing gear, since the legs were not crucial to the test.

A software bug prematurely shut down the descent engine on its initial test. NASA engineers executed a workaround and were able to fire the descent engine twice, and then run a "fire in the hole" test of an emergency separation of the LM's descent and ascent stages.

The test was considered successful enough that a second planned unmanned flight of the LM was deemed unnecessary. The LM for that flight now sits in the National Air and Space Museum.

Happy birthday, Buzz Aldrin

Buzz Aldrin, the second human being to walk on the Moon, turns 79 years young today.

"Dr. Rendezvous" was not one of the more popular astronauts among his peers. However, no one could dispute his mastery of rendezvous theory (which was immensely useful in shaping the Gemini missions), or his flawless EVA techniques on Gemini XII, which proved that man could work effectively outside of a space capsule.

I put together this "Buzz at the ladder" diorama in 2006. It uses a Dragon 1/6 scale Buzz Aldrin figure, which is posable and remarkably detailed. The LM leg is made from wooden dowel and PVC pipe, wrapped in two colors of Mylar insulation blanket and Cadbury chocolate wrapper. The LM ladder rails and "rivets" are made from aircraft aluminum, which was kindly supplied by a fellow space enthusiast from collectSpace. I made the Apollo 11 commemorative "We came in peace for all mankind" plaque by scanning a photo of the actual LM plaque and printing it on aluminum colored contact paper.

I'm looking forward to meeting Buzz at Spacefest next month!