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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Stand by. I'll give it to you exactly. Looks like around 130,000, but stand by.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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11, Houston. The exact range is 125,200 miles, and you're traveling 4486 feet per second.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Latest on Luna 15—TASS reported this morning that the spacecraft was placed in orbit close to the lunar surface, and everything seems to be functioning normally on the vehicle. Sir Bernard Lovell said the craft appears to be in an orbit of about 62 nautical miles. Over.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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And also, President Nixon has reported—or declared a day of participation on Monday for all federal employees to enable everybody to follow your activities on the surface. Many state and city governments and businesses throughout the country are also giving their employees the day off, so it looks like you're going to have a pretty large audience for the EVA.
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Neil Armstrong (CDR)
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Houston, Apollo 11. We've stopped PTC. We're in the right position; we're setting up for TV.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 11, Houston. We have you stopped in the PTC; attitude looks good to us. Mike, I would like to get a COMM check. The last couple of the transmissions from the spacecraft has been garbled from especially Buzz. Could you both give me a COMM check? Over.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Roger. You are about four-by with a slight decrease/increase in volume, sort of a wavy volume to it. Over.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. We got the network all configured for the TV. You can start any time you want. Over.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Okay, 11. We have a picture. We see the Earth right in the center of the screen. Over.
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Neil Armstrong (CDR)
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Roger, Houston. Apollo 11 calling in from about 130,000 miles out. And we'll zoom our camera in slowly and get the most magnification we can. Over.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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11, Houston. The definition is pretty good on our monitor here. The color is not too …, at least on this set. Could you describe what you're looking at? Over.
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Neil Armstrong (CDR)
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Roger. You're seeing Earth, as we see it, out our left-hand window, just a little more than a half Earth. We're looking at the eastern Pacific Ocean, and the north half of the top half of the screen, we can see North America, Alaska, United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America. South America becomes invisible just off beyond the terminator or inside the shadow. We can see the oceans with a definite blue cast, see white bands of major cloud formations across the Earth, and can see coastlines, pick out the western U.S., San Joaquin Valley, the Sierra mountain range, the peninsula of Baja California, and we can see some cloud formations over southeastern U.S. There's one definite mild storm southwest of Alaska, looks like about 500 to 1000 miles, and another very minor storm showing the south end of the screen near the—or a long ways off of the equator, probably 45 degrees or more south latitude. Can pick out the browns in the landforms pretty well. Greens do not show up very well. Some greens showing along the northeastern—northwestern coast of the United States and northwestern coast of Canada.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Roger, 11. It's a pretty good picture on clarity here. We're having—can you tell us—It appears to us that there are two distinct cloud- formations trending east/west, one approximately about along the equator, and one around 30 or so south latitude. Could you tell us exactly where those cross the landmasses? Over.
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Neil Armstrong (CDR)
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Yes. They cross just south of the lower part of Mexico, probably through Central America. That is the equatorial band which we assume to be the intertropical convergence zone. The other band, which stands about 30 south, correctly appears to join the equator at the far left, or just beyond the horizon on the left edge of Earth, or at least it looks like it's going to join it. We don't have an explanation for that banding.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Roger, Neil. Thank you. It also appears that just to the left of the terminator, up in the northern hemisphere, there's a cloudband trending—a gap in the cloud, trending northwest/southeast. It appears to us that that comes in about over the northern United States, or perhaps the central United States. Is that about correct? Over.
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Neil Armstrong (CDR)
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I can see on the monitor the thing you were talking about, but right now I can't get my eye to the window to pick out just where it crosses the shoreline.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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You guys are doing a good job. It's a real steady picture, here. We're—Clarity is excellent. The color, it's—the clouds are—The whites are distinct. The rest if it looks like, to me anyway on the monitor I'm observing, is a fairly greenish blue is the way I'd describe it. Over.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Roger. On this monitor, the landmasses appear to be just a darker grayish color rather than a brown.
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Neil Armstrong (CDR)
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Well, it's true that we do not have the depths of color at this range that we enjoyed at 50,000 miles out. However, the oceans still are a definite blue and the continents are generally brownish in cast, although it is true that they're tending more toward gray now than they were at the closer range.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Roger, 11. We've been—I've just been vectored to another monitor and sure enough, the browns are coming in a lot more distinctly on the Eidephor that we have up on our screen in the control center. Over.
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Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 11, Houston. That practice did you some good. It's looking—real smooth roll, there.
Spoken on July 17, 1969, 11:31 p.m. UTC (55 years, 3 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
