Spacelog Apollo 11

Roger. We put our—our roll for MSFN track in on the wrong side. Going to continue rolling around until we get high gain here. And, we'll delete the—the pitch that was scheduled after the TVC check.

Say again please, 11.

Roger. We put the wrong sign in —

Roger.

— for the roll correction to get MSFN high gain, and we're continuing rolling around to get the proper attitude for high gain at this time. We will delete the pitch maneuver that was scheduled subsequent to—subsequent to the TV check since we already have those pictures.

Roger. We copy. And we recommend that you go ahead and complete your TVC test on board. If you have problems, we'll talk to you when you get around further into the high gain antenna attitude. Over.

Houston, how do you read on high gain?

Roger. We concur, and we surely wish we could see it firsthand, also.

We're going over the Messier series of craters right at the time, looking vertically down on them, and Messier A we can see good sized blocks in the bottom of the crater. I don't know what our altitude is now, but in any case, those are pretty good size blocks.

Okay. Just roughly, it looks like you are about 120 miles or 130 miles right now—make that 127 miles.

We're approaching PDI point now. Over.

There's Secchi in sight.

We're going over Mount Marilyn at the present time, and it's ignition point.

Roger. Thank you. And our preliminary tracking data for the first few minutes shows you in a 61.6 by 169.5 orbit. Over.

Roger.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.

Go ahead.

11, Houston. During your SPS burn as played back on tape down here, we've observed the nitrogen tank Bravo pressure in the SPS system dropping a little bit more than we anticipated. It's holding steady right now. We'll continue to watch it and keep you posted if anything comes up. Over.

Roger. Thank you.

Right. And it has held steady —

Currently going over Maskelyne Mas -

Okay.

And Boothill, Duke Island, Sidewinder, looking at Maskelyne W, that's the yaw round checkpoint, and just coming into the terminator. At the terminator it's ashen and gray. As you get further away from the terminator, it gets to be a lighter gray, and as you get closer to the subsolar point, you can definitely see browns and tans on the ground, according to the last Apollo 11 observation anyway.

Roger, 11. We're recording your comments for posterity.

(Laughter) Okay.

Did somebody in the background—do they accuse us of being compromisers? Huh!

And landing site is well into the dark here. I don't think we're going to be able to see anything of the landing site this early.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. When you have a free minute, could you give us your onboard readout of N₂ tank Bravo, please. And we'd like to make sure you understand that ever since you stopped thrusting with the SPS, the temperature in this tank has remained steady. Over. Make that the pressure has remained steady.

Roger. We understand tank pressure has stayed steady. Thank you.

Roger. We're showing the N₂ tank pressure and the tank Bravo to he 1960, something like that, and Alfa is, oh, about 2250. Over.

Roger. We show 2249 in Alfa and 1946 down here.

Houston, Apollo 11. How about coming up with some roll, pitch, and yaw angles in which to stop this so called ORB RATE that I'm doing.

Roger. Standby.

We'll have them for you in a minute, 11.

Okay. And time to stop also, please.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.

Go ahead, Houston.

Roger. We show you, in the flight plan, staying in orbital rate until about 79 hours 10 minutes. Do you have some particular attitude or reason for wanting to go inertial? Over.