Spacelog Apollo 11

For use in connection with the prime meridian crossing, you have an orbital period now of 2 hours 8 minutes and 37 seconds. Over.

Thank you.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. A little over 2 minutes to LOS. All your systems parameters and orbit are looking good from the ground. We have AOS on the other side at 78 23 31. Over.

Roger. 78 23 21.

Roger. That was 31 on the end.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.

This is Apollo 11. Are you picking up our signals okay?

Apollo 11, this is Houston. Affirmative. We are reading you loud and clear on voice and we have a good clear TV picture, a little bright crater in the —

— No, no, no —

— the bottom of the picture. I guess that's the spot on the tube.

I'm sorry about that one.

And if you give us P00 and ACCEPT, we will uplink our new state vector and target load to you.

Okay.

Houston, Apollo 11. One of the larger craters on the back side—I noticed a small, dark speck on the outer wall and I put the monocular on it. I was able to see—oh, an area maybe a quarter of a mile in diameter. It was really a freshlooking dark colored pit, and that seems to be in contrast with all the other fresh little craters or holes that you can perceive on the walls of any of these craters. Around this particular one there seems to be two or three of these—especially the one that caught my attention. Quite remarkable. Over.

Roger. Do you have a location on that one?

No, not a precise one. I've got several pictures of it, though.

Roger. We copy.

We're getting a beautiful picture in down there now, 11. The color's coming in quite clearly, and we can see the horizon and the relative blackness of space, and without getting into the question of grays and browns, it looks, at least on our monitor, sort of a brownish gray.

That's a good, reasonable way of describing it. It appears to me as though it made a difference just sitting back in the tunnel and gazing at all windows; it makes a difference which one you're looking out of. For example, the camera right now is looking out the number 5 window, and it definitely gives a rosier or tanner tinge, especially when you look straight through it and not at an angle. Over.

Roger.

And if you rear back 95 or 100 degrees …

… Still holding … Okay.

Say again, 11?

I'd say we're about 95 degrees east, coming up on Smyth's Sea.

Roger. And for your information, we show you at an altitude of about 92 miles above the surface right now.

Okay.

Houston, Apollo 11. Could you observe a difference in the N₂ pressures before LOI? It seems to me as though the two were not equal on the … B tank was a little low on pressure. Over.

I'm flying it in SPS minimum impulse, Houston, and it's rather difficult to keep it on a constant data. The LM wants to wander up and down. I'm not sure if it's in response to MASCONN's or what, but I can get it completely stabilized in DATA and let it alone, and in another couple of minutes it will have developed its own rate.

This is Houston. Roger.

Houston, we'll be moving shortly from the side window to the hatch window, and we'll try and pick up some of the landmarks that we'll be looking at as we approach the powered descent. Over.

11, this is Houston. Roger. And we're through with the uplinks; the computer is yours. You can go to BLOCK and we'll have the information on nitrogen for you shortly. Over.

Roger. Copy.

Okay, Houston. Several minutes ago I was exactly steady on data, and since then I have been moving toward the LM, pointed straight down toward the radius vector, and that's been despite a number of down minimum pitch impulses.

Roger.

We're over Smyth's Sea right now.

Roger.

We're about 88 degrees east, I would estimate.

We show you about south of the—southwest of the crater Jansky right now.

Smyth Sea doesn't look much like a sea. It—The area which is devoid of craters, of which there's not very much, is sort of a hilly looking area. It's not like the maria at all.

Roger. We copy that about the sea, and it looks like you were just giving us a view of the crater Neper, the large crater on the left, and Jansky on the right.

We think you're close, but no cigar.

11, this is Houston. Would you care to comment on some of these craters as we go by?

Roger. We're approaching the approach path to ignition. This is equivalent to 13 minutes before ignition, and we're at about 83 degrees, I guess—83 degrees east. That correspond to location you're holding there presently?

Roger. We're showing your present position as about 77—76 degrees east looking back towards the east.

Hey, you should be looking back at Smyth Sea now.

Roger.

Okay.

Houston, what you're seeing in the middle of the screen now is the crater Schubert and Gilbert U is in the center right now; and this comes up at about—a little over 12 minutes before power decent. Instead of me looking—Instead of looking back at it, we'd be looking straight down at it in descent.

Roger.

And we show you at an altitude now of about 110 miles; and, of course, you'll be considerably lower at the initiation of powered descent.

Okay, Houston. Look at register 3 on the DSKY data. This data is increasing toward my desired of 315; and I'll let the hand controller alone here, and I'll bet you it reverses itself.

Roger, 11. We're watching the DSKY now, and it's still coming in beautifully on the TV.

Okay. There's—on the right side of the screen at the present time, there's a triple crater with—with a small crater between the first and second; and the one at the bottom of the screen is Schubert Y. Zoom in; it does have a central peak in Schubert Y. Actually, several of them, and you can observe those plus the rim craters at the bottom of your screen.

Roger. We're seeing the central peak quite clearly now.

Okay. We're zooming in now on a crater called Schubert N. Schubert N, very conical inside walls and the bottom appears to be nearly flat.

Look at data on the DSKY. It's stabilized and is holding steady now.

Roger.

Looking out the window I can see a number of small craters on the bottom of Schubert N.

We're coming up on the Foaming Sea where I'll be doing some P22 marking on a crater of my choice, name of crater, Camp.

Okay. We'll be watching for Neper.

And notice register 3 has reversed itself, and it's heading back the other way now without any pitch thruster firing.

Roger, Mike. We confirm that you've changed the direction of your pitch rate.

Generally speaking —

The crater —

— The tendency seems to be to pull the LM down toward the center of the Moon there as in a gravity gradient experiment.

Roger, 11. We copy —

It may have something to do with MASSCON's or it may —

Roger. We copy …

…

It may have something to do with MASSCON's or it may just be the peculiarity of the DSKY display.

Okay. We've observed the behavior of your DSKY, and I think we've got the data here to work on it. Let us grind around a little while on it, and we'll report back to you, probably in a REV or two.

Okay. Well, in the meantime, I'm going to pitch down toward 315.

Roger.

Three craters—three horizontal craters that you now have in the field of view are immediately underneath the ground track. The right hand is the largest crater that you see, Dubiago P.

Roger. We concur on the identification of that crater.

And we show you coming up on landmark Alfa 1 here shortly.

Roger. Mike's having his first look at Alfa 1 at the present time.

Yea. It's a very bright crater. It's not a large one but an extremely bright one. It looks like a very recent and, I would guess, impact crater with rays streaming out in all directions which should make my—Correction—the Foaming Sea easy to see coming up on it now. Crater Camp is one of the smaller ones out on the—on the floor of the Foaming Sea.

Here we show you over the Sea of Fertility now, and we ought to have Langrenus down south of track a few degrees, about 9 degrees south of track.

Now the crater that's in the center of the screen now is Webb. We'd be looking straight down on it at about 6 minutes before power descent. It has a relatively flat bottom to the crater, and you can see maybe two or three craters that are in the bottom of it on the western wall, the wall that's now nearest the—the camera. Near the bottom of the screen, we can see a dimple crater, just on the outside. And then coming back toward the bottom of the screen and to the left, you can see a series of depressions. It's this type of connected craters that give us most interest to discover why they're in the particular pattern that they're in. I'll zoom the camera in now and try and give you a closer look at it.

Roger. We're observing the dimple crater now. The central peak we can see on the Orbiter photos doesn't seem to stand out very well here.

Well, they're not central peaks. They're depressions in the center.

Roger.

And you'll notice on the pitch thruster activity, I've still—I've put in a dozen minimum impulses in pitchdown, and I'm still far from correcting back to 315.

We're moving the camera over to the right window now to give you Langrenus, its—its several central peaks and -

Roger. We got Langrenus in our screen now.

Okay, 11. This is Houston. We're getting a beautiful picture of Langrenus now with its rather conspicuous central peak.

The Sea of Fertility doesn't look very fertile to me. I don't know who named it.

Well, it may have been named by a gentleman whom this crater was named after, Langrenus. Langrenus was a cartographer to the King of Spain and made one of the—one of the early reasonably accurate maps of the Moon.

Roger. That's very interesting —

… at least it sounds better for our purposes than the Sea of Crises.

Amen to that.

Okay. It looks like you're coming inside now on the camera.

Well, I can't get behind to see the monitor. I'll bring the focus in, but we're going to be looking down past one of the LM quads and one of the antennas almost straight down at the ground track that we'll be seeing coming in now. I guess there's maybe 2 or 3 minutes before power descent.

All right, that should put the LM structure about in focus, and I'm going to move it out to infinity and then expand the field of view.

Crater Secchi is out my window now, window number 2.

Hello, Apollo 11. This is Houston. We show you coming up on the terminator at 78 53, about 7 minutes from now, and we've also got the LOI 2 and TEI 5 PAD's ready for you after the TV whenever you want to terminate. Over.

Roger.

And we're getting a good view of the track leading into the landing site now and -

Okay, And it looks like we got Secchi K, went by about 10 seconds ago; coming up on Apollo Ridge.

And in the right hand portion of our screen right now, we can see Messier Alfa and Bravo with the light colored rays streaming off in one direction.

I don't know if you can make out, but in the Sea of Fertility there are a number of craters that are just barely discernible, old, old craters whose outlines are just barely able to be seen.

Roger. I think we can make them out. The color really enhances our ability to discern features and craters over what we see in real time on our black and white monitor.

Right. The—At these low Sun angles, there's no trace of brown, it's now returned to a very gray appearance and, like the 8 crew says, it has a look of plaster of paris to it at this Sun angle, which is completely lacking in …

Roger.

Okay. This is very close to ignition point for power descent. Just passing Mount Marilyn that—that triangular shaped mountain that you see in the center of the screen at the present time with crater Secchi Theta on top of the far northern edge of the mountain.

Roger. We're getting a good view of Mount Marilyn and the Secchi Theta.

And now we're looking at what we call Boot Hill; occurs 20 seconds into the descent.

The bright, sharp rimmed crater at the very right edge of the screen, Censorinus T. Now passing the—the 1 minute point in power descent.

Roger. And for your information, your current altitude is 148 nautical miles above the surface.

Don't you think?

I'm unable to determine altitude at all looking out the window. I couldn't tell whether we were down at 60 or up at 170.

I bet you could tell if you were down at 50,000 feet.

I wouldn't be surprised.

We're passing some steep ridges here. The edge of some old craters that were photographed by Apollo 10; and those—the crew of Apollo 10 was very impressed with the steepness of these ridges when they came over them at about 50,000 feet.

Roger. We can observe they're also steep even from this altitude. You got quite a shadow being cast by the Sun at these low angles.

The entire surface is getting considerably darker than the surface that we looked at previously when the Sun was quite high above us. The crater in the—bright crater in the center of the screen,—well, the smaller one is Censorinus.

Roger. And we show you low over 1 minute from the terminator at the present time.

How's the brightness of the picture you're receiving? You think we ought to open f stop some as we approach the terminator?

Yes. The brightness is still doing quite well. You can go ahead and open it up a stop or two. The automatic light level compensation seems to be working beautifully.

There's a good picture of Boot Hill.

Roger. We're —

Three minutes and 15 seconds into the descent.

Roger. We're seeing Boot Hill now.

The next crater coming into the bottom, that's Duke Island right there, and to the left, the crater—the largest of the craters near the center of the picture right now is Maskelyne W. This is a position check during descent at about 3 minutes and 39 seconds, and it's our down range position check and cross range position check prior to yawing over face up to acquire the landing radar. Past this point, we would be unable to see the surface below us until getting very near the landing area.

Roger. I imagine you'll get a—you'll get a real good look at that tomorrow afternoon.

Sinuous Rille is the one that was referred to in Apollo 10 as Sidewinder.

That's a good name, too: Sidewinder and Diamondback. It looks like a couple of snakes down there in a lake bed.

And we're approaching the terminator now. See the —

Roger.

Contrast has increased and only the sunlit side of these ridges remain illuminated, while the dark sides and the shadow will become completely black.

11, this is Houston. The picture's getting a little grainy now. You might go ahead and open up the f stop.

Landing point is just barely in the darkness. That one crater, the upper part of which you see, lower part completely in darkness. The small, well defined crater is Moltke, which is about abeam of the landing sight.

Roger. We can just see; it looks like a little less than half of its rim right now.

And we can make out just barely some features on the surface, maybe from earthshine.

Are you wide open on the f stop at this time?

Yes, we are.

Yes. And it looks like we're just about to get the Sun coming into the lens, so we'll have to move the camera away.

Roger.

We can't see any earthshine or any surface features at all in earthshine now due to the fact that the LM is very bright and is causing our pupils to contract. It's a very fantastic view to see the terminator as you look along the edge of it. I think you'll agree that some of these craters that you're seeing in the picture now are really accentuated by the lengthening of the shadows as they come close to the terminator.

Yes. It's a very beautiful and a rugged sight that we've got on the screen now.

And I think you've got some interesting data on thruster firing versus pitch angle. It looks like that LM just wants to head down towards the surface, is all.

Roger. I have a comment here that says that's what the LM was built for.

I believe!

And as the Moon sinks slowly in the west, Apollo 11 bids good day to you.