Spacelog Apollo 11

That's affirmative.

11, Houston. Do you read?

Roger. We read you. It seems to be rather marginal on the high gain.

Roger. We concur.

Houston, Apollo 11. Could you give us a time of crossing the prime meridian 150 west? Over.

Roger. Stand by about a half a second, here. Okay. Your time of crossing the 150 west meridian will be 77 50 05. Over.

Thank you.

11, this is Houston. We have about 6 minutes remaining until LOS, and in order that we may configure our ground lines, we'd like to know if you're still planning to have the TV up with the beginning of the next pass. Over.

Roger, Houston. We'll try to have it ready.

This is Houston. We are inquiring if it is your plan to. Over.

It never was our plan to; but it's in the flight plan, so I guess we'll do it.

Houston. Roger. Out.

11, Houston.

Roger. Go ahead.

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.

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.