Spacelog Apollo 11

We're over Smyth's Sea right now.

Roger.

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

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.