Questions tagged [apollo-program]
NASA's Apollo program was a 17-mission program that focused on landing a human on the lunar surface. The program was the third human spaceflight by NASA, after Mercury and Gemini.
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How did the Apollo guidance computer handle the Earth-Moon system's rotation around the Sun?
In this comment I just wrote:
"...but at all other times it is just doing math to calculate its trajectory." The math needed a stable clock Timing accuracy of the Apollo Guidance Computer? (also 2, ...
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What is the meaning of “Bravo”?
There is movie called, " First Man (2018), which is about Apollo 11 mission. CAPCOM-APOLLO 11 speaks to Apollo 11 crew:
CAPCOM-APOLLO 11: Apollo 11, now entering lunar orbit. Your roll
should ...
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“Luckily with no Lunar Module, Tidbinbilla was able to keep tracking with no interruption…” Why is no LM significant?
@PearsonArtPhoto's answer links to the page Apollo 8, 21 – 28 December 1968 by Hamish Lindsay at honeysucklecreek.net.
The page describes a problem with one of the dish antennas that needed to be ...
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How many people spoke to Apollo 8 from outside the US?
@PearsonArtPhoto's answer links to the page Apollo 8, 21 – 28 December 1968 by Hamish Lindsay at honeysucklecreek.net.
It shows a clipping from The Canberra Times front page, "With thanks to Mike ...
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What exactly turned on the light indicating Apollo 8 was starting to fall towards the Moon?
@PearsonArtPhoto's answer links to the page Apollo 8, 21 – 28 December 1968 by Hamish Lindsay at honeysucklecreek.net from where I have quoted below.
Question: What exactly turned on the light ...
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Apollo Missions - Travel time to moon [duplicate]
I must be missing something - escape velocity is about 25,000mph. The distance to the moon about 240,000 miles. That computes to about a 9 hour flight. Why did it take 3 days for Apollo missions to ...
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Looking for veterans of the Space Race [on hold]
Hi everyone. I am writing an oral history of the men and women who worked at Cape Canaveral and KSC during Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. If you know someone that fits the bill, or know how to find them, ...
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Lunar ascent module: thrust and accuracy [duplicate]
I was wondering if there was an optimal law for the thrust (magnitude and direction) during the lunar ascent. From the videos I saw that for the first 10 seconds is vertical but the magnitude is ...
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What happened to Apollo 13 LM descent stage?
I see in the accounts of the Apollo 13 mission that the descent stage engine of the LM were used to propel the joined spacecraft into a return trajectory to earth and that the crew remained in the LM ...
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Crashed LMs visible on LRO images?
I'm rewatching the old HBO "From the Earth to the Moon" series and then reading up about specific missions in detail afterwards. One thing I hadn't realised was that the LM for each mission typically ...
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Was water ever taken outside a spacecraft?
Has an astronaut (or cosmonaut) taken water out of a spacecraft to see if it boils or freezes?
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How to get an initial setting of the range gate for a Lunar Laser Ranging using a new Retro Reflector for the first time?
From an answer to this question
They were searching by aiming their laser at the moon and looking for
reflections. But the system is set to only detect photons in a very
narrow range of ...
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Launch window for the Apollo Lunar Module?
If something would have gone wrong after a successful Moon landing requiring to ascent as soon as possible, what about the launch window for the lunar rendezvous maneuver? Could they ascent at any ...
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How close did Apollo 16 astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr. get to the edge of Plum crater?
The New York Times article What Happened to Earth’s Ancient Craters? Scientists Seek Clues on the Moon’s Pocked Surface includes a NASA photo with the caption:
Astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr., of the ...
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Left behind photo
After several trips to moon there were several items left behind on the moon's surface, including foot prints. Is there any photo or registry of any of those items taken recently?
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Why did Apollo have a crew of 3?
Why did Apollo have a crew of three when only two actually reached the surface of the moon?
I can see it makes sense for the Lunar Module only to seat two astronauts. Less mass to land softly on the ...
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How many Lunar Surface Hasselblad cameras were left on the Moon?
There were six Apollo missions that landed on the Moon. Each mission was equipped with at least two Lunar Surface Hasselblad cameras left on the lunar surface before ascent. But the total number of ...
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Why does the Apollo-8 Trans-Lunar Injection burn appear to be pulsing in this photo?
This tweet called my attention to The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum story Photographing Apollo 8's Orbit Toward the Moon. The story is quite an interesting bit of space history and worth a ...
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Did Apollo's velocity slow down after TLI due to Earth's gravity?
I assume Apollo's velocity slowed down after it left Earth orbit, for how long was it decelerating. Did it start accelerating as it approached the Moon. What was the rate of deceleration due to ...
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Docking of CSM with LM
After separation from the SLA (by about 50-100 feet), the CSM "turned around" and docked with the LM to pull it out. This turning around was done by a 180 degree change in orientation. This could have ...
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Looking for Apollo 11 powered descent video
At a science museum I visited on my 2018 fall vacation (I think it was the Chicago MSI), I saw a video loop that looked and sounded very much like part of the moon landing multimedia show at the ...
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What do you call the Apollo LEM plus CM (Command Module) when they are connected?
In the question How far away can spacecraft be seen with an optical telescope? I used
...Apollo 14 CM & LEM and the Saturn IV B..."
for lack of better words. Unlike some people I (don't) ...
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At what time in the Apollo 14 mission did the maneuver shown in this image happen, and what exactly was happening?
In a search for information for this answer I received this google books link of Comment: The Relevance of Space, by Arthur Kantrowitz, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 197, 4 April 1971, pp 32-33. ...
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Docking of Command and Service module with Lunar module
Is there any video available which is shot inside CSM during the process of docking with LM to pull it out of adapter?
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How far from Earth were the Apollo astronauts when they left the Earth's magnetosphere?
I am assuming the Apollo missions recorded radiation levels as they travelled to the Moon. Have those records ever been released, as a way of determining when the Apollo astronauts left the ...
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How did NASA get the video camera on the Moon to track the LM ascent stage, considering the substantial delay?
The Moon's distance can be as much as about 406,000 km from Earth. That's a round trip light time of roughly 2 x 406,000 / 300,000 = 2.7 seconds or more, depending on how the signal was relayed to ...
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Exit film of moon landing departure
On Apollo 15, 16, and 17 NASA filmed the Lunar Module taking off and leaving the moon. With no-one on the moon how could the the camera move to follow it and who brought the exposed film back to ...
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What's the closest that an Apollo mission passed GEO on its way to the moon?
@Uwe's comment
No astronaut ever visited geostationary orbit at 22-23k miles to maintain or deploy satellites. The Apollo astronauts just rushed by on their way to the Moon and back.
below the ...
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What was the view from the Apollo spacecraft while travelling to the moon?
From what I read on the internet, I took around 3 days for Apollo 11 to get to the Moon. I'm curious what was the view from the windows of the spacecraft during the journey. What did the astronauts ...
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Puzzler: Precisely what maximum distance from the Earth did the Apollo 13 astronauts achieve?
tl;dr:
Both this answer and this answer quote Wikipedia to state that the Apollo 13 astronauts reached 404,171 km from Earth. I'm not able to reproduce that value.
According to JPL's Horizons the ...
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Bits per core for the different versions of the Apollo guidance computer core rope memory?
The first version of the Apollo guidance computer had a ROM of only 12 K words of 16 bit. Later it was doubled to 24 K and finaly tripled to 36 K words.
The first version of core rope read only ...
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Was there fuel consumption budgeting for Apollo 11 Lunar module?
Did the astronauts aboard Apollo 11's Lunar Module have any stated or imposed limitation or restriction on the amount of fuel they could use while in lunar orbit and performing landing maneuvers? I am ...
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Was splashing down on the USSR-controlled territory a possibility for Apollo missions?
From what I understand, the planned landing areas for Apollo command modules were pre-programmed beforehand and happened in the South Pacific.
Was there any remote possibility of an emergency ...
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Did the Apollo astronauts hear any external sounds during a lunar EVA?
Did any sounds resonate through their boots or any part of their environmental suit? Could they hear the folding or rubbing of the material of their suits? Did anything impact their boots that might ...
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What modifications constituted the ‘reorificing’ of F-1 engines on later Saturn V flights?
The topic of uprating the Saturn V’s first stage engines appears to have been widely discussed, and yet there is little agreement as to how it was done.
Early Rocketdyne F-1 engines quote lower ...
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Apollo guidance computer ROM addressing using the ROM bank register, what is the bank register size?
The Apollo guidance computer had 36 K words of core rope ROM. To address 36864 words, a 15 bit memory address for up to 32768 words is not enough, 16 bits are needed.
This Wikipedia article describes ...
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What was the nature of the visible part of the viscous wake trailing the Apollo CM during reentry?
This diagram suggests a helix in the wake, was it a single-helix, a multiple helix, or a superhelix? Is there any other part of the wake that would be visible?
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Did the Apollo astronauts ever describe reentry deceleration?
Did the Apollo astronauts describe any differences in how it felt in the CM as it passed between the hypersonic, supersonic, transonic and the subsonic zone? Did the CM shake more or less in ...
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How long is the Apollo Lunar Module extraction window?
In Apollo lunar missions, the Command/Service Module extracts the Lunar Module after S-IVB's translunar injection burn. Since all three spacecraft were on a transfer orbit, they would be in the ...
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Apollo recovery zone(s)
For the Apollo missions that left Earth orbit, were there multiple recovery zones for each splashdown? How big was each zone?
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Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator entry to Mars' atmosphere
Is it known whether or not a Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator inflation and entry into Mars' atmosphere would produce more violent vibrations and lateral movements than was experienced by ...
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What was the colour of the shoes used by the Apollo astronauts in moon landing?
The pictures from Apollo landing despite being in high resolution, does not reveal the right colour of the shoes used by the astronauts during the EVA on the moon. An example - Buzz Aldrin picture ...
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How did the Apollo Service Module reenter?
I always assumed that after the Apollo Command Module separated from the Service Module, the SM was effectively inert and was simply left to re-enter of its own accord. However, from the Apollo 11 ...
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How easy would opening an Apollo capsule following dry landing be?
To help frame the problem, I have written the following scenario:
It's December 19, 1972 and the Apollo 17 has returned to Earth, but something went wrong and they landed in the middle of the Outback....
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How do you find lunar flyby using Apollo 13 mission report data?
Link to mission report: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a13/A13_MissionReport.pdf
So Im trying to do analysis on the mission phases of Apollo 13 but my part is to only focus on the flyby part. My ...
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What coordinate system was used for the Apollo missions?
This is specifically about the Apollo missions, which are not touched in this related question.
Did they use one coordinate system throughout the entire mission, or did they switch depending on the ...
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Did astronauts on the moon poop in front of each other?
I know about the Apollo pooping bag. The question is, in the CSM, was there any space to use it privately? I suppose while coasting towards the Moon they could use the LM, but on the return trip? Any ...
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How much did we know about lunar soil conditions prior to Apollo 11?
Hell everyone who have answered / commented on my question. Thanks for showing interest. What I was looking for is whether NASA or any other agency attempting to land something (any object) on moon, ...
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Why did the Apollo cabin repressurization valve cause a banging sound?
As portrayed in the movie Apollo 13, Fred Haise tried to spook his crewmates by trigerring the cabin repressurization valve, which creates a banging sound. Indeed, every Apollo crew reported hearing ...
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How different was the Apollo LM descent trajectory from the most fuel-efficient?
In most diagrams of the Apollo Lunar Module descent profile (example at the start of this video), it looks like the LM turns over and points some of its thrust downward relatively early in the process....
