FIRST WOMAN IN SPACE
Valentina Tereshkova: Soviet’s first woman to fly in space was aboard the Vostok 6 space capsule on June 16–19, 1963.
Quotes:
Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way!
Once you've been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.
One cannot deny the great role women have played in the world community. My flight was yet another impetus to continue this female contribution.
More women should actively participate in space flight. There are many well educated women working in the space industry; they are very good candidates.
NASA APOLLO / SPACE SHUTTLE KSC LAUNCH CONTROL ROOM DATA RECORDER FM MODULE
This Sangamo coaxial reel data tape Circuit Board was designed to condition and amplify the Frequency Modulated Signal from the launch vehicle and spacecraft telemetry before and during launch from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Facilities for the Apollo program, and later, for the earliest Space Shuttle flights.
It is constructed from high-quality space rated components for reliable functioning during the critical operations of the KSC launch procedures.
NASA IBM MAINFRAME PRINTED CIRCUIT CARD
FIRST PROTOTYPE
Notice the integrated circuits, they are all early ceramic type with date codes of 1970 and 1971. This from Francis Sheehan who was an engineer at NASA for many years. He primarily worked on manned fight missions such as the Gemini project and several of the Apollo missions including the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and the Shuttle program. He was located in several locations during his work. They were the main NASA facility located on Merritt Island, Florida called Kennedy Space center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force station, located near Cocoa Beach and Houston, Texas. During this Apollo era of space exploration there were no desk top calculators or computers to use. Only large main frames that required punch cards. The main frames were pre microprocessor units and had hundreds of Printed circuit boards like the one being sold. Notice the integrated circuits, they are all early ceramic type with date codes of 1970 and 1971.
FRONT PAGE OF THE WASHINGTON POST
The historical spaceflight makes headlines in most of theworld’s newspapers the next day.
GERMAN AIRFORCE FLIGHT SUIT BY EDGAR BURCHARD
Officer of the German Air Force, specializing in aerospace medical science, he worked for two years at NASA, at the Johnson Space Center, between the Apollos and Skylab, together with scientists from the Skylab project. Experience of 18,000 hours of flight (by plane). Specialist in topics related to hyperbaric oxygenation and spatial disorientation. Together with Von Braun, he was one of the Germans re- fished by NASA after the Second World War.
SOLO BOOK (Notes)
While Collins’s crewmates are away, he has an array of duties to perform. If something goes wrong, then he must be prepared to rescue the LM if possible or even return to Earth without the other Astronauts. Both his nominal duties and contingency flight plan are kept in a special “SOLO BOOK”, which he gets ready to use. Here display Collins monitors Eagle’s descent over the radio and makes notes in his SOLO BOOK.
APOLLO 11 MISSION PATCH
The historical mission patch contains an error in its rendering of the shadow cast by the moon on the earth. (Here the correct view). National prestige is at stake. The enormity of the task is reflected in the mission patch chosen by the crew: a piscture of an eagle, the national symbol, landing on the moon. In its talons is a cluster of olive branches, an international symbol for peace. Unlike most mission patches that have flown before or since, the names of the crew are purposely left off. Everything that anyone has ever done for the space program has reached a culmination. Apollo 11 represent the efforts of a nation.
APOLLO MENU PRESS RELEASE
The food selection on Apollo 11 is greater than on any previous mission. NASA has attempted to tailor meals around the tastes of the individual crew members. Apollo crews have a limited list of 60 or 70 foods they can choose from. Some are delicious by any standards, and other are quite tasteless.
FLIGHT DIRECTORS REPORT
Since opening in 1963, the Manned Spaceflight Center (now called the Johnson Space Center) had been the hub of the agency’s operations – not just during missions, but also through much of the technology development and astronaut training programmes. Building 30 was the centre of it all. Its control room, with its four rows of grey IBM computer consoles, gauges, dials and meters, monitored some 1,500 items of constantly changing information. Within the control room, teams of mission experts worked round the clock during missions, overlapping with each other in four eight-hour shifts codenamed green, white, black and maroon.These controllers’ average age was only 32, and most had degrees in engineering, mathematics or physics.Each team was responsible to a flight director; maroon team was led by Milt Windier, black by Glynn Lunney, white by Gene Kranz and green by Cliff Charlesworth, who was in overall charge of the Apollo 11 mission.
CUSTOMS DECLARATION
As the Customs Declaration notes, any condition onboard that might lead to the spread of disease have yet to be determinate. The returning astronauts are isolated first in a trailer (far right) and then in a suite of rooms at the manned Spacecraft Center, Houston for 21 days following possible exposure.
While still in quarantine aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, the astronauts retrieve their logs and gear from Columbia through a connecting tunnel; Mike Collins takes the opportunity to write a thank you on the wall above the sextant mount (top Right) to the trusty space capsule that flew them to the Moon and Safely home again. By the third lunar landing it is conclusively determined that the moon is sterile and further crews do not have to endure quarantine.
WHY WERE ASTRONAUTS QUARANTINED AFTER RETURNING FROM THE MOON?
STARS CHARTS
The astronauts of the first Apollo missions were left in isolation after returning from the Moon for three weeks to be sure that they had not been contaminated by alien bacteria. The last crew to be quarantined was that of the Apollo 14 mission. Since then, since it had been verified that there were no life forms dangerous to humans on our satellite, this procedure was no longer applied.In fact, bacteria have never been found on the moon except once when the Apollo 12 astronauts found a terrestrial bacterium still alive on a probe that left the earth two years earlier.
STARS CHARTS
Forty-five minutes after the launch, the astronauts tried to get comfortable, sounding rather like friends settling in for a long car ride. Collins attempted to find a star named Menkent to help the spacecraft’s guidance systems figure out their orientation in space. Each start that the computer using for alignment is given a number. After aligning on Menkent, which is star number 30, Collins repeats the process on a second star, Nunki, number 37. The computer afterwards was able to check the spacecraft alignment.
STARS FOR APOLLO
A catalogue of 37 stars distributed across the sky was programmed into the rope memory of the onboard computer. There were some quite faint stars in the list, but this was only because the brightest stars are unevenly distributed across the sky. Planners had wanted to ensure that irrespective of the direction in which the fixed line of sight of the optics was pointed, the crew would find a star sufficiently bright within the range of the movable line of sight to view through the sextant. Each star had a numerical code in base eight (octal) so that the crewman could tell the computer which star he wished to use, or in other cases the computer would indicate the star that it had chosen for a specific operation. Some of the objects in the Apollo star list were not stars at all. Three numbers were set aside so that the Sun, Moon and Earth could be referenced by the crewman for other tasks, and there was also a code that allowed a 'planet' to be defined if needed. In fact this could be any celestial object and in some cases, this 'planet' was actually a star, just not one that the computer knew about. Three of the fainter stars in this list have unconventional names that were added as a practical joke by the crew of the ill-fated Apollo 1 during their training. Star 03, Navi, is the middle name of Gus Grissom (Ivan) spelled backwards. Likewise, his two crewmates added oblique references to themselves among the Apollo star list: Star 17, Regor, is the first name of Roger Chaffee spelled backwards; and Edward White II gave his generational suffix to the prank by spelling 'second' backwards as Dnoces and applying it to Star 20. The people of Apollo kept these names in their literature as a mark of respect to a fallen crew and they have been known to appear in a few star atlases and books in succeeding years.
APOLLO 12 – STAR CHART
STAR NAME
0 Planet
1 Alpheratz
2 Diphda
3 Navi
4 Achernar
5 Polaris
6 Acamar
7 Menkar
10 Mirfak
11 Aldebaran
12 Rigel
13 Capella
14 Canopus
15 Sirius
16 Procyon
17 Regor
20 Dnoces
21 Alphard
22 Regulus
23 Denebola
24 Gienah
25 Acrux
26 Spica
27 Alkaid
30 Menkent
31 Arcturus
32 Alphecca
33 Antares
34 Atria
35 Rasalhague
36 Vega
37 Nunki
40 Altair
41 Dabih
42 Peacock
43 Deneb
44 Enif
45 Fomalhaut
46 Sun
47 Earth
50 Moon
THE APOLLO A7L LUNAR SURFACE SUIT
An evolved version of Gemini suits, the Apollo spacesuit had two models: The A7L for missions 7 through 14 and A7LB for missions 15 through 17 (modified for ease of use with the Lunar Roving Vehicle). Designed for the harsh environment of the lunar surface, safety and mobility were key factors. All previous American suits received life support from the spacecraft via long umbilical hoses that were not conducive to free movement. The Apollo suits added a self-contained life support backpack and a pair of lunar overshoes to provide traction on the lunar surface. This training A7LB spacesuit also features the red stripe on each arm and leg, indicating it was for the EVA Commander. Use of the red stripe began with the Apollo 13 mission and allows for easy identification of astronauts in photos and videos.
LUNAR MODULE'S CHECKLIST
Getting EAGLE (Lunar Module) ready for descent to the surface. Flight Director Gene Kranz writes an entry in the log, “this team is not too red hot”. In the meantime, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong being to prepare the Lunar Module (LM) for Landing using this checklist.
LUNAR’S CHART
One of Collins’s tasks was locating EAGLE on the lunar surface. Collins checks off squares on LAM-2 (Lunar Area Map – 2) as he searches for EAGLE from Orbit. The actual landing site was never accurately determined until after the men returned to Earth, although Collins was quite close at one point.
Where on the moon did the astronauts land?
Apollo 11: Mare Tranquillitatis (0.67408° N, 23.47297° E)
Apollo 12: Oceanus Procellarum (3.01239° S, 23.42157° W)
Apollo 14: Fra Mauro (3.64530° S, 17.47136° W)
Apollo 15: Hadley/Apennines (26.13222° N, 3.63386° E)
Apollo 16: Descartes (8.97301° S, 15.49812° E)
Apollo 17: Taurus-Littrow (20.19080° N, 30.77168° E)
NASA’S COMMUNICATION
Six Journalist are chosen to be represent the world’s press corps aboard the prime recovery ship, U.S.S. Hornet, in the Pacific Ocean. All dispatches they file also must be sent to NASA’s News Center in Houston where they are made available to news agencies around the world.
NEIL ARMSTRONG'S TRAVEL VOUCHER
The voucher itemizes each detail of Armstrong’s travel arrangements, with a “government spacecraft” noted among government aircraft and automobiles used on the trip. “Government meals and quarters furnished for all above dates,” the voucher states. Arriving in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 24 July 1969, Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins declared they had brought back “moon rock and moon dust samples”. Taking into account inflation, astronaut declared an avarage expesens of $33.31 in 1969 would be worth around $217 today.
TOUCH THE MOON [NWA 7834]
Specimens of the Moon and Mars are among the rarest substances on Earth. Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth some pieces of the Moon while others arrive on Earth as a result of asteroidsslamming into the lunar surface. These impacts launch chunks of the Moon into outer space. Some of these pieces have Earth intersecting orbits and become the most rare type of Lunar meteorite. This specimen was intercepted falling in the Sahara Desert. Its scientific name is NWA 7834. It is the 7834th Lunar rock recovered from the North West African corridor of the Sahara Desert that has been scientifically analyzed and classified.
HOW MANY POUNDS OF MOON ROCKS, IN TOTAL, DID THE APOLLO ASTRONAUTS BRING BACK TO EARTH?
WHERE ARE THEY?
ARE ANY OF THEM IN PRIVATE HANDS?
The Apollo missions brought back 842 lbs of geologic samples (rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust) in total. The main repository is the Lunar Sample Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The Laboratory prepares samples for shipment to labs, institutions, and universities around the world and sends out about 400 such shipments per year.
Regolith breccia collected by Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille
As for whether any are in “private hands,” that's harder to say, but if there are, it’s not legally. Small samples were gifted as goodwill gifts to 135 countries and all 50 state governments, and some recipient governments weren’t terribly assiduous at keeping track of them. Federal law enforcement tries very hard to track down alleged Moon samples. A fingernail-sized sample originally gifted to Honduras was seized in 1998 by Customs agents after a Florida man attempted to sell it for $5M. Another sample given to Denmark was found years later to have been stolen at some point and replaced with a piece of petrified wood, but who perpetrated the theft and where the sample is now, is unknown.
LUNAR DUST
If the Bush administration's plan to set up a base on the moon is to become a reality, scientists willfirst have to devise a way to deal with a tiny but ubiquitous enemy: lunar dust. Lunar dust is extremely abrasive -- and unavoidable -- as astronauts quickly learned during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s. Within hours, the dust covered the astronauts' spacesuitsand equipment, scratching lenses and corroding seals. Fortunately for the astronauts, their contact with lunar dust was short enough that it didn't cause any major problems. But explorers living on a moon base for weeks or even months at a time arenot likely to get away so clean. Under prolonged exposure, the explorers would be at risk for everything from mechanical failuresin spacesuits and airlocks to lung disease, said researchers last week at a NASA workshop focused on the issue. "Dust is the No. 1 environmental problem on the moon," said Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt,who reported having a severe allergic reaction to moon dust during his mission in 1972. "We need to understand what the (biological) effects are, because there's always the possibility that engineering might fail." Moon dust is much more jagged than dust on Earth because there's no water or wind on the moonto toss it around and grind down its edges. It's created when meteorites, cosmic rays and solar winds slam into the moon, turning its rocks into powdery topsoil. The Apollo astronauts couldn't help but get covered in the stuff as they struggled to stay upright onthe moon's surface, where the force of gravity is one-sixth of that on Earth. Later, they tracked the dust back into their space capsules and inhaled it when they took off their helmets. "When you go weightless again, it shook up from the floorboards," said Schmitt. "It smelled likespent gunpowder."
LUNAR ROVER MODEL
This is a full-size model of the Lunar Roving Vehicle prototype. The LRV is a battery-operated, space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of the Moon. Three LRVs were deployed with Apollo 15, 16 and 17 (1971-1972) and are still on the lunar surface. It is popularly called the Moon buggy, a play on the term dune buggy. Built by Boeing in 17 months, each LRV has a mass of 460 pounds (210 kg) without payload. It could carry a maximum payload of 1,080 pounds (490 kg), including two astronauts, equipment, and lunar samples, and was designed for a top speed of 8 miles per hour (13 km/h), although it achieved a top speed of 11.2 miles per hour (18.0 km/h) on its last mission, Apollo 17. Each LRV was carried to the Moon folded up in the Lunar Module's Quadrant 1 Bay. After being unpacked, each was driven an average of 30 km, without major incident.
WHAT TEMPERATURE DID NEIL ARMSTRONG AND BUZZ ALDRIN FIND ON THE MOON SURFACE?
WERE THEIR SUITS AND EQUIPMENT APPROPRIATE FOR HIGH AND LOW TEMPERATURE VARIATIONS?
They were always in direct sunlight, so the temperature of anything that had been there a while (such as the soil) could have been as high as 120° C or so. Their space suits were bright white to reflect light, made of many layers to insulate them. The key problem with heat wasn't the heat coming from the outside, but the heat coming from the astronaut himself. The suits were so completely insulated that their own body heat could not escape. They would have cooked themselves in a little while if the suit didn't have a cooling system. The cooling system consisted of an undergarment with tubes running all through it. The tubes were full of water, which was pumped in a cycle around their bodies and into their backpack. In the backpack, it passed through a sort of refrigerator that cooled the water down. The astronaut could adjust the rate of cooling to match the level of energy he was expending.
DID ANY OF THE APOLLO ASTRONAUTS EVER GET SICK FROM BEING IN SPACE
OR LANDING/WALKING ON THE MOON?
The crew of Apollo 17 got sick from inhaling too much moon dust, causing them to have a disorder known as Lunar Hay Fever (I’m not even kidding right now, it is a real disorder). Symptoms include but are not limited to: sneezing, watery eyes, and sore throat.
Astronaut Gene Cernan of Apollo 17, covered in lunar dust.
_______
ASTRONAUT QUOTE:
"THAT’S ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND"
Neil Armstrong
_______
WAS THERE A TOILET ON APOLLO 11?
Apollo 11 was one of nine manned Apollo missions to the moon, including six manned landings, so the question should refer to the Apollo program in general. To urinate, astronauts rolled a condom-like item onto their penis. The condom was connected to a bag with a short hose. Spills were common, meaning the astronauts often had to deal with droplets of urine floating around the cabin. The liquid that did get collected in the bag was held in a container that the crew emptied into outer space periodically. Once released into space, the urine droplets glowed and flashed in the sunlight like fireflies. One astronaut, asked the most beautiful sight he’d seen on the moon trip, replied, “urine dump.” During the troubled Apollo 13 mission, the astronauts were encouraged to urinate in plastic bags rather then use the waste management system, out of fear that venting the urine could cause the ship to go off course, resulting in the need to use dwindling power resources for another burn to keep the ship properly oriented. To empty their bowels, astronauts taped a plastic bag to their rear ends, but remember, nothing goes “down” in space. So they had to use their hands to push the feces into the bag. Sometimes this didn’t quite work, as on Apollo 10 when something floated around the cabin and none of the three crew members wanted to take responsibility. “Not mine,” one of them said. After the deed was done, they had to knead the bag’s contents with disinfectant and store the bag in a container, conceivably for scientific investigation once they returned to Earth. By the end of a mission, the smell in the capsule was pretty gnarly, by all accounts. The “frogmen” - whose job was opening the hatch after splashdown - reportedly recoiled from the stench when they retrieved the Apollo 8 crew. One of the astronauts said after smelling the fresh sea air he realized they’d been living in the equivalent of an outhouse for a week. Wally Schirra, a crew member of Apollo 7, had advice for the Apollo 8 crew on how to defecate in the command module: “Get naked, give yourself an hour and bring plenty of tissues.” Hearing this, Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders began a “low-residue” diet before the mission, determined to avoid moving his bowels on the entire one-week trip to the moon and back. I’m not sure how this worked out.
ORION
Orion is the NASA spacecraft that will carry astronauts to the Moon on the upcoming Artemis missions. Orion is built with the help of ESA, It will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). Orion will serve as the vehicle that will take astronauts to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during their missions, and provide safe reentry velocities from deep space as astronauts return to Earth. To protect astronauts on these long-duration missions and return them safely to Earth, Orion engineers have woven innovative technology, advanced systems, and state-of-the-art thermal protection into the fabric of the spacecraft. The team behind Orion has built upon the past 50 years of space exploration experience in human space flight, launch operations, robotic precursor missions, in-space construction, and mission management. During the Artemis I mission, Orion travelled 268,563 miles away from Earth, the farthest a spacecraft built for human has ever traveled from our home planet.
Orion: Learning From the Past With Apollo
Orion uses an improved, larger, blunt-body module, much like the shape of the Apollo capsule. With a diameter of 16.5 ft (5 m), the Orion crew module has 1.5 times the habitable volume of the Apollo capsule. With a habitable volume of approximately 217.9 ft3 (6.17 m3), the Apollo could carry a three-member crew. The Orion crew module has a habitable volume of 316 ft3 (9 m3) and can carry a four-member crew. During Orion’s planning process, NASA studied several different kinds of entry vehicles and rockets. Although Apollo-era researchers were consulted, NASA did not set out to make the Orion spacecraft identical to the Apollo spacecraft. Ultimately, the chosen module design met NASA’s mission requirements while being the safest and most effective.
Artemis Missions
Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the Moon in Greek mythology; she was also referred to as the “torch bringer.” Artemis now personifies NASA’s path to the Moon. As part of the broader Moon to Mars exploration objective, this program name is the umbrella under which NASA’s lunar plans will be branded. By the end of 2026, the third Artemis mission will land the first woman and the next man on the Moon.
Artemis I: Artemis I is the first integrated flight test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the SLS rocket. This uncrewed mission will be the first in a planned series of exploration missions in the vicinity of the Moon and will travel 64,000 km (40,000 miles) beyond the lunar surface. This first exploration mission will allow to use the area of space near the Moon as a proving ground to test technologies farther from Earth and demonstrate that Orion can get to a stable orbit in the lunar vicinity to support sending humans to deep space.
Artemis II: The second flight will take crew on a slightly different trajectory and test Orion’s critical systems with humans on board. The SLS will evolve from an initial configuration capable of sending a minimum of 70 metric tons to the Moon to a new and more powerful configuration that can deliver at least 105 metric tons. Future exploration missions will include visits to the Gateway, a space habitat in orbit around the Moon. NASA and its partners will use the Gateway to create a permanent presence in cislunar space that will drive activity with commercial and international partners, help explore the Moon and its resources, and leverage that experience toward human missions to Mars. Artemis III: The third flight will deliver the first crew to the surface of the Moon since 1972. This flight will take the crew to the Moon’s south pole via a human landing system departing from the Gateway in lunar orbit.
