Changes in the Apollo program
NASA Deputy Administrator on January 4, 1970 George Lowe announced Apollo 20 cancellationthe final planned Apollo moon landing mission. The agency needed a Saturn V rocket that could launch Apollo 20 to launch the Apollo Applications Program (AAP) experimental space station, named Skylab in February 1970. Since former NASA administrator James Webb halted the construction of any additional Saturn V rockets in 1968. , this proved to be the only viable but difficult solution.
In other program changes, on Jan. 13, NASA Administrator Thomas Paine Focused on how NASA planned to meet ongoing budget challenges. The lunar landing mission will now take place every six months instead of every four, and with the April slip from Apollo 13, Apollo 14 will now fly in October instead of July. Apollo 15 and 16 would fly in 1971, then AAP would launch in 1972, and three consecutive crews would spend 28, 56, and 56 days on the station. Lunar landing missions would resume in 1973, with Apollo 17, 18, and 19 closing out the program by the following year.
In addition to the programmatic changes, several important management changes took place at NASA in January 1970. On 26 November 1969, Christopher Croft The director of flight operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, assumed the position of deputy director of the MSC. On December 28, MSC Director Robert Gilroth Nominee Sigurd “Sig” SjobergFrom 1963 to Deputy Director of Flight Operations, Craft Success. At NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, George Mueller, Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight, resigned from his position on December 10, 1969. On January 8, NASA Administrator Penn named Dale Myers, vice president and general manager for space, to replace Mueller. Shuttle program at North American Rockwell Corporation. On January 27, Penn announced that Wernher von Braun, designer of the Saturn family of rockets and director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, since its founding in 1960, would move to NASA Headquarters and become deputy assoc. will assume the post of At. Administrator for planning
Apollo 11 Lunar Science Symposium
Between January 5 and 8, 1970, several hundred scientists, including all 142 American and international principal investigators who were provided with Apollo 11 samples, gathered at the Albert Thomas Exhibit and Convention Center for Apollo 11 in Houston. Lunar Science Conference. During the conference, scientists discussed the chemistry, mineralogy, and petrology of the lunar samples, the search for carbon compounds and any evidence of organic material, the results of dating the samples, and the results returned. Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package (EASEP). Senior NASA managers including Administrator Penn, Deputy Administrator Lowe, and Apollo Program Director Rocco Petrone attended the conference, and Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin delivered the keynote speech at the dinner reception. The leading journal Science devoted its 30 January 1970 edition to the papers presented at the conference, calling it “The Moon Problem”. The Lunar Science Conference evolved into an annual event, renamed the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in 1978, and continues to attract scientists from around the world to discuss the latest developments in lunar and planetary exploration. is kept
Apollo 12
On New Year’s Day 1970, the Apollo 12 astronauts Charles “Pat” Conrad, Richard Gordonand Alan Bean 81 led.St Annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, as Grand Marshal. Actress Joan Lockhart, an avid space enthusiast, interviewed him during the telecast of the event. As President Richard Nixon had previously requested, Conrad, Gordon, and Bean and their wives visited former President Lyndon B. Johnson and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson on January 14, 1970, at their ranch near Fredericksburg, Texas. Explained his mission to former President and Mrs. Johnson.
Managers released the Apollo 12 command module (CM) Yankee Clipper from quarantine and returned it to the North American Rockwell plant in Downey, California on January 12. Engineers there thoroughly inspected the spacecraft and eventually developed it. For public display. NASA transferred the Yankee Clipper to the Smithsonian Institution in 1973, and today the capsule Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA also released lunar samples returned by the Apollo 12 astronauts and parts of the Surveyor 3 spacecraft from quarantine. Scientists received their allotted samples in mid-February, after initial testing Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) Surveyor parts arrived at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California for detailed analysis.
Apollo 13
As the first step in programmatic rescheduling of all lunar landings, on January 7, NASA announced that the launch of Apollo 13 would be delayed from March 12 to April 11. The Saturn V rocket was topped by the Apollo spacecraft. Roll out Last December to launch pad 39A where workers began tests of the vehicle. The main crews of Lovell, Mattingly, and Hayes and their backups Young, Swigert, and Duke continued training for the 10-day mission to land on the Fara Moro region of the moon.
Apollo 13 prime crew members Lowell, Mattingly, and Hayes completed their water egress training in the Gulf of Mexico on January 24 off the coast of Galveston, Texas. Aided by a motorized vessel retriever, the three astronauts entered a boilerplate Apollo CM. . The sailors lowered the capsule into the water, first in the stable 2 or apex down position. Three self-inflating balloons lifted the spacecraft to a stable 1 apex-up position within minutes. With the help of the recovery team, Lovell, Mattingly, and Haise exit the spacecraft onto a life raft. A helicopter pulled them out of the life rafts using cat nets and returned them to the retriever. Later that day, the astronauts returned to the MSC to inspect the lunar rocks at LRL that the Apollo 12 astronauts had returned to the previous November.
During their 33.5 hours on the lunar surface, Lovell and Haise planned to conduct two four-hour spacewalks to establish the lunar surface. Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP)a collection of five probes designed to collect data on the lunar environment after the astronauts’ departure and to conduct geological exploration of the landing site. Planned to reside in the Command and Service Module (CSM), perform geological observations from lunar orbit, including imaging possible future landing sites. Lovell and Haise conducted several simulations of spacewalk timelines, including setting up the ALSEP instruments, practicing core sampling, and photographing their activities for documentation purposes. They and their backups conducted practice sessions with a partial gravity simulator, also known as a POGO, an arrangement of harnesses and servos that simulates walking on the lunar surface. Lovell and Young completed several flights. Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) which simulated the flight characteristics of the Lunar Module (LM) for the last several hundred feet of descent to the surface.
At LRL, technicians prepared the Apollo Lunar Sample Return Containers (ALSRC), or rock boxes, for Apollo 13. As with all missions, Apollo 13 carried two ALSRCs, each box and lid constructed from a single block of aluminum. Workers placed sample containers and bags and two 2-cm core sample tubes inside the two ALSRCs. Once loaded, technicians sealed the boxes under vacuum conditions so they wouldn’t be pressurized beyond the lunar ambient conditions. MSC engineers prepared the American flag that Lowell and Hayes planned to plant on the moon for storage on the LM’s forward landing strut.
Apollo 14
As part of the rescheduling of the Moon mission, NASA delayed the launch of the next flight, Apollo 14, from July to October 1970. The CSM and LM arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida in late 1969 and were monitored by technicians. Vehicle tests in the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (MSOB). On January 12, workers lowered the LM’s ascent stage onto the CSM to conduct a docking test – the next time the two vehicles docked they would be on their way to the Moon and the test confirmed their compatibility. Workers combined the two phases of the LM on January 20.
The three stages of the Apollo 14 Saturn V arrived at KSC’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in mid-January, and as workers stacked the first stage on its mobile launch platform on January 14, they stacked the remaining rocket stages. Delayed. May 1970. This decision proved fortunate, as engineers needed to modify the engines of the second stage. After the pogo oscillations felt during the launch of Apollo 13.
Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Rosaand Edgar Mitchell And back them up Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evansand Joe Angle Continued training for his mission. In addition to working in spacecraft simulators, Sheppard, Mitchell, Cernan, and Engle conducted suitable vacuum chamber runs at MSC’s Space Environmental Simulation Laboratory (SESL) and completed their first orientation with the deployment of their suite of ALSEP probes. of
The Apollo 14 astronauts were the first to use the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET), a golf cart-like wheeled vehicle to transport their instruments and lunar samples. A team led by project design engineer William Creasy developed the MET based on recommendations from the first two lunar landing crews on how to improve performance on the lunar surface. Creasy and his team demonstrated MET to Sally LaMere, editor of MSC’s employee newsletter The Roundup. Three co-astronauts, William Pogue, Anthony “Tony” England, and Gordon Fullerton, tested the MET prototype in a simulated one-sixth lunar gravity during parabolic plane flights.
To be continued…
News from around the world in January 1970:
January 1 – President Richard Nixon signs the National Environmental Protection Act into law
January 4 – The Beatles hold their final recording session at London’s Abbey Road Studios.
January 5 – Daytime soap opera All My Children premieres.
January 11 – The Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Minnesota Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
January 22 – Pan American Airlines makes the first scheduled commercial Boeing 747 flight from New York to London.
January 14 – Diana Ross and the Supremes perform their final concert in Las Vegas.
January 25 – The film M*A*S*H, directed by Robert Altman, premieres.
January 26 – Simon and Garfunkel release Bridge Over Troubled Water, their fifth and final album.