edgar-mitchell

64
The Way of the Explorer
this seven-minute task. In the “morning” it was again business as usual,
without a second thought of the experiment.
After three days, during which we traveled more than 240,000 miles
and slowed into lunar orbit, Al and I climbed into the lunar lander, bid
farewell to Stu, and prepared to undock. Stu deposited us in the 10-mile
orbit from which we would descend to the surface, and returned through
the vacuum to a 60-mile orbit for his work of mapping that barren world.
As Al and I orbited only a few thousand meters above the highest lunar
peaks, the familiar gray landscape became recognizable. In a most austere
way, it was hauntingly familiar. There were mountains and valleys, a sun in
the sky. For the first time in three days there was a relative up and down;
the tiny earth in the distance appeared a satellite of the moon. But little
else resembled anything we had ever seen. No flora, no softening features.
Here the land was presided over by an omnipresent night sky. Without an
atmosphere, sunlight lent an unreal clarity to the landscape. If we were to
open the hatch, it seemed as though we could reach out and run our fingers
over the ragged lunar surface.
As for our the mission, there was a tentative sense of optimism. We
knew we were over the right area because we could see Cone Crater and
the entire topography of Fra Mauro beneath us coming into lunar sunrise,
just as we had imagined it would appear out the window of Antares. Then I
was struck with a sense of wonder. The same sun rose this morning over
the Atlantic, I thought, as we silently flew over this strange world.
As we flew through the terminator into the lunar night, barely 90
minutes from beginning our powered descent to the surface, trouble arose
once again. The computer guidance software, we discovered, was receiving
incorrect information, thereby producing a signal that would abort the
landing once it began. Moreover, we would soon be passing behind the
moon into a communications blackout, cutting off our lifeline of information
and support from Houston. Once again, we had to carefully, accurately,
and quickly find a way to bypass a problem that threatened the
mission. But of the 90 minutes available to us to solve the problem in this
case, we would be behind the moon and out of radio contact for 60.
In Houston, where it was 2 o’clock in the morning, they were working
on the problem. When we emerged from behind the moon, we expected
they might have procedures for a fix prepared for us, likely a revised computer
update to get around the problem. But it was much more than that.
After regaining communications we would have but a stark 10 minutes to
complete the pre-descent checklist, enter navigation updates, and manually
program the remedy into the computers. Because of fuel constraints,
time was not on our side. We simply could not afford another trip around
this rugged world without major changes in our cramped schedule.