The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

Apollo 11
Crew
Commander: Neil Armstrong
LM pilot: Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr.
CM pilot: Michael Collins
Call signs
CM: Columbia
LM: Eagle
Duration of moonwalk: 2 hr 33 min
Time spent on Moon: 21 hr 36 min
Samples collected: 21.0 kg
The mission that climaxed with the first manned
landing on the Moon. During the final stages of the
LM’s 12.5-minute descent to the Moon’s surface,
Armstrong took manual control of the spacecraft
and piloted it to a suitable landing site. A low-fuel
warning gave Armstrong just 94 seconds to land
prior to an abort and return to the CSM. As the LM
came down, its descent engine kicked up dust and
reduced Armstrong’s visibility to a few meters. At 10
m above the surface, the LM lurched dangerously,
but Armstrong continued to guide the spacecraft
toward a successful touchdown in the Sea of Tranquility
at 20:17:40 GMT on July 20, 1969, about 6.5
km from the designated target. The astronauts
donned spacesuits and were ready to step onto the
Moon about 6.5 hours after their arrival. Armstrong
placed a TV camera on the LM ladder then set foot
on the Moon. He was watched live on television by
an estimated 500 million people. (The only two
countries that declined to telecast the moonwalk
were the Soviet Union and China.) Aldrin followed
about an hour later. The two men set up a flag;
deployed a number of experiments including a seismometer,
a laser reflector, and a solar wind detector;
gathered samples of lunar rock and soil; and took
the longest distance phone call in history, from President
Nixon. Upon returning to Earth the astronauts
were quarantined, initially in a mobile
quarantine facility aboard the recovery ship and
then for about three weeks in the specially built
Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Johnson Space
10, 11, 100, 121
Center.
Apollo 12
Crew
Commander: Charles Conrad Jr.
LM pilot: Alan Bean
CM pilot: Richard Gordon
Call signs
CM: Yankee Clipper
LM: Intrepid
Duration of moonwalks
First: 3 hr 56 min
Second: 3 hr 49 min
Time spent on Moon: 31 hr 31 min
Samples collected: 34.3 kg
A mission planned to build on the success of Apollo
11, with the added goals of making a precision touchdown
and of sampling lunar rocks within 0.5 km of the
landing site. Apollo 12 began dramatically. Gordon
was so convinced that electrical storms would lead to
the launch being scrubbed that he fell asleep during
the countdown. In fact, Apollo 12 took off on schedule,
but, at T + 36 seconds, as the Saturn V passed
through low clouds, a lightning bolt discharged
through it to the ground. Sixteen seconds later, the
rocket was struck again, causing safety mechanisms to
disconnect primary power to the CSM and forcing the
crew to restore it manually. Once in lunar orbit, the
LM separated from the CSM and descended to a pinpoint
landing on the Ocean of Storms near a ray of the
crater Copernicus and less than 180 m from Surveyor
3, which had soft-landed on the Moon in April 1967.
Conrad and Bean went on two moonwalks. During
the first, they set up the ALSEP and positioned a color
TV camera to provide the first color transmissions
from the lunar surface. However, Bean allowed direct
sunlight to enter the camera’s lens, which damaged its
vidicon tube and rendered it useless; television viewers
on Earth were able to see the astronauts step onto the
Moon but little else. During a second moonwalk, the
astronauts walked about 1.5 km, collecting lunar samples
and removing parts of Surveyor 3 for return to
Earth. For the first time, the astronauts documented
each sample they took, including the first double-core
tube sample of lunar soil. Later laboratory examination
revealed that the Surveyor 3 parts harbored bacteria
that had survived 19 months of extreme
temperatures, dryness, and the near-vacuum of the
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