The iconic footage of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk is a must-watch, especially today when we remember Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the Moon. He passed away today at the age of 82. His enduring legacy will continue to spur us on to reach for the stars and take more first steps on other worlds.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has located the Apollo 11 F-1 rocket engines and plans to recover them. “I’m excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we’re making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor,” Bezos wrote on the Bezos Expeditions website. “We don’t know yet what condition these engines might be in – they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they’re made of tough stuff, so we’ll see.”
Bezos said that about a year ago he was thinking of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission and wondered if the F-1 engines that started the seminal mission to the Moon could be located.
The Saturn V used five F-1 engines in the first stage. The F-1 is still the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed, producing one and a half million pounds of thrust, burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 was launched and the five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean.
Even though the engines remain the property of NASA, Bezos hopes that the space agency would allow the recovered engines to be displayed at the Smithsonian or another museum.
“If we’re able to raise more than one engine, I’ve asked NASA if they would consider making it available to the excellent Museum of Flight here in Seattle,” he said. “NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds. It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore.”
Bezos pointed out that no public funding will be used to attempt to raise and recover the engines, as it’s being undertaken by him privately.
Bezos said he’ll keep everyone posted on the progress of the recovery of these engines.
LROC image of the Apollo 11 landing site, acquired Nov. 5, 2011 (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
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Just over 42 years after Neil and Buzz became the first humans to experience the “stark beauty” of the lunar surface, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the remnants of their visit in the image above, acquired Nov. 5, 2011 from an altitude of only 15 miles (24 km). This is the highest-resolution view yet of the Apollo 11 landing site!
The Lunar Module’s descent stage, a seismic experiment monitor, a laser ranging reflector (LRRR, still used today to measure distances between Earth and the Moon) and its cover, and a camera can be discerned in the overhead image… as well as the darker trails of the astronauts’ bootprints, including Armstrong’s jaunt eastward to the rim of Little West crater.
The crater was the furthest the Apollo astronauts ventured; in fact, if you take the total area Neil and Buzz explored it would easily fit within the infield of a baseball diamond!
Neil Armstrong’s visit to the crater’s edge was an unplanned excursion. He used the vantage point to capture a panoramic image of the historic site:
Panorama of the Apollo 11 site from Little West crater. (NASA)
“Isn’t that something! Magnificent sight out here.” Armstrong had stated before he was joined by Aldrin on the lunar surface. “It has a stark beauty all its own. It’s like much of the high desert of the United States. It’s different, but it’s very pretty out here.”
Previously the LROC captured the Apollo 15 landing site, which included the tracks of the lunar rover — as well as the rover itself! And, just yesterday, the LROC site operated by Arizona State University featured the latest similarly high-resolution view of the Apollo 12 site. This location has the honor of being two landing sites in one: Apollo 12 and the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which had landed on April 20, 1967 – two and a half years earlier!
The Apollo 12 landing site in Oceanus Procellarum. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
Even though the US flag planted by Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean isn’t itself visible, the shadow cast by it is.
Apollo 12 was the only mission to successfully visit the site of a previous spacecraft’s landing, and it also saw the placement of the first Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), which included a seismometer and various instruments to measure the lunar environment.
Read more about this image on the LROC page here, and check out the video tour below of the Apollo 12 site.
Images and video courtesy of NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
The movie trailer for Transformers 3 came out over a week ago, and seeing it is a facepalm moment for any true human spaceflight follower, fan, aficionado, or historian. I mean really, — and yes, I know this is a movie — but how could they portray what they call “a generation’s greatest achievement” so inaccurately? I originally decided I wasn’t going to post it, because it basically re-writes history and I can only imagine how the conspiracy theorists will run with this. Plus getting this kind of thing into the public mindset, I fear, will be another “Capricorn 1” moment where people construe the movie as proof that NASA is hiding things. But Robert Pearlman over at collectSPACE posted an article today, basically tearing apart the trailer, discussing every inaccuracy in detail. So watch the trailer, above, and then go check out Robert’s article — its great.
And then, while you’re at it, go read Robert Krulwich’s article on NPR’s website, where he gets a unusually lengthy response from Neil Armstrong about what really happened on the Apollo 11 moon walk, and why it was so short.
News reports of some ‘long lost’ Apollo 11 footage surfacing in Australia sounded pretty intriguing, with articles about it appearing on several websites this morning. But surely, any of the long-searched-for-and-believed-lost footage finally showing up would have received a bigger fanfare than just a few articles. I checked with NASA Headquarters about this footage, and they told me it actually is the same video that NASA restored and released in 2009 for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
These restored videos include a copy of a tape recorded at NASA’s Sydney, Australia, video switching center, where down-linked television from Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek was received for transmission to the U.S., as well as original broadcast tapes from the CBS News Archive recorded via direct microwave and landline feeds from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson that had not been viewed for over 30 years. Continue reading “‘Long Lost’ Apollo Footage Was Actually Released in 2009”
This is so cool – and impressive, most impressive! A 16mm camera located near the base of the Saturn V rocket captured incredible detail about the ignition and lift off of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The high-quality video slows down 30 second of footage to about 8 minutes, but it’s worth every second to watch! The narrator explains it all in great detail. You’ll see the first moments of ignition where the flames light and expand, then get sucked back into the flame trench; and fire and ice all in one video. It really is awesome!
Here are some Apollo 11 pictures; of the crew, the spaceships and the Moon landing.
Here’s a picture of the Apollo 11 crewmembers. On the left is Commander Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon. In the middle is Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and then Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin on the right.
This is a picture of the Saturn V rocket. This was the booster that carried Apollo 11 from the Earth to the Moon. Over the course of the Apollo program, NASA launched a total of thirteen Saturn V rockets.
Here’s a picture of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module “Eagle”. This is the spacecraft that the astronauts used to descend from lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon.
Here’s a picture of Buzz Aldrin standing on the surface of the Moon during Apollo 11. You can see an experiment in front of Aldrin designed to detect “moonquakes”. And then there’s the Eagle Lunar Module in the background.
Here’s a picture of Aldrin standing beside the US flag placed on the Moon. There’s no wind on the Moon, so there’s a metal support bar holding up the flag.
Once they returned from the Moon, the crew of Apollo 11 were put into quarantine, in case they brought back any kind of lunar bacteria or viruses. This turned out to be unnecessary, and didn’t happen for future missions.
The Sea of Tranquility is the landing site of Apollo 11, the mission that gave mankind its first ever walk on the Moon.
Walk? Yes, that’s right. The Sea of Tranquility is not actually a sea, so Neil Armstrong didn’t have to walk on water. In fact, there isn’t a single sea on the lunar surface. The Sea of Tranquility is actually a lunar mare. Now, although the plural of ‘mare’, ‘maria’, is a Latin word that means ‘seas’, these maria don’t have water in them.
Lunar maria were named as such because early astronomers mistook these areas as seas. You see, when you look at the Moon, particularly its near side (well, we don’t actually get to see the far side), i.e., the side which practically constantly stares at us at night, you’ll notice certain features that are darker than others.
Compare the Moon to a grey-scale model of the Earth, and you’ll easily mistake those dark patches for seas. By the way, in case you’ve been reading article titles (not the entire article) on this site lately, you might recall us mentioning water on the Moon. There’s water alright … underneath the surface, so even assuming that they’re plentiful, they don’t qualify as seas.
Let’s go back to our main topic. Called Mare Tranquillitatis in Latin, the Sea of Tranquility is found in the Tranquillitatis basin of the Moon and is composed of basalt. Maria are seen from Earth as relatively dark because the lighter colored areas are much elevated than them and hence are better illuminated by light coming from the Sun.
Whenever color is processed and extracted from multiple photographs, the Sea of Tranquility gives off a slightly bluish shade. This is believed to be caused by the relatively higher metal content in the area.
The actual landing site of Apollo 11’s lunar module is now named Statio Tranquillitatis or Tranquility Base. To the north of that specific area you’ll find three small craters aptly named Aldrin, Collins, and Armstrong, the privileged crew of Apollo 11.
The lunar module of Apollo 11 was not the only spacecraft to have landed on the Sea of Tranquility. There was also the Ranger 8 spacecraft … although “crash landed” is a more appropriate term. It wasn’t a failed mission though, since it was really meant to impact the lunar surface after taking pictures throughout its flight before striking the Moon.
LROC's second look at the Apollo 11 Landing Site [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. Click for larger version.
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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera has taken a second look at the Apollo 11 landing site. These images were taken before LRO reached its science orbit of 50 km (31 miles) above the Moon, but the lighting is different from the previous images it took of this region, providing more detail and a whole new look at this historic site. This time the Sun was 28 degrees higher in the sky, making for smaller shadows and bringing out subtle brightness differences on the surface. The look and feel of the site has changed dramatically. See below for a close-up view.
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The astronaut path to the TV camera is visible, and you may even be able to see the camera stand (arrow). You can identify two parts of the Early Apollo Science Experiments Package (EASEP) – the Lunar Ranging Retro Reflector (LRRR) and the Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE). Neil Armstrong’s tracks to Little West crater (33 m diameter) are also discernable (unlabeled arrow). His quick jaunt provided scientists with their first view into a lunar crater.
Nice going LROC!
This article was edited on Sept. 30 to correct a mistake about LRO’s orbit at the time these images were taken. See our previous article on the first round of LROC’s images of various Apollo landing sites.
Ed von Renouard working at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station in Australia was the first person to see images from the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Image courtesty of Bruce Ekert.
Six hundred million people, or one fifth of humanity at the time, watched Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon in 1969. But seeing live transmissions from that historic event wouldn’t have been possible – and the Apollo missions wouldn’t have possible either – without reliable communications and accurate tracking capabilities.
To support the Apollo Program, NASA built the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) with three 85 foot (26 meter) antennas equally spaced around the world at Goldstone, California, Honeysuckle Creek, Australia and Fresnedillas (near Madrid), Spain.
Because of the movie “The Dish” however, most people think the Parkes Radio Antenna was the only dish used in Australia. But the Honeysuckle Creek dish was the real star of the Apollo missions. Most notably, it supplied voice and telemetry contact with the lunar and command modules but it also provided the first televised pictures of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.
“It was a job well done by many people all over the world,” said Bruce Ekert, a technician with the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station. “When I reflect that we were part of history, it is still amazing that it came together and worked so smoothly.”
The Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station (HSK) was a radio-quiet location in the Australian Alps surrounded by granite peaks 32km southwest of Canberra, Australia’s capital.
Ekert helped install a microwave relay link from HSK to the Red Hill Radio Terminal in Canberra. “This link was the “missing link” as at that time, there was only a telephone line from HSK to Canberra, and this was unsuitable for TV pictures,” Ekert told Universe Today.
Apollo antenna coverage. Credit: NASA
Ekert was working for the government telecommunications department and in April 1969 he was told his next job would be to install a microwave link so that when Australia’s side of the world was pointed toward the Moon, all the communications to the Moon and back could be relayed to NASA and mission control in Houston.
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station during Winter (July) 1969. Photo courtesy Bruce Ekert
It may have been summer in the US, but in Australia it was winter. 1969 was cold and snowy, especially in snow country at 1200m (3600ft) up in the mountains, making the work difficult.
“It was cold and we had a lot of snow that year,” Ekert said, “Aligning microwave dishes on towers in cold weather, the bolts tend to lock up, and it’s difficult to move them around to get the best signal. Moving them with cold hands and cold steel is not the easiest things to do. But we installed microwave dishes on towers and equipment in the buildings. We also had to install a temporary tower with two dishes on it to redirect the signal through the mountains to get it out to the rest of the world.”
“We were running by the seat of our pants at one stage,” Ekert continued. “It was all thrown together and we knew it would work, but still, since we threw it together we hoped it would work according to plan.”
Ekert and his co-workers had to make sure the temporary links stayed working for the duration of the Apollo 11 mission.
“We maintained the equipment in a hands-off position,” he said. “As we say now, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. We worked for the complete duration of the mission, but we weren’t allowed to touch anything if it was working – just let it run. If it had failed, then we would have had to fix it, but since everything just coasted along and there weren’t any problems, we just watched and waited like everyone else.”
But those at HSK had one little advantage. “The staff at Honeysuckle Creek actually were the first people in the world to see the pictures coming from the Moon, by a few milliseconds,” Ekert said. “So that is our claim to fame.”
Ed von Renouard, working at HSK was the first man in the world to see the pictures from the Moon as they came from the receiver in the dish. (See top image of Ed back in 1969, and below is Ed with Bruce Ekert)
Louise from the HSK reunion organizing committee, Bruce Ekert, and Ed von Renouard at the Apollo 11 celebrations in Australia. Photo Courtesy Bruce Ekert.
But then after 8 minutes, NASA decided the larger 64meter Parkes Radio Telescope, 300 kilometers away, was getting a clearer signal and switched over for the remaining coverage of the spacewalk for the next two-and-a-half-hours.
Yes, there was a wind storm at Parkes, which threatened to blow the dish off course, as portrayed in “The Dish,” but Ekert said the movie was a typical Hollywood type creation.
“There were no crises where they were going to lose communications,” he said. “There was a big storm, where they had winds up to 60 mph (100 kph) at Parkes not long after the landing happened. They did fear the dish might be blown off course, but they always had the standby of Honeysuckle Creek, which was still receiving pictures, and at that point the moon had risen higher in the sky and pictures were actually better. So if the Parkes dish had actually been blown off course, they would have immediately switched back to Honeysuckle Creek.”
The original Honeysuckle dish now at Tidbinbilla. Courtesy Bruce Ekert.
Parkes was part of MSFN’s “wing” stations to provide back-up and additional coverage. This meant that each of the three locations around the world would have two stations capable of communicating with Apollo spacecraft at lunar distances. In addition to just redundancy, there was another reason for having two Apollo-capable stations at each location. For project Apollo, communications used the higher frequency S-Band (around 2.2GHz), and the beam width of the 85 foot antennas at those frequencies was only 0.43 degree. Ideally, one antenna would track the Command Service Module in Lunar orbit and the other would track the Lunar Module to the surface.
Parkes was also called in to assist with the Apollo 13 emergency.
In addition, a number of other stations supported Apollo, including a facility at Tidbinbilla, 20 km away from HSK, which also had dedicated Apollo equipment and people to operate as an additional receive/transmit facility.
More permanent microwave relays were installed, and HSK was part of all the Apollo missions, and in 1974 at the conclusion of the Skylab program, HSK Creek joined the Deep Space Network as Deep Space Station 44, working deep space missions like Viking, Voyager, Pioneer and more. It was closed in December 1981, with its 26 meter antenna relocated to the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex at Tidbinbilla, and renamed Deep Space Station 46, where it is still in use today.
The original HSK site has been leveled, and only the concrete foundations remain, but in 2001 an outdoor display was added. During Apollo 11 celebrations in July of this year, Ekert joined about 200 other people who worked at HSK, Parkes and Tidbinbilla to commemorate their achievements with Apollo.
Bruce Ekert on July 21, 2009 at the Honeysuckle Creek site, taken from the position of the communications tower. Below is the concrete pad which marks the position of the building. At the very back of the photo is the place where the HSK Dish was situated. Courtesy Bruce Ekert
“We traveled to the site of the HSK tracking station, for a ceremony unveiling a new plaque to show visitors and tourists where history was made on 21st July, 1969,” said Ekert. “We then moved over to another part of the site and a time capsule was filled with memorabilia from 1969 until now. My wife, who is Russian, put in a 50 Ruble note, with the words that there is not a “Cold War” anymore. The time capsule was buried, with instructions for the park rangers that it is to be dug up in 60 years time to mark the 100th anniversary of man’s first footsteps on the moon.”
Neil Armstrong also sent a note of congratulations for the ceremony, touching on the misconceptions the rest of the world might have because of things portrayed in the movie “The Dish.”
“Some of you, I expect, may have had mixed emotions about the film, THE DISH. I understand, because as technical people, we like things to be correct and accurate. And the film did not always accurately capture the roles of those of you at Honeysuckle Creek, those of you at Parkes, and those of you at Tidbinbilla. But for most of the viewers of the film around the world, those were not the details that they would remember anyway. What they will remember is that down in Australia there were some very dedicated people, with some very big antennae and complex electronic equipment that did remarkable things that were instrumental in the success of man’s first flights to the moon. They will have a sense that you were having a great time doing what you were doing. And what they remember will, in fact, be the truth.”
—from Neil Armstrong’s message to the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex
The celebrations continued in Australia in Canberra and at exactly 12.51pm local time, they showed a replay of the moon walk, with Neil Armstrong jumping down off the ladder of the lunar module to the surface of the Moon at exactly 12.56pm.
Some of the Honeysuckle team underneath the old antenna, DSS-46, at Tidbinbilla on Monday 20th July 2009. Credit: Honeysucklecreek.net
“The audio came over the auditorium sound system, and the atmosphere was awesome,” Ekert said. “It was a great celebration, where we patted ourselves on the back and had a salutatory drink to the whole situation.”
And a well deserved drink it was. The rest of the world sends its thanks to those who made watching television from the Moon possible.
![NAC image blown up two times showing Tranquility Base [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].](https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Apollo-11-close-up.jpg "NAC image blown up two times showing Tranquility Base [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].")
