December 21 – Launch of Apollo 8

Today saw the launch, in 1968, of the first three humans to orbit another astronomical body (the Moon, in case you were wondering), and to see an Earthrise. They were American astronauts James Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders, and their vessel was Apollo VIII (or, more often these days, Apollo 8).

The Crew of Apollo VIII (image credit: NASA)

There was never any intention to land on the Moon on this trip; that would have been difficult without the Lunar Module, which was still being tested on terra firma. And travelling as far as the Moon hadn’t even been the intention just a few months before lift-off. The job of the Apolo VIII crew was originally to orbit the Earth with the Lunar Module attached, but that was changed at short notice, giving them a more historically significant role

Another first for the crew was their ability to take a photograph of the whole Earth. They were the first astronauts to be far enough away to get it all in the frame.

The Earth from Apollo VIII (image credit: NASA)

Lovell and Borman are currently (at December 2022) the oldest living astronauts. Both were born in 1928. Borman (born March 14) is the oldest by 11 days (Lovell was born March 25). Hong Kong-born former US ambassador to Norway, William Anders, is a relative spring chicken (born October 1933).

As with all the Apollo missions, the launch was made possible by using the Saturn V rocket, the largest and heaviest thing ever used to take people or stuff into space, head and shoulders above the Delta or Falcon Heavy, and absolutely dwarfing the shuttle. It took Apolo VIII just under three days to reach the Moon (notching up another first by passing through the Van Allen radiation belt), after which they spent a fourth day making ten orbits, before returning and splashing down in the Pacific and being picked up by World War II veteran USS Yorktown.

May 04 – Launch of Lunar Orbiter IV (1967)

Lunar Orbiter IV was sent to the Moon from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 13 on May 4th 1967 using an Atlas Agena rocket.

The first three Lunar Orbiter (LO) flights had been directed towards finding suitable sites for upcoming Apollo landings, but LO4 was more of a scientific mission, aiming to increase knowledge of the Moon’s surface, photographing most of the near side and a certain proportion of the far side from a high polar orbit.

Your basic Lunar Orbiter style lander. (Image: NASA)

The journey to the Moon was not entirely without incident. There was difficulty locking the tracker onto the star Canopus, and higher levels of radiation from the Van Allen Belt.

Once in orbit, LO4 was able to start photographing the surface. This too was not without its problems, as the thermal door protecting the camera became stuck open until extra commands were sent up to close it. This was then followed by uncertainty over whether the door had opened enough for the next set of photos.

The Moon from Lunar Orbiter IV (image: NASA)

Eventually, LO4 photographed more than 99% of the near side, and then moved to an orbit approximate to that planned for Lunar Orbiter V.

Communication with LO4 was lost in July 1967, and the assumption is that it crashed on the Moon sometime in October.

The large round thing in the middle of today’s second photo is the Mare Orientale (Eastern Sea). If you’re a regular lunar viewer but don’t recall seeing it before, that’s because it’s not easily viewed from down here. It’s on the very far western edge of the near side, and most of the time only shows up as a couple of mountain ranges. Before the space age you would never have guessed that those mountains were part of a massive bullseye.

April 17 – Launch of Surveyor 3 (1967)

Later destined to become (as at April 2022) the only probe on another heavenly body to be visited by humans (the crew of Apollo XII), the Hughes Aircraft Company-built Surveyor 3 was launched by NASA on April 17 1967 from Cape Canaveral, using an Atlas Centaur launch vehicle.

Surveyor 3 is still up there, of course, sitting in a small (200m diameter) crater now named Surveyor, in the Mare Cogitum region of the much larger Oceanus Procellarum (‘Ocean of Storms’).

Photo of a model of Surveyor 3 (credit: NASA Scientific and Technical Information Division “Surveyor Program Results”, 1969)

Landing on the Moon was no picnic for Surveyor 3. An engine problem meant it bounced twice before settling, and bouncing on the Moon is a serious business. The first bounce sent the probe back upwards 35 feet (that’s about two adult giraffes), followed by a smaller second bounce of about 11 feet.

The Surveyors were all similarly constructed craft (body, three legs, and a pointy bit sticking out the top with a solar panel and antenna), but with gradually more bells and whistles (not literally) as the program progressed. Surveyor 3, in the photo above, is shown to have a TV camera (1) and surface-sampler (2 and 3).

The soil scoop and camera were returned to Earth by the crew of Apollo XII. The camera is on display at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C. Whether or not these pieces of space salvage were still carrying viable bacteria on their return remains the subject of speculation.

November 10 – Launch of Luna 17 (1970)

Luna 17 was launched on November 10th, 1970, at the start of a ten month mission to deploy the Lunokhod 1 rover, the first machine to move about the Lunar surface under its own steam. That’s just a figure of speech; despite looking like it might have been steam powered, Lunokhod was run by rechargeable batteries attached to a solar cell.

In the image above, the rover is the hot-tub shaped object on the top, and the things that look like wheels actually are. To the left and right are ramps to allow Lunokhod 1 to leave and begin exploring.

That exploring lasted for 321 days, covering over 6 miles (10km) of the Mare Imbrium, one of the largest craters on the Moon (and indeed in the Solar system) and involved taking thousands of photographs of the view and samples of the local soil.

November 07 – launch of Surveyor 6

In the 1960’s, one of the many problems facing the planners of the manned Apollo program was whether it was even possible to land on the moon, and what kind of surface would be waiting for any unsuspecting astronauts.

Not actually Surveyor 6, but The general design of all NASA’s Surveyor spacecraft was the same, so here you go. (image credit: NASA).

So NASA sent a series of Surveyor probes up to find out more about what would be waiting from them. The sixth of the series was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on November 7th, 1967, on a three day journey to the Sinus Medii (“Middle Bay“) one of the Moon’s smaller basaltic plains.

View of Sinus Medii from Surveyor 6. (Image credit: NASA)

After sending back nearly 30,000 images of the surface, Surveyor 6 left it briefly, becoming the first craft to lift off from a body other than the Earth. By firing its engines for just a few seconds, it was able to lift about 10 feet into the air and land 8 feet away from its original position. This allowed photographs to be taken of the footprints left by the first landing, with the aim of gaining a better understanding the mechanical properties of the Lunar surface.

January 22 – Apollo 5 (1968)

Apollo 5 was the first unmanned test flight of the Apollo Lunar Module (LM). The 11 hour mission took off from Cape Kennedy in the evening of January 22nd 1968. (Aside: I paused here to turn off the spelling suggestions of this infernal machine. I’m sure Kate Kennedy is a lovely girl, but she has no place here.)

Apollo 5 launch (credit: NASA)

The purpose of the flight was to test the workings of the LM in a space environment, and to make sure the “landing abort” system worked, as depicted in the mission patch, below.

Apollo 5 PATCH (credit: NASA)

Despite a few niggles, NASA decided the flight was a success. So much so that they cancelled plans for a further unmanned test flight and decided that the second LM flight would involve a crew.

The LM was produced by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, (now Northropp Grumman), a familiar name in American aircraft circles, as they were the people behind the “Hellcat” fighter, a major player in the Pacific theatre in WWII. It was the company’s founder, Leroy Grumman, who steered the company, post-war, into space projects. His designer, Thomas Joseph Kelly, led the team that designed and built the bizzarely-shaped and instantly recognisable Apollo Lunar Module (originally known as the Lunar Excursion Module, or LEM).

 

 

June 01 – Launch of Surveyor 1 (1966)

The Surveyors were a series of soft landing lunar probes designed to gather information about the Moon’s surface which was needed before committing to sending people up there (it would have been very embarrassing to watch a lunar module sink into the ground).  The first of these, Surveyor 1, was launched from Cape Canaveral on June 1st, 1966, using an Atlas-Centaur rocket, a modified form of the US Air Force’s Atlas ICBM.

Surveyor 1 as seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, 1999 (image credit: NASA)

The main scientific instruments on board were a TV camera and a “strain gauge” to measure the forces on landing.

A slightly better photograph of a Surveyor model on Earth (image credit: NASA)

There were seven Surveyors in total, with landing sites spread out across the Moon, of which numbers 2 and 4 crashed.  Surveyor 1 was sent to check out the area known as the Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms), from where it took more than 11.000 photographs.  Procellarum is one of the lunar maria (seas), but being bigger than the rest it bears the name “ocean”.

 

May 18 – Launch of Apollo 10 (1969)

Apollo 10 was the fourth of the crewed flights in the NASA Apollo program, launched this day in 1969.

As usual there was a three man crew: Tom Stafford and John Young got to try out the lunar module, while Eugene Cernan stayed in the command module.

(Image credit: NASA)

Apollo 10 was a dress rehearsal for the big one: landing men on the Moon.  As such, it was a great success.  Stafford and Young in the lunar  module were successfully separated, and got to within 9 miles (~16 km) of the surface. The “descent stage” of the lunar module was then jettisoned,  just as it would if they had actually landed (I’m not sure if anyone knows whether it’s still in orbit?) and the crew used the “ascent stage” to get back to Cernan.

The three then jettisoned the ascent stage and successfully made it back to the Pacific Ocean (setting a new space speed record for a crewed vehicle along the way), where they were met by the USS Princeton.

There are those who say that the ascent stage of “Snoopy” (the nickname given to the lunar module) is still up there going round the Sun.  A British search has decided that they are 98% certain that the Earth-crossing asteroid 2018 AV2 is in fact the only crewed space vehicle to still be in orbit without its crew.

 

 

 

February 14 – Launch of Luna 20

Launched this day in 1972, Luna 20 was part of the Soviet Union’s unmanned answer to the USA’s manned Moon missions. The main aim was to return samples to Earth, and Luna 20 was the eighth member of the family to attempt this. It’s mission was to finish the job that Luna 18 was supposed to have completed the previous September. Luna 18, however, had ceased transmitting as soon as it hit the Moon, suggesting a less than perfect landing.

Luna 20 returns home

Luna 20 was more successful. It landed in the Apollonius highlands, near the Mare Fecunditatis (Sea of Fertility) on February 21st. Holiday snaps were taken with the panoramic camera, and the on-board drill took some soil samples (55 grams). These were launched back to Earth the next day and landed near the copper mining town of Jezkazgan, (now in Kazakhstan, but at the time in the USSR) on Feb 25th.

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On this day in 2008, OGLE-2006-BLG-109 Lb was discovered. Yes, I know, it’s not the easiest name to remember, but it is slightly more exciting than it sounds. OGLE-2006-BLG-109 Lb is an extra-solar planet, orbiting the star OGLE-2006-BLG-109 L in Sagittarius (which means that to avoid writing it again I’m just going to use the “b” as the name of the planet). It is believed that the solar system to which “b” belongs has some planets similar in size to Jupiter or Saturn, and possibly some more Earth-sized. “b” was discovered using a technique called gravitational lensing (“OGLE” stands for Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment).

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And it wouldn’t be the same without a quick asteroid, so today is the day that Johann Palisa added 304 Olga to his expanding collection. He first spotted it on February 14th 1891. Palisa was 42 at the time, so maybe he’d decided Valentine’s Day was a young man’s game.

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