Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Apollo 16 "Invisible" Obstacles




More info: Apollo 16 Lunar Surface Journal; https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/a16.trvsta1.html

Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) gets a high-speed workout by Apollo 16 commander John Young. Source: NASA


When exploring the moon, Apollo astronauts visited several different "stations." These could be craters or other landmarks that looked interesting to scientists.

In the early missions, the astronauts walked to each station. Later, they had a cool moon buggy to drive.

John Young, the Apollo 16 commander, spent three days driving the Lunar Rover to distant stations, and he had some scary moments with "invisible" craters.  

After he returned to Earth in 1972, he met with engineers to discuss the mission and the worries he had about driving on the moon.

When Artemis astronauts return to the moon, this may be something to watch for...

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"I was scared to go more than 4 or 5 kilometers an hour. Going out there, looking dead ahead, I couldn't see the craters. I could see the blocks alright and avoid them. But I couldn't see craters. I couldn't see benches. I was scared to go more than 4 or 5 clicks. Maybe some times I got up to 6 or 7, but I ran through a couple of craters because I flat missed (seeing) them until I was on top of them. And, I don't recommend driving in zero phase (which is the direction directly opposite the Sun). (Pre-flight) they kept saying they wanted it included in the traverse, and I specifically cautioned them not to include it on the traverse. But, there is no way for us to get to Flag Crater without driving in zero phase. It sure is grim. The other direction (on the way back to the LM) was about twice as good. I saw my tracks on the way back. We were doing 7, 8, 9, and 10 clicks. It wasn't any good during the traverses where we were going down-Sun. I was tacking a lot of times. But, when you got to a ridge, you couldn't tell if it was a drop-off, or whether it was a smooth, shallow ridge. In a couple of cases, you couldn't see there was a ridge. I didn't care for that much. It's kind of like landing an airplane aboard ship where you're looking right into the Sun and you can't see what you're doing. You just go ahead and land it anyway. It is not normal but, on occasion, you have to do it. But you'd just as soon not."

[Excerpt from the Apollo 16 Lunar Surface Journal with corrected transcript and commentary by Eric M. Jones (Copyright © 1997).]