A view of Apollo 16's Lunar Rover, a good dependable car that cost $2 Million.

Apollo 16’s Lunar Rover was driven over 20 miles on the three EVA’s at Descartes, and this is a good picture of the television camera on the right front of the vehicle, that took hour after hour of color television, and made it seem like those watching back on earth, were the third Astronaut, viewing where no man had been before.

 

 

                             And a picture of Charlie Duke working near the rover on the surface of the Moon.

                   And a good processed image to remove glare, showing the rover and the LM Orion.

Apollo 16 Lunar Rover Grand Prix: My Favorite Apollo movie film.

Towards the end of EVA-1, John Young drove the Lunar Rover solo, with Charlie Duke filming his drive to and from the direction of the LM for engineers at Boeing, so they could have documentation of how the Rover actually performed on the lunar surface. This movie is one of my all time favorites from Apollo, and shows how much the Rover drove like “A combination of a bucking bronco, and a rowboat in a rough sea”, according to Dave Scott of Apollo 15, the first Rover driver. 4-wheeling - On the Moon!

The first flight of Orbital Science Company’s Taurus rocket on the A-One maiden launch went well. The booster delivered the dummy Cygnus payload simulator into orbit, and everything appeared to go well with the launch. Delayed twice, first by an umbilical and unacceptable weather Saturday, the Antares rocket ignited, and roared off the pad and arced northeast away from Wallops Island, Virginia, and NASA TV provided live coverage of the launch.

 

Television from both ground tracking cameras and onboard the first and second stages of the Antares rocket were sent down to the ground, and here is what some of the images looked like:

 

    First stage burning properly during the first stage of ascent.

         First stage separation and the first stage falling away as the upper
         stage accelerates to orbit.

 

Second stage shutdown and the Cygnus payload simulator is in orbit.

 

All in all an apparently very successful debut flight for the second COTS resupply company, and the International Space Station is going to have a second company able to supply cargo to the orbital outpost. Hurrah for OSC/Taurus! Way to Go!

 

 

 

 

41 years ago today - Apollo 16 EVA 1.

                               Immediate area of the LM, and AlSEP site.
 

  41 years ago today, Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke were walking on the moon on EVA 1, their first excursions outside of the Lunar Module Orion. Young and Duke had stepped onto the lunar surface, set up the flag, deployed the lunar rover, unloaded the ALSEP scientific package, and then began to set up the ALSEP southwest of Orion.

   I was in 8^th grade at the time, and left school early that afternoon, playing hooky, to watch EVA 1 on television. I had not gotten home till Young and Duke were at Station 1, and did not see Young rip the cable from the Central Station to the Heat Flow electronics box, because he couldn’t see the cable because the control unit for his spacesuit was in the way.

  I did get home in time to see Young and Duke working at Station 1, and saw Duke pick up a medium sized rock that was sticking out of the surface near the lunar rover. He told capcom Tony England back at Mission Control in Houston, Texas, that if he fell in Plum crater, Mulhberger, one of the scientists back in the science support room behind the MOCR, had “had it!”

   I wanted to include several pictures of the landing site from orbit, pictures from the surface, and some personal reminisces of my watching the exploration of Descartes by Young and Duke, as witnessed by me, and millions of others, on live television from the surface of the Moon.

 

 

  I remember Young jumped up twice for both the television camera on the rover, and Charlie Duke’s Hasselblad, and this was one of the more memorable flag saluting pictures from all of Apollo.

 

 

  Once at the ALSEP site, Young accidentally tore the cable for the Heat Flow probes loose from the ALSEP central station to the electronics box, and this was the worst loss of the mission. The rest of the ALSEP deployment went nominally, and everything else worked.

            The Heat Flow Electronics box, view looking Southwest.

Young and Duke then drove west south west of the LM to sample around Flag Crater, Station 1 on their itinerary outside Orion on EVA 1. They sampled on the Northeast corner of Plum Crater, then back near the Rover, where Charlie Duke picked up a “Great Scott’ sized rock with white crystals on top of it, on direction of the geologists in the Science Support Room. It was during this part of EVA 1 that I got home, turned on the TV, and saw some limited amount of live coverage on the networks, (ABC & CBS as I recall)

                      John Young's panorama at Station 1

        A  TV Capture image of Charlie Duke grabbing the Great Scott rock on the rim of Plum Crater.