Science: Back to the Moon

Even as the Soviet troika circled the earth, the U.S. was busily preparing a space spectacular of its own. On the morning of Nov. 14, only 117 days after man’s conquest of the moon, the eyes of the world will again be focused on Cape Kennedy’s pad 39A. Though the flight of Apollo 12 may seem like history relived, the second American effort to land men on the moon should be almost as dramatic as its predecessor. It will demand every bit as much daring from its all-Navy crew.

Riding atop a thundering Saturn 5 booster, the Apollo 12 astronauts will use a rocketry system virtually identical to the one that propelled Apollo 11. Yet their nautically named command ship, Yankee Clipper, will blaze its own distinctive path. Halfway to the moon, Apollo 12 Skipper Charles (“Pete”) Conrad, 39, a veteran of two earth-girdling Gemini flights, will fire the spacecraft’s service propulsion engine, jolting the ship out of its “free-return” trajectory. No longer able to loop the moon automatically and return to earth, should its engine falter, Apollo 12 could be lost forever in an orbit around the sun. But NASA flight planners feel that the maneuver is worth the risk: it will save crucial fuel reserves on the way to the landing site in the Sea of Storms, roughly 860 miles west of Tranquillity Base.

Conrad’s Parking Lot. Leaving Gemini Veteran Richard F. Gordon Jr., 40, behind in the mother ship, Conrad will descend with Space Rookie Alan Bean, 37, to the moon’s surface in a lunar module called Intrepid, namesake of seven fighting ships from U.S. naval history. Conrad is so confident of Intrepid’s navigational gear that he plans to fly a “heads up” approach. He will face the darkness of space until he is little more than a mile from the lunar surface; then he will pitch Intrepid forward for his first glimpse of the small, rockless landing area, which his shipmates have already nicknamed “Conrad’s parking lot.”

During 32 hours on the moon, Conrad and Bean will take two strolls, each lasting 3½ to 4 hrs., gather about 130 lbs. of lunar rocks, and stage several scientific experiments. In addition to such familiar activities as measuring bombardment of the moon by solar particles and setting up another seismometer to detect lunar rumbling, the astronauts will leave behind three sophisticated instruments: 1) a magnetometer to take readings of the moon’s weak, though detectable magnetic field that may tip off scientists to the moon’s internal structure; 2) an ion detector capable of determining the nature of charged electrical particles near the lunar surface; 3) a cold cathode gauge to measure the density of the thin lunar atmosphere. Powered by an atomic generator that will produce electricity from the heat given off by its radioactive plutonium core, these instruments are designed to radio back telltale clues about the moon’s makeup for at least a year.

Deliberate Crash. The astronauts’ most ambitious lunar excursion will be down the 12° slope of the nearby 665-ft-wide crater that has been the resting place of Surveyor 3 ever since the unmanned probe soft-landed on the moon more than two years ago. Bean will descend first, attached to Conrad with an Alpine-style tether. If all goes well, the two men will try to reach the spidery spacecraft, examine and photograph it and then bring back some of its parts, including a 17-lb. TV camera. These cannibalized samples should provide spacecraft designers with invaluable information about the kind of wear they can expect in equipment at future lunar bases.

Even the.departure from the moon will be somewhat different. Once they rejoin Yankee Clipper 69 miles overhead, Conrad and Bean will send Intrepid’s ascent stage crashing into the moon rather than into a lunar orbit. This will eliminate a potential hazard to future lunar navigation as well as cause enough of a thud to give earthbound seismologists a good calibration test of the new lunar seismometer. Next, the astronauts will shoot a series of closeup photographs of the moon, using both ordinary and infra-red film to help NASA planners pick out landing sites for the remaining eight Apollo missions. Finally, Yankee Clipper’s engine will be fired once again to begin the long, leisurely journey back to earth. Ten days 4 hr. 30 min. after it sets off from Cape Kennedy, Apollo 12 should splash down in the Pacific, 525 miles east of Samoa, to end man’s second successful expedition to the moon.