DOCSLIB.ORG

From the Office of Public Relations -More

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
From the Office of Public Relations -More MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. News Office (AC0069) From the Office of Public Relations Massachusetts Institute of Technology FOR RELEASE TO A.M. NEWSPAPERS Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 OF SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1969 Telephone: 864-6900, extension 2701 Astronaut James A. Lovell, Jr. , navigator on the Apollo 8 flight to the moon, will be in Cambridge Thursday (February 13) to address students and staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where the Apollo guidance system was developed. Appearing with the astronaut will be Mr. Christopher C. Kraft, who, as director of flight operations for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Manned Space- craft Center at Houston, Tex., is the chief ground controller for all manned space flights. Astronaut Lovell, who is a captain in the U.S. Navy, and Mr. Kraft will be at M.I.T. Thursday to take part in a special Apollo convocation for M.I.T. students and staff. The convocation will be at M.I. T.'s Kresge Auditorium from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p. m. M.I. T. President Howard Johnson will preside at the convocation. Other convoca- tion speakers will be Dr. Charles Stark Draper, founder and director of the M. I. T. Instru- mentation Laboratory which is responsible for the Apollo guidance work, and Mr. David G Hoag, an associate director of the Laboratory who directs the Laboratory's Apollo work. Captain Lovell will illustrate his talk with color slides and color motion pictures which he and the other members of the Apollo 8 crew - - Col. Frank Borman and Lt. Col. William Anders -- made during their flight. The illustrative pictures show views of the moon and the earth made during the voyage out and back, scenes of the lunar landscape made while the Apollo 8 was in orbit around the moon, and scenes made inside the spacecraft showing crew members at work. The convocation will be televised live and in color by WGBH-TV Channel 2. Color television monitors will be located in the Sala de Puerto Rico at M. I.T.'s Student Center to -more- Use copy created from Institute Archives record copy. © Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. News Office (AC0069) 2-2-2-2-2 Apollo 8 Convocation accommodate overflow crowds from among the M. I. T. community. In addition, WGBH-TV expects to rebroadcast the convocation program by videotape at a time to be announced later. Earlier Thursday - - from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p. m. - - Lovell and Kraft will take part in a special assembly at Kresge Auditorium for staff members and employees from Instru- mentation Laboratory. Dr. Draper will preside at that meeting. In his talks at M. I. T. - - particularly in the talk before the Instrumentation Labo- ratory work force -- Captain Lovell is expected to present a first hand report on the operation of the guidance-and-navigation system on the moon trip. The M. I. T. Laboratory not only designed and developed the on-board guidance- and-navigation system hardware for Apollo, but also has continuing responsibility for pro- gramming the guidance computer portion of the system for each Apollo flight and for training astronaut crews in use of the system and programs. Moreover, M.I.T. engineers at the Laboratory and at Apollo centers throughout the U. S. support NASA in installation, checkout and test of all systems and, during missions, back up ground controllers at Houston in the use of the system in space. On the flight to the moon, Captain Lovell's special assignment as navigator was the operation of the M.I.T. guidance system. In preparing for the mission, he made his last visit to the M. I. T. Laboratory (at 75 Cambridge Parkway) only 10 days before the Apollo 8 launch for a final practice session with the Laboratory's Apollo spacecraft. NASA, in post flight analysis, described the operation of the G & N system during the flight as "phenomenal." The spacecraft landed in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the half million mile round trip less than one-third of a mile off the programmed target point. Captain Lovell drew commendations from NASA for his expert use of the system during the flight. He operated the system's space sextant and scanning telescope, its computer programs, and its inertial measurement unit with such skill that he became known among his colleagues at Houston as "the man with the golden hands. " At one point on the flight toward the moon, Col. Borman poked good-natured fun at Captain Lovell and at his skill with the M. I. T. system. Colonel Borman told capsule com - municators not to praise Captain Lovell too much. "We've got to spend four more days up here with him and already he's talking about going back to M. I. T. as a professor, " Colonel Borman told the ground. Captain Lovell will conclude his visit to M. I. T. Thursday at a small, private dinner at the home of President Johnson. Use copy created from Institute Archives record copy. © Massachusetts Institute of Technology .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • USGS Open-File Report 2005-1190, Table 1
    TABLE 1 GEOLOGIC FIELD-TRAINING OF NASA ASTRONAUTS BETWEEN JANUARY 1963 AND NOVEMBER 1972 The following is a year-by-year listing of the astronaut geologic field training trips planned and led by personnel from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Branches of Astrogeology and Surface Planetary Exploration, in collaboration with the Geology Group at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas at the request of NASA between January 1963 and November 1972. Regional geologic experts from the U.S. Geological Survey and other governmental organizations and universities s also played vital roles in these exercises. [The early training (between 1963 and 1967) involved a rather large contingent of astronauts from NASA groups 1, 2, and 3. For another listing of the astronaut geologic training trips and exercises, including all attending and the general purposed of the exercise, the reader is referred to the following website containing a contribution by William Phinney (Phinney, book submitted to NASA/JSC; also http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/ap-geotrips.pdf).] 1963 16-18 January 1963: Meteor Crater and San Francisco Volcanic Field near Flagstaff, Arizona (9 astronauts). Among the nine astronaut trainees in Flagstaff for that initial astronaut geologic training exercise was Neil Armstrong--who would become the first man to step foot on the Moon during the historic Apollo 11 mission in July 1969! The other astronauts present included Frank Borman (Apollo 8), Charles "Pete" Conrad (Apollo 12), James Lovell (Apollo 8 and the near-tragic Apollo 13), James McDivitt, Elliot See (killed later in a plane crash), Thomas Stafford (Apollo 10), Edward White (later killed in the tragic Apollo 1 fire at Cape Canaveral), and John Young (Apollo 16).
    [Show full text]
  • PEANUTS and SPACE FOUNDATION Apollo and Beyond
    Reproducible Master PEANUTS and SPACE FOUNDATION Apollo and Beyond GRADE 4 – 5 OBJECTIVES PAGE 1 Students will: ö Read Snoopy, First Beagle on the Moon! and Shoot for the Moon, Snoopy! ö Learn facts about the Apollo Moon missions. ö Use this information to complete a fill-in-the-blank fact worksheet. ö Create mission objectives for a brand new mission to the moon. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVELS 4 – 5 SUBJECT AREAS Space Science, History TIMELINE 30 – 45 minutes NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS ö 5-ESS1 ESS1.B Earth and the Solar System ö 3-5-ETS1 ETS1.B Developing Possible Solutions 21st CENTURY ESSENTIAL SKILLS Collaboration and Teamwork, Communication, Information Literacy, Flexibility, Leadership, Initiative, Organizing Concepts, Obtaining/Evaluating/Communicating Ideas BACKGROUND ö According to NASA.gov, NASA has proudly shared an association with Charles M. Schulz and his American icon Snoopy since Apollo missions began in the 1960s. Schulz created comic strips depicting Snoopy on the Moon, capturing public excitement about America’s achievements in space. In May 1969, Apollo 10 astronauts traveled to the Moon for a final trial run before the lunar landings took place on later missions. Because that mission required the lunar module to skim within 50,000 feet of the Moon’s surface and “snoop around” to determine the landing site for Apollo 11, the crew named the lunar module Snoopy. The command module was named Charlie Brown, after Snoopy’s loyal owner. These books are a united effort between Peanuts Worldwide, NASA and Simon & Schuster to generate interest in space among today’s younger children.
    [Show full text]
  • Apollo Over the Moon: a View from Orbit (Nasa Sp-362)
    chl APOLLO OVER THE MOON: A VIEW FROM ORBIT (NASA SP-362) Chapter 1 - Introduction Harold Masursky, Farouk El-Baz, Frederick J. Doyle, and Leon J. Kosofsky [For a high resolution picture- click here] Objectives [1] Photography of the lunar surface was considered an important goal of the Apollo program by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The important objectives of Apollo photography were (1) to gather data pertaining to the topography and specific landmarks along the approach paths to the early Apollo landing sites; (2) to obtain high-resolution photographs of the landing sites and surrounding areas to plan lunar surface exploration, and to provide a basis for extrapolating the concentrated observations at the landing sites to nearby areas; and (3) to obtain photographs suitable for regional studies of the lunar geologic environment and the processes that act upon it. Through study of the photographs and all other arrays of information gathered by the Apollo and earlier lunar programs, we may develop an understanding of the evolution of the lunar crust. In this introductory chapter we describe how the Apollo photographic systems were selected and used; how the photographic mission plans were formulated and conducted; how part of the great mass of data is being analyzed and published; and, finally, we describe some of the scientific results. Historically most lunar atlases have used photointerpretive techniques to discuss the possible origins of the Moon's crust and its surface features. The ideas presented in this volume also rely on photointerpretation. However, many ideas are substantiated or expanded by information obtained from the huge arrays of supporting data gathered by Earth-based and orbital sensors, from experiments deployed on the lunar surface, and from studies made of the returned samples.
    [Show full text]
  • Deep Space Navigation: the Apollo VIII Mission
    F EATURE Deep Space Navigation: The Apollo VIII Mission by Paul Ceruzzi things. I remember that one of the Missile Division. For a mission like things that I was concerned with at the Apollo, inertial navigation had several In December 1968 the Apollo VIII time was whether our navigation was challenges. The first is that gyroscopes, mission took three astronauts from the sufficiently accurate, that we could, in which are at the heart of an inertial sys- Earth to an orbit around the Moon and fact, devise a trajectory that would get tem, tend to drift and give erroneous read- back again, safely. It was the first mission us around the Moon at the right dis- ings. The second is that the system needs to carry human beings far enough away tance without, say, hitting the Moon to account for the acceleration of gravity, from the Earth to be influenced primarily on the back side or something like which cannot be distinguished from the by the gravitational field of another heav- that, and if we lost communication accelerations due to a rocket’s thrust or enly body. That mission also marked a with Earth, for whatever reason, could any other accelerating force. number of other famous milestones: the we navigate by ourselves using celes- The drift problem, though serious, first human crew lofted by the Saturn V tial navigation. We thought we could, was manageable for intercontinental bal- booster, the Christmas Eve reading from but these were undemonstrated listic missiles (ICBM), whose rocket the Bible book of Genesis, and the skills.1 motors burn only for a few minutes.
    [Show full text]
  • Moon Rock Now on Permanent Display at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum
    Moon Rock Now on Permanent Display at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum Posted by TBN(Staff) On 07/22/2020 Lovell holds the Ambassador of Exploration Award. Image Credit: NASA/Paul Alers LEXINGTON PARK, Md. - When the doors of the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum open at 10 am Friday morning, visitors will be able to stand within inches of the Moon, or at least a small piece of it. As part of the “Naval Aviation in Space” exhibit currently in final development, the lunar sample, or “Moon Rock” is now on display at the museum. The lunar sample is on permanent loan from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the museum as part of the Ambassador of Exploration program. In 2009, NASA gave each of the pioneer astronauts, those from Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, or their surviving relatives, the Ambassador of Exploration award on the condition it be housed in the institution of their choosing. Captain James “Jim” Lovell, most famous for his role as commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, chose the Pax Museum to be the home for his award. This was in recognition of his time as a student at the U. S. Naval Test Pilot School and Strike Aircraft Test (now VX-23) at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. Lovell’s Gemini XII heat shield, Apollo XIII patch, and lunar sample now on display at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum. Image Credit: PRNAM/Dan Bramos Captain Lovell, who traveled into space on four separate missions including Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13, is a lifetime member of the museum who now resides in Illinois.
    [Show full text]
  • Educator's Resource Guide
    EDUCATOR’S RESOURCE GUIDE TAKE YOUr students for a walk on the moon. Table of Contents Letter to Educators . .3 Education and The IMAX Experience® . .4 Educator’s Guide to Student Activities . .5 Additional Extension Activities . .9 Student Activities Moon Myths vs. Realities . .10 Phases of the Moon . .11 Craters and Canyons . .12 Moon Mass . .13 Working for NASA . .14 Living in Space Q&A . .16 Moonology: The Geology of the Moon (Rocks) . .17 Moonology: The Geology of the Moon (Soil) . .18 Moon Map . .19 The Future of Lunar Exploration . .20 Apollo Missions Quick-Facts Reference Sheet . .21 Moon and Apollo Mission Trivia . .22 Space Glossary and Resources . .23 Dear Educator, Thank you for choosing to enrich your students’ learning experiences by supplementing your science, math, ® history and language arts curriculums with an IMAX film. Since inception, The IMAX Corporation has shown its commitment to education by producing learning-based films and providing complementary resources for teachers, such as this Educator’s Resource Guide. For many, the dream of flying to the Moon begins at a young age, and continues far into adulthood. Although space travel is not possible for most people, IMAX provides viewers their own unique opportunity to journey to the Moon through the film, Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon. USING THIS GUIDE This thrilling IMAX film puts the audience right alongside the astronauts of the Apollo space missions and transports them to the Moon to experience the first This Comprehensive Educator’s Resource steps on the lunar surface and the continued adventure throughout the Moon Guide includes an Educator’s Guide to Student missions.
    [Show full text]
  • Table of Contents
    PAGE: 1 PAGE: 2 Table of Contents LEXILE® MEASURE 3 Copernicus, King of Craters 870L 4 Catching Andromeda’s Light 890L 6 Merry Christmas from the Moon! 810L ©Highlights for Children, Inc. This item is permitted to be used by a teacher or educator free of charge for classroom use by printing or photocopying one copy for each student in the class. Highlights® Fun with a Purpose® ISBN 978-1-62091-227-0 PAGE: 32 object—either a rocky asteroid or an icy comet—was more than a mile in diameter. Still, there are larger craters on the Moon, so why is Copernicus special? The answer is simple: because the crater faces Earth directly, it looks nice and round, exactly the way everyone thinks a crater should look. But what really makes Coper- nicus special is its halo of rays. These wispy streamers stretch outward in every direction. Like the crater itself, they are brightest when the Moon is full. Take a close look at these feather-like Copernicus splashes. When a big object blasts out a crater, the smallest particles travel farthest from the point of impact. This spray of rock then falls in a splash pattern onto the lunar surface. This material looks bright because it’s made up of crushed and broken rock, which Copernicus, King of Craters By Edmund A. Fortier On the Moon, this crater rules. The best-known impact crater on to the left of the Moon’s center. reflects light better than the dust- Earth is Meteor Crater. It is You’ll see a small bright spot covered lava plain.
    [Show full text]
  • LUNAR LANDMARK LOCATIONS ­ APOLLO 8, 10, 11, and 12 MISSIONS by Gary A
    NASA TECHNICAL NOTE NASA TN 0-6082 LUNAR LANDMARK LOCATIONS ­ APOLLO 8, 10, 11, AND 12 MISSIONS by Gary A. Ransford, Wilbur R. Wollenhaupt, and Robert M. Bizzell Ma111ud Spacecraft Center Houston, Texas 77058 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION • WASHINGTON, D. C. • NOVEMBER 1970 I. RE PORT NO. /2, GOVERNMENT ACCESSiON NO, 3. RECIPIENT"S CATALOG NO. NASA TN D-6082 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5. REPORT DATE LUNAR LANDMARK LOCATIONS - November 1970 APOLLO 8, 10, 11, AND 12 MISSIONS 6. PERFORM ING ORGANIZATION CODE 7. AUTHOR(S) 8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION REPORT NO. Gary A. Ransford, Wilbur R. Wollenhaupt, and Robert M. Bizzell, MSC MSC S-249 9. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME AND ADDRESS 10. WORK UNIT NO. Manned Spacecraft Center 914-22-20-11-72 Houston, Texas 77058 II. CONTRACT OR: GRANT NO. 12. SPONSORING AGENCY NAME AND ADDRESS 13. REPORT TYPE AND PERIOD COVERED National Aeronautics and Space Administration Technical Note Washington, D.C. 20546 I.e. SPONSORING AGENCY CODE IS. SUPPl,.EMENTARV NOTES 16. ABSTRACT Selenographic coordinates for craters that were tracked as landmarks on the Apollo lunar missions have been determined. All known sources of error, such as gimbal-angle drifts and clock drifts, are accounted for by addition of the proper biases. An estimate of the remaining errors is provided. Each crater is described with respect to the surrounding terrain, and photographs of these craters are included. The total photographic coverage of these craters from the Lunar Orbiter and the Apollo missions is listed. 17. KEY WORDS (SUPPLIED BV AUTHOP) 18. DiSTRIBuTION STATEMENT · Photogrammetric Control Points · Selenograph · Orbital Science · Apollo Landmarks · Navigation Unclassified - Unlimited · Landmark Tracking · Mapping · Landing Sites · Surveying 19.
    [Show full text]
  • Illustrations
    G. K. Gilbert. Ralph B. Baldwin. Courtesy of Pamela Baldwin. Gene Simmons, Harold Urey, John O'Keefe, Thomas Gold, Eugene Shoemaker, and University of Chicago chemist Edward Anders (left to right) at a 1970 press conference. NASA photo, courtesy of James Arnold. Ewen Whitaker and Gerard Kuiper (right) during the Ranger 6 mission in 1964. JPL photo, courtesy of Whitaker. Eugene Shoemaker at Meteor Crater in 1965. USGS photo, courtesy of Shoemaker. Key photo centered on Copernicus (95 km, 10° N, 2 0° w) on which Eugene Shoemaker based his early geologic mapping and studies of Copernicus secondary-impact craters. Rima Stadius, a chain of secondaries long thought by most experts to be endogenic , runs roughly north-south to right (east) of Copernicus. Telescopic photo of exceptional quality, taken by Francis Pease with loa-inch Mount Wilson reflector on 15 September 1929. Mare-filled Archimedes (left, 83 km, 30° N, 4° w) and postmare Aristillus (above) and Autolycus (below), in an excellent telescopic photo that reveals critical stratigraphic relations and also led ultimately to the choice of the Apollo 15 landing site (between meandering Hadley Rille and the rugged Apennine Mountains at lower right). The plains deposit on the Apennine Bench, between Archimedes and the Apennines, is younger than the Apennines (part of the Imbrium impact-basin rim) but older than Archimedes and the volcanic mare. Taken in 1962 by George Herbig with the rzo-inch reflector of Lick Observatory. Features of the south-central near side that have figured prominently in lunar thinking, including Imbrium sculpture at Ptolemaeus (p, 153 km, 9° 5, 2° w); hummocky Fra Mauro Formation its type area north of crater Fra Mauro (FM, 95 km, 6° 5, 17° w); and Davy Rille, the chain of small craters extending left (west) of the irregular double crater Davy G (D).
    [Show full text]
  • On the Social Impact of the Apollo 8 Earthrise Photo, Or the Lack of It?1
    On the social impact of the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo, or the lack of it?1 Fred Spier Senior Lecturer Big History emeritus, University of Amsterdam Summary In this article, the various forms of contemporary news reports are explored of the Apollo 8 Earthrise pictures and whole Earth images photographed by the astronauts. Already during this flight to the Moon, that took place at the end of December of 1968, remarkable differences in perceptions, emotions, and interpretations emerged between the United States and Western Europe and, more likely than not, the rest of the world as well, con- cerning the Earth and humanity’s place on it. Furthermore, it appears that within both continents a considerable portion of the population was hardly affected by these pictures, if at all. These differences in perceptions have evolved over the past fifty years, while many of them continue to exist today. All of this will be examined in some detail with emphasis on what happened during and right after the flight of Apollo 8. Correspondence | Fred Spier, [email protected] Citation | Spier, F. (2019) On the social impact of the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo, or the lack of it? Journal of Big History, III(3); 157 - 189. DOI | https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i3.3390 ntroduction IOn December 24, 2018, it was exactly fifty years The Apollo 8 photos of Earth from lunar orbit were ago that the astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission took the not the first such pictures. The unmanned US Lunar first pictures of Earth from lunar orbit.
    [Show full text]
  • The Space Race Documented Through Front Pages of Newspapers from Around North America
    The News Frontier The Space Race documented through front pages of newspapers from around North America Newspapers and patches generously donated to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center by Jerrid Kenney After the end of World War II, a new battle began: the Cold War. In the mid-20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union were each trying to prove they were better than the other. Both sides wanted to show the superiority of their technology, military, and, by extension, their political systems. Starting in the late 1950s, the battlefront reached space. The United States and the Soviet Union fought to first achieve milestones in space exploration—starting in 1957 with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I, continuing through the U.S.’s landing astronauts on the Moon in 1969, and ending with a handshake in space between American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts in 1975. Witness the fight for extraterrestrial might by reading about the United States and the Soviet Union’s major feats of the Space Race, as recorded in American and Canadian newspapers in real time. The Space Race Over Time July 15-24, 1975 February 20, 1962 May 28, 1964 The Space Race comes October 4, 1957 April 12, 1961 July 20, 1969 John Glenn becomes NASA launches to an end with the Soviet Union Yuri Gagarin Neil Armstrong first American to unmanned Saturn I Apollo-Soyuz Test launches first becomes first becomes the first orbit the Earth rocket as first step Project, the in-orbit artificial satellite human in space human to walk on of the Apollo the Moon docking of U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • The Surveyorprogram
    ..... _° o0ooooo _ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19770025235 2018-04-11T18:05:23+00:00Z .4;" ' F 00000001-TSA03 ORIGINAL PAGE IS OF POOR QUALIo/,y I 1 i 4 , I i IIII '1 ', !, 00000001-TSA04 i._ ,) I l L 1 I t i I / WDC-A-R 77.02 .. National Space Science Dora Center/ World Om Center A For Rockets end Satellites Catalog of Lunar - Mission ;. Data ' ': TechnicalCoordinator - WINIFRED SAWTELL CAMERON Editors ELLEN J. MANTEL • ELIZABETH ,_, MILLER July 1977 i-- 00000001-TSA05 / PREFACE i, We acknowledge with thanks those persons, too numerous to name, of the National Space Science D_ta Center (NSSDC) who have contributed to the production of this Ca_log. Appreciation of the contributions of the experimenters is also hereby acknowledged. _,eir data submission and explanatory documentation form the base o£ this Catalog. _e NSSDC per- ... r sonnel activity included data and information handling, verification, ! data description, inventory, illustrations, and photography, as well as : document production, and involved both the acquisition scientists and ! the Data Center's onsite contractor, General Telephone and Electronics/ ' Information Systems, PMI Facilities Management Corporation personnel. _: The Data Center strives to serve the scientific community in a useful = L manner so that the scientific data deposited there can be disseminated _: for continued and further analysis. Scientists are invited to submit : comments or recommendations regarding the format of this Catalog, the .: data announced herein, and the services provided by NSSDC. Recipients ., are urged to inform other potential data users of its availability. _t i ._ IVinifredSawtell Cameron _i Elizabeth R.
    [Show full text]