Journey Through The Solar System, Episode 05 - Assignment, Shoot The Moon
Transcript
00:00Okay, engine stop, APA at a decent, nose control both auto, decent engine command override
00:19off, engine arm off, 13 is in.
00:22We copy you down, Eagle.
00:26Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed.
00:30Roger, Tranquility, we copy you on the ground.
00:33You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.
00:35We're breathing again.
00:36Thanks a lot.
00:37Although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained as you get close to it.
00:45It's almost like a powder.
00:48Ground mass is very fine.
00:52I'm going to step off the land now.
00:55That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
01:09Before Neil Armstrong could take that first step onto the moon's surface,
01:13a lot of work had to be done.
01:15Among the numerous jobs performed was a survey of the moon
01:18to see if it was safe for men to venture there.
01:21Would conditions require special equipment and procedures?
01:25Such important questions had to be answered before the manned expeditions were begun.
01:51This is Larry Ross, Director of Space Programs at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
01:57And I'm the host of this fifth program, Assignment Showtime.
02:03This is Larry Ross, Director of Space Programs at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
02:09And I'm the host of this fifth program, Assignment Showtime.
02:15This is Larry Ross, Director of Space Programs at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
02:19And I'm the host of this fifth program, Assignment Shoot for the Moon,
02:23in a series of 13 programs called Journey Through the Solar System.
02:27Now let's see excerpts from a NASA film which describes the Ranger and Surveyor unmanned missions to the moon.
02:33These spacecraft were launched by the Lewis-managed Atlas-Agena and Atlas-Centaur.
02:40The assignment was specific.
02:42These are photographs of the surface of the moon that are good enough to determine whether or not it's safe for a man to land there.
02:48But appearances can be deceiving.
02:51Just as deceiving as trying to get a good picture of, well, a candy apple.
02:56Doesn't seem to be too much of a problem.
02:58Just set it up, light it, and snap the picture.
03:01Easy, quick, simple.
03:04But it can be tough.
03:07As the technology of man in space was developing,
03:10it became more and more apparent that our knowledge of the moon's surface as a possible landing site was not sufficient.
03:17To land man safely on the moon and get him safely off again,
03:21we had to know whether we could set up a precise enough trajectory to reach the moon.
03:27Could we design and build a spacecraft to land gently on the moon?
03:31Among all those lunar craters, could we find a place clear and level enough for a safe landing site?
03:40To make it possible for a man to land in the Apollo zone on the moon,
03:44better pictures were needed than those taken through Earth's best telescopes.
03:49In fact, better pictures might do more than find a landing site for Apollo.
03:54Scientists hope they might resolve questions unanswered in the 300 years since Copernicus prompted Galileo to study the moon.
04:04What were the lunar craters Galileo observed?
04:10Hits dug by objects hurled from space, or the scars of old volcanoes?
04:15Telescopic photographs, far from answering these questions,
04:19scarcely reveal features on the moon as big as the meteor crater in Arizona,
04:24almost a mile across and several hundred feet deep.
04:32Ranger was designed simply to hit the moon.
04:35Before it crashed to its lunar impact point,
04:38it would send back to Earth close-up TV pictures of a portion of the moon's surface.
04:45The first successful Ranger reached a small lunar sea,
04:49since renamed Mare Cognitum, the sea that has become known.
04:59As soon as the cameras were turned on, the pictures were transmitted to the tracking station at Goldstone, California.
05:05From here they were retransmitted to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in nearby Pasadena.
05:11Here in the spaceflight operations facility, great excitement prevailed as Ranger neared the moon
05:16and its pictures came alive on the TV monitor.
05:19At last, scientists could turn to close-up pictures like these.
05:24Ten seconds to impact. All video good. Signal normal. Standby for impact.
05:32Ten seconds to impact. Video still good. Next one, signal straight.
05:37Three, two, one. Impact, impact has occurred.
05:42Prints of each picture were made for immediate study by scientists and engineers.
05:49On the theory that all lunar seas were flat and would offer the best landing sites,
05:56Ranger examined the surface of two such areas.
05:59Surprising to some scientists, the photographs at first showed little evidence of any volcanic activity on the moon.
06:06No boulders, no rubble, no crevasses, no dust.
06:10Pictures of craters covering craters suggested that the surface of the moon was long ago dug into
06:16and loosened by repeated impacts.
06:26In Ranger 8 photographs, the first signs of volcanic activity on the moon seemed to appear.
06:32The lunar landscape Ranger's TV cameras explored was bleak.
06:37A flat surface studded with craters.
06:41Some are miles across, others no bigger than a washtub.
06:45All were probably formed billions of years ago.
06:51The last target area was the floor of the Alphonsus crater, chosen because it was not a lunar sea.
06:58There was a lot of interest in the dark, smaller craters within Alphonsus,
07:02which might explain more about the forming of the lunar surface.
07:06On the Alphonsus floor, new signs of variety on the moon's surface began to appear.
07:12Craters caused by volcanoes long since dead.
07:17But the evidence from these photographs raised more questions than the pictures answered.
07:24Surveyor, a far more complex spacecraft, was designed to make a soft landing on the moon.
07:31But once safely down, it would also send back TV pictures of a possible Apollo landing site.
07:41The first surveyor worked perfectly, made its planned soft landing,
07:45and sent back more than 11,000 pictures of a small area in the ocean of storms.
07:53Surveyor's moon was dark and relatively smooth.
08:01But still studded with craters and littered with rocks.
08:09Its pictures made it clear that where it landed, there is little loose dust on the surface.
08:16But neither is this surface hard.
08:22It seems to behave much like earthly soil, and will certainly support the weight of a manned landing craft.
08:34It supported surveyor's weight and offered a glimpse beneath the moon's surface,
08:39where the shock absorber sank slightly into the material on which it came to rest.
08:46After transmitting the first batch of pictures and surviving the dry heat of a lunar noon,
08:51surveyor slept.
08:53It slept through the 14-day long lunar night as temperatures plunged 500 degrees.
09:01Then it came awake on command to continue its examination of the moon.
09:08Surveyor took the first color pictures of the moon,
09:11showing a blue-gray surface in contrast to the small color wheel attached to one of surveyor's feet.
09:19In some ways, surveyor's moon seemed more hostile than we thought it might be.
09:25Some feared that rocks littering even the smooth plains
09:28might present a landing hazard to any manned spacecraft.
09:36Lunar Orbiter presented a set of problems different from ranger or surveyor.
09:41It was designed to circle the moon with a pair of cameras
09:45to photograph large areas of the Apollo landing zone
09:48and give good close-up pictures of many possible landing sites.
09:53We called it the flying drugstore because it develops its own film.
09:58The spacecraft also carries an electronic readout system
10:01to scan its photographs and send them back to Earth.
10:06Lunar Orbiter was an impressive advance in lunar photography.
10:20Here was a first close look at large pieces of the moon,
10:2416,000 square miles of the Apollo landing zone,
10:28with a resolution 100 times better than Earth-based views.
10:47For a planned lunar landing, scientists hoped to find a string of sites in groups of three,
10:53each group a series of five-mile-wide ovals strung out in a straight line.
10:58Each site would have to be crater-free, have no large boulders,
11:03and no surface slope steeper than seven degrees.
11:11Of all the areas photographed by the Lunar Orbiters,
11:14only a few were expected to prove smooth and level enough
11:17to meet all the Apollo landing requirements.
11:21The spacecraft photographed several suitable areas.
11:26Working with the photographs,
11:28scientists observed that the smoothest terrain appears to be the darkest.
11:36Using degrees of brightness as a yardstick
11:39has made it possible to measure the roughness of the moon's surface.
11:43Really smooth areas are hard to find.
11:52Orbiter missions have resulted in the selection of eight possible Apollo landing sites.
11:57The most promising seems to be a broad plain on the southeastern part of the Sea of Tranquility,
12:03just east of the crater Mascaline D.
12:06The surface is flat. There are no deep craters, few boulders.
12:16The other seven sites stretch along the equator
12:19from the Sea of Tranquility to the Ocean of Storms.
12:37There was now sufficient data to pinpoint Apollo landing sites for the first mission.
12:43In terrain like this, the first lunar landing craft will touch down
12:47and man descend to take his first exploratory steps on the moon.
12:55Orbiter also photographed the far side of the moon
12:58and found it to be even more heavily cratered than the face.
13:02These were bonus shots made because the cameras had to be in continual operation
13:06until all the film was exposed.
13:18The first high-quality pictures taken of this area,
13:21they covered 80 percent of the moon's hidden face.
13:33One of Orbiter 2's bonus pictures was a shot of the crater made by Ranger 8
13:39when it impacted the moon.
13:42The freshness of the crater was determined by measuring the brightness
13:45of the volcanic rock around the crater.
13:48Originally concentrated and dark in appearance,
13:50the material was now powdered and brightened by the force of the Ranger collision.
13:59The Lunar Orbiter not only provided outstanding photographs of the moon,
14:03it also helped improve our Earth-bound measurements of the moon's shape
14:07and its gravitational field.
14:10Micrometeoroid sensors on board discovered that a spacecraft orbiting the moon
14:15has no more chance of being hit than one in orbit around Earth.
14:20Measuring radiation, Lunar Orbiter 1 experienced two solar flares
14:24after completing its photography,
14:27images that would have spoiled its pictures had they occurred earlier.
14:34Lunar Orbiter 3 photographed this great 400-mile-long fault,
14:39half as deep as the Grand Canyon,
14:41and on another part of the moon, a mountain towering 6,500 feet from the floor of a crater.
14:49Other Orbiter photographs reveal many craters filled with what is apparently volcanic debris.
14:56Here is a wealth of material for continued study by geologists and other scientists.
15:03For example, the crater Copernicus is one of the most prominent features on the moon.
15:08Until not long ago, this photograph taken through the 120-inch reflecting telescope
15:13at the Lick Observatory in California was the best available.
15:20This is Copernicus as seen by Lunar Orbiter 2.
15:25Two miles wide, two miles deep, the crater dominates the face of the moon.
15:34Foth, the keyhole-shaped crater in the foreground, is about 13 miles across and nearly a mile deep.
15:47Foth is 33 miles from Copernicus.
15:51Much of this distance is covered with debris blasted from Copernicus
15:54by the impact of a giant meteorite billions of years ago.
16:03Rounding the back shoulder of the moon, one orbiter got an exceptional shot,
16:08the first photograph of Earth seen from outer space.
16:14From afar, Earth seems shrouded in clouds, much as Venus has always looked.
16:20To scientists, this photograph suggests that Venus may not be hidden beneath a perpetual cloud cover.
16:27A TV camera close enough to photograph Venus may find holes through which to see this planet with greater clarity.
16:34Who knows what a closer look at the evening star will bring?
16:38What answers may be found?
16:41Or what new questions man may have to ask about the nature of the universe?
16:51Other surveyors have touched down near the Landsberg crater in the ocean of storms.
16:59And in the Sea of Tranquility, pressing their unmistakable footprints into the lunar surface.
17:08Like their predecessor, these surveyors took a good look at themselves
17:14and then turned their television cameras on the lunar countryside.
17:25One of the most unusual features of Surveyor 3 was its surface sampler,
17:32a five-foot-long arm with a hand-sized scoop.
17:35This device was designed to dig into the soil to determine bearing strength and other characteristics.
17:41It dug several trenches in the lunar crust.
17:46It dumped samples of lunar material on its footpad, allowing close examination of the freshly disturbed soil.
17:58In other tests, the scoop was deliberately dropped on the surface
18:02and pictures taken of the resulting dents and cracks.
18:08Another surveyor experiment used this alpha scattering device
18:12to determine the chemical composition of the lunar soil.
18:16At one point, surveyors' cameras interrupted their look at the moon to record this event,
18:22an eclipse of the sun by the Earth.
18:46The most important scientific conclusion drawn so far from all these photographs
18:51is that the moon's ancient surface is still slowly undergoing change.
18:59This has been caused mainly by the jarring impact of objects hitting the moon.
19:04But whatever the cause, the moon is not, as we thought, a perfectly preserved relic of the geologic past.
19:17Lunar Orbiter has extended the mapping of the moon to the far side
19:21so that features there could be accurately located,
19:24and it also surveyed many important scientific sites.
19:28These pictures of the moon's polar areas disclosed striking new details.
19:41This is Oriental Basin on the extreme western edge of the moon's disk
19:46and stretching 600 miles in diameter.
19:50The mountains surrounding the basin are among the most massive on the moon,
19:54rising some 20,000 feet above the surface.
20:03Other areas of interest to scientists have been explored.
20:06What are the changing red spots that have been seen in Aristarchus?
20:11What makes the crater's walls so bright?
20:24What kind of erosion created the river-like channel in the Alpine Valley?
20:29Was it volcanic, or was it, as some conjecture,
20:32the result of water on the moon's surface eons ago?
20:38What is the explanation of Cobra Head?
20:42How was it formed?
20:44Why are there certain color differences in this region?
20:49Near the Harbinger Mountains lie a number of curious craters
20:52with sinuous channels extending from them.
20:55Scientists will try to deduce what could have happened on the moon's surface
20:58to account for them.
21:08Because of the astonishing detail of pictures like these,
21:11the yield of information is great.
21:14For example, this rock is 75 feet across.
21:18From the picture, it is possible to tell that it rolled downhill some 900 feet,
21:23scraping away the lunar topsoil.
21:29This rock is only 15 feet across,
21:31but it too left a trail that can be clearly seen.
21:41Oblique photos of the Copernicus crater would seem to exclude it
21:44as a suitable landing site for a manned spacecraft.
21:48But a look at other Copernicus photos taken from a nearly vertical perspective
21:52reveals several promising possibilities,
21:55particularly here in the northwest area.
22:01And surprisingly enough, these lunar photo missions have shown scientists
22:05views of Earth no man had ever seen before.
22:09This is the first photograph of the nearly full planet from 215,000 miles away.
22:17It will provide additional information on the amount of sunlight reflected by Earth.
22:25Lunar Orbiter has successfully surveyed 99 percent of the moon's front face
22:33and significantly increased high-resolution coverage of the far side.
22:38These pictures are likely to be the source of lunar surface information for many years
22:43and should contribute to a fuller understanding of the moon.
22:49If many other questions are still in doubt, some of the answers may already be in our hands.
22:56Examination of these photographs is not complete,
22:59and already they've produced miles of data tapes to be processed.
23:04And additional information is being returned so rapidly
23:08that it will take years to evaluate it all.
23:11When the TV cameras on Ranger 7, 8, and 9 in 1964 and 1965
23:18took close-up pictures of the moon just before impact, astronomers were very pleased.
23:24Ranger 7 had confirmed that there were lunar regions topographically acceptable
23:30as landing places for the manned Apollo spacecraft.
23:34The resolution of Ranger 8 was about ten times better than that
23:38of the best Earth-based telescope's resolution.
23:42Ranger 9's last photograph was taken a quarter second before impact.
23:48The picture showed an area 200 feet by 240 feet.
23:53After the Surveyor 1 spacecraft soft-landed on the moon in June 1966,
23:59a heavily pockmarked surface was revealed.
24:03Craters of all sizes and rocks were examined with a surveyor camera.
24:15The soft landings on the moon by Soviet and U.S. spacecraft
24:19confirmed that the lunar surface would support a manned landing craft.
24:24Set to rest were theories that the moon's surface was like cotton candy or whiskers
24:30or was a very deep, soft dust.
24:33The stage was now set for men to go to the moon for the first time,
24:37a truly momentous occasion in the history of all humankind.
24:47Men were to bring back samples of lunar material for detailed analysis here on Earth.
24:53These lunar rocks and soil were to tell us if the moon were made of Earth-like material
24:59and analysis would tell us their age.
25:07A new science was to grow out of this exploration of the solar system,
25:12comparative planetology.
25:14We were destined to learn more about other worlds and to compare them to Earth.
25:19We could then deduce more about Earth and its destiny.
25:30The Moon and Us
25:40Our next episode, the sixth in a series of 13, is called The Moon and Us.
25:47During that program, we will see highlights of many of the manned expeditions to the moon.
25:54It was an exciting time when the peoples of the Earth stopped their daily pursuits
25:59to watch this live, televised history in the making.
26:04The impact was felt by millions of us as Armstrong stepped onto the moon's surface
26:15and all shared the excitement of being on the moon for the first time.
26:20It was a momentous occasion.
26:23The impact was felt by millions of us as Armstrong stepped onto the moon's surface
26:32and all shared the excitement of discovery and exploration,
26:36emotions until then the exclusive property of only a few in history.
26:53Until our next show, this is Larry Ross at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, saying goodbye.
27:23NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
27:53NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology