DISCLOSURE / FILE
NASA-UAP-D025 is an Apollo 16 scientific debriefing transcript in which NASA personnel reviewed lunar photography, laser altimeter, sub-satellite, particle, and magnetometer results, including one joking reference to an "alien star base" during a discussion of Van de Graaff-area magnetic and laser correlations.
NASA-UAP-D025, “Apollo 16 Scientific Debriefing”
NASA-UAP-D025 is an Apollo 16 scientific debriefing transcript in which NASA personnel reviewed lunar photography, laser altimeter, sub-satellite, particle, and magnetometer results, including one joking reference to an "alien star base" during a discussion of Van de Graaff-area magnetic and laser correlations.
The debriefing is mainly a technical review of Apollo 16 science return after the mission, with detailed discussion of lost photographic coverage, a damaged stellar camera glare shield, reduced laser altimeter performance, and film-processing concerns. NASA personnel said the laser altimeter returned less than half of the planned observations, but the readings were distributed well enough that the shortfall did not seriously damage the scientific return. Later discussion focused on sub-satellite particle and magnetometer findings, including magnetic dips near lunar craters and a large Van de Graaff-area anomaly. The "alien star base" line appears as an offhand joke after a speaker notes that laser data correlates with the Van de Graaff region, not as a finding asserted by the document.
So you can see that we did lose some data.p.37
The end of the shield was bent.p.202
We had planned a total of 20 hours and a few minutes of operating time.p.275
We got 14 hours and a half so that we are down about 25% in the total operating time.p.279
A total number of firings, 3283 and 2106 is the actual number that was recorded so wep.300
the sub-satellite was deployed successfully, our spin rate was nominal about five and a second spin period we want five plus or minus a couple.p.910
And of course the big result is this really huge magnetic dip going over the vondegraph crater, or a region right near the vondegraph crater.p.1721
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Again, the areas in black are the total area covered, which we obtained from the mission.
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Again, the areas in black are the total area covered, which we obtained from the mission.
The areas in red are the pieces which we missed due to the deletion of the plane change and
the early return.
It could be an alien star base or something, I don't know.p.1961
This little piece down here was a blight pass, which we had planned with the pan camera.
It would have taken place on Grab 72 in order to get photographs of his sending, which is
an area in particular interest to the geology.
So you can see that we did lose some data.
On the other hand, we did pick up some data that we would not have gotten.
And I think overall the effectiveness of the pan of the coverage was about 90% of what
we had hoped for pre-mission.
I really want to express the thanks of the photo team to the flight planners here and
also to Ken for his operation of the cameras during the mission.
I know that it was very confusing to be continually changing the flight plan and Ken probably wondered
what the hell we were doing with all his on-offs and so on.
But really I think we did a very effective job of recovering almost all of the data that
we had planned for the mission.
May I have the next slide, please?
This is a diagram showing what the Apollo 15 coverage was like.
This is the plan coverage for the 16 mission and in the dotted line is a plan coverage for
the 17 mission.
The only reason I show this is to indicate that the areas where we did lose data unfortunately
are in the areas that were not covered by 15 and will not be covered by 17 so that the
losses, although small, were real.
May I have the next slide?
Ken, during the film recovery EVA, you reported that the stellar camera glare shield was hung
up on the handrail.
I am not 100% clear as to exactly what that situation was.
This is the stellar camera glare shield and this is a little cover that comes down and
covers that when the mapping camera is retracted.
Maybe you have discussed this with the other people here at the center but for my own information
I would like to know whether this is the cover that was hung up or this is covered?
Both of them.
The shield at the forward end, that one, the first one you looked at, that was sticking
up.
That is sticking up.
But the tip out here was mashed against the handrail.
Mashed against the handrail out in there along here.
The rail isn't in this picture.
The rail is not installed.
It is not installed.
It would have been along here.
That is right.
This lip was up against it and bent back out of the way.
I see.
That was not in the full extend position.
It would look like a partial extension.
Would you tell whether this was bent, whether this rail was bent, this extend rail?
No, but I think we have a photo to probably tell you that.
I don't remember.
The end of the shield was bent.
Whether that rail...
No.
In the next section of the equation, that one was bent.
Whether that rail itself was bent, I didn't notice.
The implication of course is that if this had happened early in the mission and this shield
were bent down, we might get excessive light into the stellar camera and our background
density would be lower or would be higher than we expected.
We might not see as many stars.
The other indication of malfunction that we had of course was in the exposure control
on the pan camera.
That would indicate that the pictures away from the terminal may be overexposed.
That situation is also being looked at and again we're going to talk about it this afternoon
before we actually process the film.
The next slide.
This is the information which I have with regard to the laser altimeter operation.
The first row across here is what the nominal mission would have been and the second row
is the actual results from the Apollo 16.
We had planned a total of 20 hours and a few minutes of operating time.
We got 14 hours and a half so that we are down about 25% in the total operating time.
This is the total revolutions in Longitude that we had planned 10.3 and we got 7.5 so
again we're down about 25% in that regard.
A total number of firings, 3283 and 2106 is the actual number that was recorded so we
are down nearly 30% in the total number of firings.
Also the number of valid elevation readings that we got was appreciably less than the total
number of firings.
So that the actual mission in terms of altimeter observations gave us a little bit less than
half of what we had actually planned.
That's really not as serious a shortfall as it sounds just from the numbers because the
readings were quite well distributed throughout the mission.
The general operation that we saw on the altimeter, the first several revs were completely nominal
and all of the elevation readings were valid.
Then it began to fall off about 75%, 65% and down to about 60% except on the last data
pass on Rev. 62 where it was only about 10% effective.
Generally what we seem to observe is that there would be one good shot and one bad shot
and one good one bad and then maybe several good ones in a row.
We can talk about the reason for that but that's more appropriately covered in the systems
review tomorrow.
The effect that it will have on the data is simply to give us a larger spacing between
data points so far as its effect on the reduction of the photography is concerned, that's absolutely
inconsequential so far as its effect on the correlation between the tracking and gravity
data and the profiles it's a little bit more of concern as they do have a little bit more
smoothing to do between the data points that they got but essentially I don't think that
it really hurts us so far as the scientific return from the mission is concerned.
I would like to say just a word or so about the utilization of the photography.
It has been proceeding much more slowly than I had anticipated in reducing the pictures
from Apollo 15 however the work which is being done by the ACIC in St. Louis is indicating
that the photography photographic reduction will provide positional coordinates of features
on the lunar surface with the accuracy of 10 to 12 meters in position and in elevation
and that seems to coincide very well with what we had predicted pre-mission so we are
quite confident that we're getting very good information from the pictures in that regard.
The tracking data generally is consistent within an orbital pass but we do find discrepancies
up to a kilometer between adjacent photographic passes so that the reduction of the photographs
is giving us a much better tie between orbital passes than we get from the tracking data itself.
Consequently we do expect eventually to come up with an internally consistent coordinate
system reference system figure of the moon with an accuracy on the order of 12 to 15 meters.
It's highly gratifying to me.
So far as the pan camera utilization is concerned there have been some map compilations done.
The indicated precision of those is on the order of 3 meters which again is about what
we had expected but that is a precision and not an accuracy number because of the geometric
problems with the pan camera photography.
However, so far as the resolution of the pan camera is concerned that has held up to just
about what we had expected from one and a half to three meters at the sub-vehicle point
and decreasing off to about five to six meters at the limits of the film.
So far as our indications at the moment are that the results from 16 are quite satisfactory
we do have these problems that we have to resolve in the processing of the film and once that
is done we will be able to say exactly what we did obtain.
But again I want to express the photo team's thanks to you particularly Ken for the time
and attention that you gave to the camera operation and the results that we have obtained.
Thanks for any questions for?
Do you have a plot of the altimetry, you know last time someone had drawn up a rough hand
sketch of the altimetry and what did anyone do that this time?
The profiles?
Yes sir.
No I don't Ken I think maybe children has one of those and is he here?
Bill?
Yeah Bill.
Do you have a plot?
Yeah I thought you had one.
Okay.
I thought you had one.
Okay.
He'll show that.
Is that handfuls or a couple of shavings?
I don't know how extensive they were enough to concern the people in the processing lab.
All I know that's about all that I know about it where it's supposed to have a review of
that this afternoon.
It could have very serious implications obviously one thing that I seem to recall from the during
the mission is that we had apparently more film left for post-TEI photography than we
had anticipated.
And what that could mean of course is that the camera was not passing film when we thought
it was and things were being chewed up pretty badly inside so we're going to have to look
that over very carefully before we go ahead with the processing of the film.
We expect the camera contractor to look at the shavings and tell us where he thinks they
came from and that may give us a better clue as to what they are actually are.
Do you have a processing schedule yet?
I guess it's all in advance to what you do in a hold until this afternoon yeah after
we're meeting this afternoon.
Assuming you determined to go ahead and develop it we'll take you three or four days to process.
I think the anticipated schedule was to have the original film processed within this week
and all of the duplicate copies within four weeks have been distributed.
Perhaps you stated what is the accuracy of the altimeter?
The least count of the altimeter is one meter.
The accuracy is dependent pretty much upon the slope in the area which is illuminated
and a little bit on the albedo in the area which is illuminated.
In general I think it's fair to say that the reading that we get from the altimeter will
be correct to within three to five meters.
Have you figured out what to do with the pan camera for processing?
I've got a correction for the exposure.
I don't know what has been figured out.
We had a group working on it last week and they're going to give us that report right
after this meeting with decide what to do.
I could comment on what happens by the recommendation for back first and they think the movie is some one-off spill generator and they can do that, you know, they can handle the other pictures, but at some time it'll take way out to be half number one.
And whether or not the altimeter says about that tell me why it's carried out to me because, you know, which is not my opinion.
The situation is really that near the terminator the pictures are underexposed anyhow because we can't open the slit wide enough and so on.
So the camera was wide open at the terminator but it was open wider than it should have been when we were away from the terminator so that the terminator pictures are a little bit underexposed then they become properly exposed and after that they will be overexposed.
So what we would really like of course is a variable processing through each photo pass but that's probably not feasible in the even contemplate.
Thanks Fred.
Nice subject will be the particles and fields of the sub-satellite and I think Jim McCoy is going to cover that is he here?
Oh, there he is.
We got a mic right up there.
Yeah, they'll project it up there in the back booth if you want to.
Yes, where's Paul on which could you get this projected up to?
Okay, can you hear me?
Okay, yes, quickly the sub-satellite was deployed successfully, our spin rate was nominal about five and a second spin period we want five plus or minus a couple.
The attitude was good according to preliminary indications in the sun sensor we have a couple of degrees kept off from the ecliptic which is well within the limits we needed.
The operation of all of the electrostatic analyzers in both solid state telescopes is good although we don't seem to have the noise problem that we had on Apollo 15 and a couple of the analyzers.
And we've got rid of our accumulator counting error that we have characterized in the 15 to give us some problems in our data analysis now on that satellite.
The quick look results on our first magneto tail pass in the presence of these rather expected rather high fluxes of low energy protons.
Which have also been seen now with a new imp from the series I satellite experiment to.
And on this magneto tail pass we appear to have the remnants of a small solar event of the form of some high energy solar cosmic ray electrons and protons around.
Which should prove interesting for our shadow interpretation particularly on electric fields in the magneto tail.
Beyond that if they have those slides there I'd like to briefly describe some of the results we got from Apollo 15.
Would hope to be similar for this one. Our primary experiment was to examine particle shadow configurations in the magneto tail that people are passing through this region by here where we are in the earth's magnetic field.
And use that to examine the question of openness and access through the magneto tail to the magnetic field lines and ultimately to the van Allen belts where theory generally holds that the radiation must somehow come in and then be trapped and exhilarated.
The degree of connection back here with the interplanetary field has been in quite a bit of question and briefly stated the Apollo 15 results indicate pretty clearly that at least most of the time at the latitudes where we pass through the tail.
Of course we only have a couple of passes that these field lines are in fact open out here, connect directly into the interplanetary field and have direct access of solar cosmic ray particles.
We have also observed the existence of a plasma sheet which is known to form in closer to the earth to extend out to them in the distance.
And at least a couple of occasions we have observed cross tail electric fields which are important to theoretical models accounting for aurora and for acceleration particles into the radiation belts.
An unexpected observation which we found interesting was 30 KED or thereabouts protons in very large numbers which we observed quite frequently back in the magneto tail and also observed outside the magneto tail in very similar places.
Our first feeling was that these must also be some component of the solar cosmic ray proton spectrum.
They are of course very low energy would be stopped by even the finished piece of material but the numbers of them and the consistency of their flux densities make them very attractive as probably being indicative, quite indicative of the source that they come from and the magnetism bring them.
Further examination however of the locations where we see them and of the almost constant intensities that we see almost force us to the conclusions that they must somehow be protons from the outer Van Allen belt region here which are somehow coming loose from the earth's field
and moving outward and then getting on to the interplanetary fields and moving out to where we see them and perhaps say the inverse process of the postulated process where we bring solar cosmic ray particles in from the sun to populate the Van Allen belts initially.
Getting our data and now our computer program is at Berkeley in shape where we can examine this detail and unfortunately have been delayed in that.
If I have the next slide I'll show you one orbit of data from the telescopes when these very steady fluxes of protons were present and during this period now I'll show you one orbit of data from the telescopes when these very steady fluxes of protons were present
and during this period and actually for a period of a couple of orbits earlier these fluxes were almost constant there is some changing here there is a very very slight shadowing of protons not very much of all this motion electron phenomena
but then these particles essentially turn off as though somebody closed the valve and this is characteristic of the way they behave when they appear they're suddenly there and when they disappear they're gone just as fast
and we're very hopeful that we will be able to make some sense out of what turns these things on and off and determine where they're coming from and what the mechanism is in presumably now in the magnetosphere
Okay, I think I'll just throw it open to any questions now. Okay.
Where's the lifetime estimate of the 16th orbit?
I wish you hadn't brought that up. I was going to be very sure to get that for us.
We had been very hopeful of getting another dozen or a couple of dozen magnetical passes out of this satellite since it worked so beautifully
I think we're going to cover that.
Chris said it was going to stay up there forever so it better.
The world's going to come to land pretty shortly.
Any other questions about particles and fields?
Okay, let's continue on with some satellite and get on the back.
We didn't say anything about it. I assume that our satellite is sending out good data.
Is it battery charging okay and everything? It's not running into the problem that the 15 guys had or was that normal for the machine?
The machine is working.
All the detectors are operating.
We've got a short lifetime. Okay, let's see. I think Larry Sharp is going to take the homeless place, right?
Okay.
Magnetometer.
The objectives of the magnetometer experiment are essentially pre-pulled.
First is to measure the remnant magnetism on the lunar surface.
Second is to map the electrical conductivity of the lunar interior.
We're finally studying the various aspects of the moon's interaction with the fields and particles in this environment.
The Y scope of these objectives may be possible by the geometry of the absorber that passes through the three fundamentally different regions of space.
For example, to get the spatial variations of remnant magnetism on the lunar surface, one must be in the geomagnetic tail where the temporal variations are almost absent in the magnetic field.
This is a very steady situation. The initial orbit of the sub-satellite was somewhat lower than Apollo 15 and the inclination of about 11 degrees instead of 28.
And I'd like to show you the predictions.
The orbit.
Okay. We've plotted days past deployment versus the parallel in altitude.
Okay. We started out here in pretty good shape. About 97 kilometers or 97 by 123, I guess.
And the prediction was a very rapid drop down to 30 some back up in good shape.
No real trouble until there's the ground line until about 200 days when the probability is 50, 50 of a crash.
Here are the air bars here. You can say the probability was maybe one chance in 10 of a crash year and maybe one chance in five.
And the odds have changed considerably. This was the prediction. Notice the time scale has been expanded greatly.
These are hours now instead of days. Here was the initial prediction at 37 kilometers in here, the actual data points.
This one was taken this morning around in here. And if you can extrapolate by eye, it looks like we have about four days left.
I guess Bill Sogren's taking 50-50 odds that will crash. If anyone's in the betting booth, it's possible that we'll skim the surface and come back out.
Even if we make it through this one, that next dip is going to probably finish this off, which is most unfortunate.
It might be out of your field, but how come our prediction didn't match the actual...
We don't know the gravity field that well, and that's the business of this satellite initially to the gravity field.
I don't know if I can try these pads, but I'll go along after them and try to drive that point on so many times. I think we're really seeing a couple of pads.
Well, any event we have one month's worth of good data, which will add to our panel of 15 results.
And to get some idea of what we're doing with this data, I'd like to show the first slide, which represents an average of 17 different orbits taken when the moon was in the Earth's magnetotail.
And we've plotted the moon's longitude along the horizontal, and the magnetic field in gammas along the vertical.
These numbers are representative of the Earth's tail field, and of course, if you subtract out an average value, this residual would represent the lunar surface field.
And of course the big result is this really huge magnetic dip going over the vondegraph crater, or a region right near the vondegraph crater.
Also, the other initial result we got out of 15 data was that most of the dips in the magnetic field seem to be clearly associated with craters,
lined within a few degrees of the ground track defined by the orbit sub-satellite.
We've numbered the seven most obvious local minimum, and named five of them with associated craters.
Initial results from Apollo 16 show the same type of structure, although we don't see anything as big as vondegraph.
We see, we do go over Korolev again.
That's where the orbits intersect when we're in the tail.
And we see a few other hertz-brung and Pavlov-type bumps.
One is with a little tiny crater called Stein, and one near Mendelev.
Now, if you do repeat this procedure several times with different lunations, say you cover different tracks over the moon,
and this allows a contour map to be made.
So if I go to the next slide, this shows the ground track from where we found the anomaly.
Here was one over hertz-brung, Korolev.
Here's vondegraph.
You can see it right close to the northern border, Pavlov, and one over Mill.
Those are pretty good one-to-one correspondence with large craters.
The initial 11 orbit, of course, is much near the equator.
The inclination goes up to plus or minus 11.
So we saw one over Korolev, and Stein craters located right about here.
It's not too big.
The next map shows a compilation of a lot of these linear profiles.
Next slide, into a contour map.
It's a little hard to read the contours.
This big black blotch here is a result of contours stacked in top of each other near this vondegraph anomaly.
You can see the numbers are hard to make out.
You can see the structure over Korolev, a hint of some structure over hertz-brung.
And the southern sea over here is actually an enhancement sticking out of the moon, so to speak.
You can see Mill shows a definite structure.
Now, the Apollo 16 results should enable us to expand this map,
we'll get better resolutions throughout this area, and be able to extend it along in here.
We'll probably still have a gap down in this region.
[inaudible]
The numbers presented in the chart, if you can see them, are measured in tenths of gamma at an altitude of 100 kilometers.
So, for example, a good representative value is about 30,
and the zero we've arbitrarily chosen at the bottom of the vondegraph dip, since this is the lowest value of magnetism we've observed.
We just call it zero and scale everything relative to it.
So, if you're at 100 kilometers, you'll see a three-gamma dip going over a vondegraph on the average.
Oh, we were fortunate. Also, the near side of the moon. Does the gravity profile have any -- can you correlate?
I've looked at the gravity profile, and it doesn't seem to correlate at all.
Actually, the laser data correlates better with -- you don't -- there's no gravity on the backside.
Okay, but on the backside.
Understand.
It correlates pretty well with the laser data, which shows great big hole here in the backside of the moon around vondegraph.
So, we get our big hole, but I can't see anything.
Scientific justification for connecting the two results.
I will add the -- this reminds you of the gamma ray.
Yes, that's true.
The thick is also a vondegraph. I don't know what it means.
It could be an alien star base or something, I don't know.
Anyway, the next slide shows the front side of the moon, and -- it's upside down.
The thing to contrast is the much smoother nature. Could we do a 180 on the slide, please?
Can you hear me?
Can you turn the slide around, please?
I always had a coffee break. Okay, here.
Anyway, the front side of the moon is much, much smoother than the backside.
The variations are, oh, an order of a factor of 10 smooth.
We don't see very much structure at all. It's very hard to even draw contours.
[ Inaudible ]
Can you sort out the differences in that and the effects of running through the Earth's magnetic field effects?
Since the front side is always close to the Earth, can you sort out --
Oh, we're really measuring magnetic variations on the backside caused by being on the backside,
not due to our measuring environment.
All right, the Earth's tail field is very, very constant when you're in --
Good second, when you're away from the neutral sheet, and that's where all that status is taken.
Well, I guess we never got the front slide complete.
Okay, this is a blow up of the Van de Graaff region in the attempt to pinpoint the exact source of this large anomaly.
We kind of suspected it was over the crater itself since we had always put forth a theory
that what we were actually observing in these dips was some sort of a meteorite impact
that caused a rather uniformly magnetized crust to suddenly have holes in it,
and we're seeing the equivalent dipole of what was left over, and this kind of shoots holes in the theory.
You see a -- this is the BX component, which is the radio component,
and a plus number indicates a value sticking into the moon.
So you see this rather large hole here magnetically in between two craters,
and if you look at various models of double dipoles and stuff, it just doesn't quite fit.
The other components, B sub Y and B sub Z, show that it can't be one of these angling dipoles from the crater.
And presently, we're now conducting the same sort of studies over the rest of the anomaly to see if it checks out.
I've just -- just yesterday completed the one over Corlev, and that one is right in the middle of the crater,
which is promising for this shocking magnetization theory.
[ Inaudible ]
How much validity -- how much validity do we have in the femurs?
I understand there's no chance that we could be off by --
[ Inaudible ]
So it doesn't seem much chance.
We'll get -- maybe one more is the sub satellite comes crashing down in the moon.
The last 10 kilometers should give us a good swath of data, which will give us another high-resolution plot like this.
But other than that, we're 10 out of luck.
[ Inaudible ]
Okay, let me go.
Okay, thank you. Question?
[ Inaudible ]
Okay.
[ Inaudible ]
There's the front side of the moon.
Okay, and our coverage from Apollo 11 will extend.
We'll just equate it across here.
[ Inaudible ]
Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, this is zero degrees.
Okay, I'm going from zero to 90 east to 90 west, the terminator.
This is southern sea region, which is about the only distinctive feature on the front side per se,
and even that's on the terminator.
And again, these are relatively high values of magnetic fields sticking out of the moon.
So you might say that the southern sea is a highly magnetized region.
Notice the 16 site is out of our coverage as we're all the Apollo landing sites.
[ Inaudible ]
Well, most of these values are about 30, 28, 27, which means they're all 3-gamma higher than a zero at bandi-graph.
So I would say the maximum plus or minus is about a half a gamma on the whole front side.
[ Inaudible ]
This is a function of not having quite enough data.
Instead of making physical looking contours, we drew actual contours with the data.
And obviously, if there's a little bit of offset from one orbit to the next,
it's going to result in elongated contours.
If we fix this up, we're in mates and intelligent looking guesses.
They would be much more circular.
[ Inaudible ]
Yes, with 12, 14, 15.
[ Inaudible ]
Well, you see, the surface data deals with what's smaller scale size phenomena.
And so there's really no one-to-one correlation.
I suppose that the --
[ Inaudible ]
Well, I'll think and be sure that over a region of 100 kilometers,
that the average field was 30 in gamma, which no one would bet on.
Then we could make some interesting predictions about other places on the moon.
But I suspect if you went down to Apollo 12 and went 100 meters away,
you'd find a much different value in the magnetic field.
We noticed, look at Apollo 14.
They went one kilometer and they went from 43 gamma to 103 gamma.
So, who's to say what's a representative value for the magnetic field in a given area?
Apollo 15.
Apollo 15, they saw a steady field of 6 plus or minus 4 gamma, which is essentially 0.
But there again, you know, behind the next boulder, it'd be 100 gamma, probably, you know.
And the results on 60, I thought, were tremendous.
The tremendous gradients they got between one place and another.
At 313 gamma field, what would you surprise me as far as getting a value at large?
Yes?
Of course.
[ Inaudible ]
No, I'm not a geologist type.
[ Inaudible ]
It would seem to me that the younger a crater was, the more chance it would have
to produce a good, clean cut signature on the magnetic field data.
I think.
For example, Van de Graaff itself looked like a fairly young crater
because there's very few secondary craters in the bottom of it.
So, it looks fairly young whereas things like Kurtzbrung seemed to be very old.
They're well-blocked with secondary craters.
[ Inaudible ]
It's 88 kilometers from the northern rim.
So, from the center of Van de Graaff, it's about 130, 140 kilometers.
[ Inaudible ]
Any other questions?
Okay, thank you, Larry.
And, yeah.
Good question.
Last subject will be the transponder.
Feel so good?
[ Inaudible ]
This is a gravity experiment and we monitor the gravity by just monitoring the velocity
of the spacecraft or the lamp or the sub-satellite.
Of course, on this particular mission, we lost our LEM data on impact because it started
cumbling and so that data was lost.
We do have the CSM in the low altitude orbit which is very interesting data.
[ Inaudible ]
Here's the orbital track and hopefully I can get this aligned.
Not like that.
This profile just below it is the gravity anomaly that was detected.
This line right here represents zero gravity-centra-isostatic equilibrium.
And anything below it, of course, would be negative gravity deviations.
So, here we are at Calamaeus going essentially over the center with the track and we can see
the large negative anomaly again and almost 100 milligalves.
Here we see some highland material where we have a positive.
Then we drop down into a relative low in between these two old craters of parkas
and albatignias and then a high in here.
At this point, there's the Descartes landing site and we're actually at about 50 milligal
negative anomaly in that region.
There's some nice correlations here with the laser altimetry measurements.
I'll show them in the next profile.
But this is continuous.
I've just taken one small section here.
We have this thing from limb to limb.
About 110 longitude plus to 110 minus.
Essentially, three revs and revs, three through rev.
Eleven, eight revs.
Eight revs of data that are pretty good.
And then they started their station keeping and data kind of got garbage stuff a lot.
There's a lot of an anubium that's going on.
I'm going to point out one kind of interesting thing here.
Notice that Talamaeus here has an anomaly much lower than anubium,
although anubium, which is this region right in here,
this marinubium right in here, is still at about minus 50 milligalves.
Here's an altimeter profile.
And going right to the anubium, Talamaeus region, again,
we see that anubium elevation here is some, by the way,
the scale here is two kilometers per heavy line.
So we've dropped down here almost two kilometers from the floor of Talamaeus
to the floor of anubium.
Yet the gravity anomaly is just the opposite,
that Talamaeus is some 50 milligalves lower than the anubium region.
And another interesting point is,
right on these ACIC maps, anubium is shown a kilometer higher than Talamaeus.
And here we are, two kilometers lower.
So we're talking about three kilometers of discrepancy in just that little area right there.
So I think some of these guys were talking about the right thing
when they said we really didn't know the altitudes too well.
I think that shows up quite dramatically when you look at the low sun angle view
as you approach the terminator, the things that were in the anubium didn't show up
until significantly after we anticipated.
We missed our times on those things a great deal,
and that could only be called by having a discrepancy in our relative heights.
Yeah, this is not just, this is Rev. 28.
We've looked at there are five real good tracking, laser tracking passes over this region,
and we've looked at three of them, and all three show the same consistency of the drop there.
Another interesting thing here, Prokal Arm, Tranquilitatus, Fracunda Tatus,
all seem to be about on the same level.
Smithii, again, being a low about four and a half kilometers.
That was the same thing on Apollo 15 when we passed over it.
It was some four and a half kilometers below as mean radius here,
and we're still referencing this to a 1738, well, 0.1, radius off the CG.
If you take this stuff and start fitting it to an optical center with a CG offset
that you do indeed get the two kilometers shift again of the CG being closer to the Earth by some two kilometers.
Let's say that tranquillity is about two and a half kilometers lower than the cart.
That's right.
Yeah, here's the landing site right in here.
And this is, we had a negative gravity anomaly in here.
Well, kind of according to this, maybe that's the situation because it looks like a topographic low.
Yeah.
This is the backside.
We had some -- these are the limbs where the data was missing.
These are taken from those -- this data is taken from that thrift printout that we get in real time,
and there's some gaps in the data.
These will be filled in once they get the station tapes delivered.
But we can see the Crater Hertzbrand here very evidently with the central peak or something in it.
You don't have any data in that hundred and twenty-degree region.
Not now.
We should have it next week or so.
I'm going to get the tapes here.
Let me go.
One of the things that -- well, on Apollo 15, there was a definite -- well, centered about 180.
There was a definite big trough in here.
We went down about some four and a half kilometers.
It was very jagged.
But it was centered just about here.
And on Apollo 16, now we do not really see that.
We see this highland material here which we had on six -- on 15, that's -- that's started about in here
and showed a marked high region in there.
And this is holding on 16 also.
So this is kind of consistent with 15.
Here's another -- this is orbit 38 on the backside.
I'll just kind of lay it there to show you some of the consistency.
This is 10 orbits later.
The profile is almost there.
Smithiai.
Oh, here we have some data in that.
So there's your data.
Okay.
Are you looking for something to pick?
Yeah, I'm looking for something around 105.
105.
And probably being ridiculous.
Okay.
I do have some data on the sub-satellite from Apollo 15.
But I don't know if that's the time to really show here.
I think I've shown enough stuff on 16, huh?
I'd like to stick to 16.
Any of the problems we have or any of the data that we got for the crew?
Well, I'm very happy with all the data we've gotten on 16.
And the sub-satellite on 16, like Larry mentioned, just before me, it's pretty grim.
Although there was -- there wasn't OD solution just run out about an hour ago where the last state vector was used as the --
position for running out the lifetime program.
And the lifetime program, if we believed that 15-8 model that we had used initially back there when we rejected that thing,
says that this thing should come back up, still says it's not going to crash.
But --
This will be a very interesting thing to watch the next couple of days, I guess.
Right.
That's the right thing all of a sudden, as long as I'm up and ready.
Well, it's just --
[laughter]
I asked Coach Batch about that, and I don't know what he can speak for later or not, but I told him it was 50 pounds,
and where they can actually see an impact of 50 pounds.
I think that's all it weighs.
This central station?
[laughter]
Well, let's see.
It should hit about maybe some 20 or 30 degrees west longitude and five or six degrees north.
Is that right there? Something like that.
A five or six north latitude and about 30 west.
That's what it looks like.
That linear extrapolation.
Okay.
[inaudible]
Well, thank you, Bill.
Thank you, gentlemen, for attending.
This concludes our scientific debrief.
And I'd like to thank the crew for giving their time up to come on over to.
Give us some information and also learn some things that would happen.
Okay, let me say something for the crew.
I want to commend Ken for the way that he operated the Sim Bay.
I don't think you'll ever find a guy who's either more interested in it or more aware of what the operational problems were
and who could do a better job.
He really did an outstanding job, and I think he's well done.
The other thing I'd like to say is since I've been on this program,
I've been continually impressed with the importance of what we're doing in our support of you guys.
These experiments, they look way out right now, and they're difficult for the man in the street to relate to.
But my feeling is from some of the things I've seen here and from the thrust of science and technology in this country
that in our lifetime, and I want to say when, but I imagine it's going to be a damn sight sooner than anybody even here in this room can imagine,
there are going to be practical applications of some of these discoveries that have been made that will affect every one of us.
And I think you're to be congratulated.
The other thing is that I get out of all this that I think the United States ought to be spending two to three times
the amount of money that we are spending on basic research and development and applied research and development.
And I think that if you really look at the big picture of our energy requirements for clean energy in the future
in order to improve the life of human beings on this planet, we ought to do that and get on with it.
Thank you.
During the next couple of months, we'll probably have an opportunity to talk to a lot of people that help to have some influence
or shape the pattern of our program and related programs.
And I would appreciate it very much.
I'm sure we all could use the data as if you find out things.
We realize that you have preliminary data today and a lot of the things are only hints and suggestions of things to come.
I would personally appreciate it very much if you give us a call periodically and tell us what you found.
It's too easy for us to go through here and at the end of a week or so walk off and never really know what happened
and never know what kind of data came out.
And I think that makes us very poor salesman.
I think you could help us do a job to kind of feedback the quality of the data that you've been getting.
If you could keep us informed, please don't ever feel like you're interfering with our operation or don't be inhibited to call us.
If we can't come to the phone and take the data or talk to you about it,
Secretary will take the number, we'll be glad to call you back.
And if there's any time when you have some question about the data, it doesn't matter how trivial it may seem to you.
If you want to look at some data and you're curious to know whether we've ever seen a particular observation
or whether the spacecraft was moving at the time your data was taken,
or I don't care how far out it might seem to you, questions are pretty cheap and not asking questions can be very expensive.
And so please feel like our job isn't finished until you guys have all the information you can use.
And I would like for you to feel like you can call anytime.
Thank you very much.
I'd like to say giving my thanks also was very pleased with the way all the gear worked,
especially my part on the lunar surface and part I saw of Ken in orbit.
It was just a real pleasure to have emplaced all this stuff for all you people and glad it's working so well.
And thanks for the opportunity of going.
If you can gin up another one, I'll be glad to go along again.
Thank you.
[ Silence ]