Word: lunar
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...Houston for "translunar insertion" (TLI). Firing for five minutes, the reliable S-4B engine accelerated the ship to 24,245 m.p.h., fast enough to tear it loose from the earth's gravitational embrace and send it toward the moon. At a point 43,495 miles from the moon, lunar gravity exerted a force equal to the gravity of the earth, then some 200,000 miles distant. Beyond that crest, lunar gravity predominated, and Apollo was on the "downhill" leg of its journey...
Continuing their flawless flight, the astronauts zoomed past the western rim of the moon at 5,645 m.p.h. They were whipped behind the far side and into lunar orbit by the moon's gravity and a 5-min. 57-sec. burn of the reliable SPS engine that reduced their speed to 3,736 m.p.h. When they emerged from behind the eastern edge, after 34 minutes during which radio communication was blocked, they had dropped into a 70-by 196-mile-high orbit...
...point, Houston radioed to Apollo 11: "We've got an observation you can make if you have some time up there. There's been some lunar transient events reported in the vicinity of Aristarchus." Astronomers in Bochum, West Germany, had observed a bright glow on the lunar surface?the same sort of eerie luminescence that has intrigued moon watchers for centuries. The report was passed on to Houston and thence to the astronauts. Almost immediately, Armstrong reported back, "Hey, Houston, I'm looking north up to ward Aristarchus now, and there's an area that is considerably more illuminated than...
...thing the astronauts did not observe was Apollo's companion in lunar orbit?the Soviet Union's unmanned Luna 15 moon probe (see p. 17). Arriving in the neighborhood two days before the U.S. spacecraft, Luna went into an orbit as close as ten miles from the moon and eventually landed. The chances that Luna would be visible from Apollo 11?much less collide with it?were estimated by Houston's Christopher Columbus Kraft, director of flight operations, as about "one in a billion...
...astronauts slept very long before awakening to the most momentous day of their lives. Collins got six hours, Aldrin and Armstrong five apiece. During Apollo's eleventh revolution of the moon, Aldrin and Armstrong donned their space suits and crawled through a tunnel for a final checkout of the lunar module before its long separation from the command module. They paid particular attention to Eagle's propulsion systems?the tanks containing the hypergolic fuels that fire the descent and ascent engines, and the pressure gauges on the helium that forces the fuels into the combustion chambers, where they burn upon...