Word: moons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cernan began their preliminary chores: familiarizing themselves with the terrain, photographing the area and, finally, maneuvering the rover out of its berth in the side of the lunar module. Then, after a fast test spin by Cernan ("Hallelujah, Houston, Challenger's baby is on the road"), the moon car was positioned so that the remote-controlled color television camera mounted on the front end of the vehicle could begin sending the first pictures back to earth...
Those transmissions were by far the clearest yet sent from the moon. The red, white and blue of the U.S. flag were displayed in brilliant hues on TV screens as the astronauts raised a banner that had hung in Mission Control since the first moon landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969. Expertly operated by technicians at remote control consoles in Houston, the camera picked up the puffs of dust raised by the astronauts as they walked, awkwardly learning to cope with the moon's weak gravity-a sixth that of the earth-and the bulkiness of their space...
Cernan also had reason to be embarrassed. With one swing of his geological hammer, he accidentally clobbered the $13,000,000 moon car, knocking off part of one of its rear fiberglass fenders, which act as shields against the spray of dust churned up by the rover's wire mesh wheels. Cernan tried to reattach the section of fender with gaffer tape. But because of the everpresent, clinging fine-grained lunar dust, it would not stick. As precious minutes ticked away. Mission Control suggested that the astronauts abandon the fender repair work and get on with the more important...
Unaware of that failure, the elated astronauts improvised a duet, singing, "While strolling on the moon one day . . . in the merry month of December." Mission Control soon interjected a sobering note by notifying them that they were already 40 minutes behind their timetable and that the original objective of their first moon ride had to be scrubbed. But a nearer crater provided an intriguing find: vesicular rocks, containing pockets formed by gas. That was one of several clues that the area had once been the scene of volcanic activity...
Paper Fender. At the start of their second moon walk, the astronauts headed straight for the damaged rover. Displaying a little old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity. Mission Control had advised them to tape together four lunar maps made of stiff photographic paper and attach the resulting 15-by 20-in. rectangle to the damaged fender with clamps taken from Challenger's interior light fixtures. The scheme worked. Indeed, the paper fender was so effective that it shielded the astronauts from dust even when Cernan opened the rover's throttle to more than 7 m.p.h. on the way to South...