Word: ocean
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...color TV camera brought to the moon aboard the lunar module Intrepid deprived earthbound watchers of the spectacular sights that should have accompanied the sounds. Last week, while the astronauts remained in quarantine aboard the carrier U.S.S. Hornet, the world finally got a close-up view of the Ocean of Storms. Movie and still films brought back by the astronauts were flown to Houston, decontaminated, developed and released by NASA. They were well worth waiting...
Under a pitch-black sky, the Ocean of Storms presents an eerie face, its black shadows starkly contrasting with the blinding white reflection of early morning sunlight from the desolate, rock-strewn surface. The black-and-white monotony is broken only by the color brought to the moon by man-the golden insulating foil on Intrepid, (continued on page 41) the red and blue of the American flag, the golden reflection from the umbrella antenna-and the blues of the earth in the sky above...
Scientists were just as elated over what the astronauts had left behind. Performing well at the Ocean of Storms base, ALSEP (for Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package) had begun transmitting valuable data even before the astronauts left the moon. For the time being, earth controllers commanded two of the instruments-designed to investigate any traces of lunar atmosphere-to go into a stand-by mode; that would allow earthly gases left within them to bake out during the torrid two-week-long lunar day (maximum temperature: 240° F.). Once freed of these vapors, which interfere with their high-voltage...
...lunar surface from the high-velocity solar particles that normally bombard it. Meanwhile, the seismometer had recorded an unexplained, two-minute tremor. And scientists were still trying to explain the strange vibrations recorded for 55 minutes by the instrument immediately after Intrepid's ascent stage impacted into the Ocean of Storms...
Although these bell-like reverberations were unlike any seismic event on earth, Columbia University Geophysicist Gary Latham offered a plausible explanation. The effect may have been caused, he said, by a layer of rubble or fractured rock sandwiched between bedrock in the floor of the Ocean of Storms and a solid cover of fine material deposits above. Lacking dampening fluids or gases, the layer of rubble may have acted as an echo chamber in which the seismic waves reverberated. If so, the next big seismic event on the moon should be a scientific spectacular; the third-stage rocket of Apollo...