Ready For Moon Shot

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31863, 16 December 1968, Page 17

Ready For Moon Shot

Press Assn. —Copyright) ; CAPE KENNEDY, Dec. 15. With a week to go before blast-off on a Christmas Eve bid for an orbit round the moon—the United States Apollo 8 astronauts were told yesterday that the space flight was readv to go, the Associated Press reported. Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell and Major William Anders started the day with a medical briefing and then climbed into a spacecraft simulator for several hours to rehearse critical phases of the ambitious mission. Later they huddled with project officials to review the readiness of all systems in, the Apollo 8 shin. All received the green light The astronauts planned to relax in their “ready room” quarters tomorrow. Meanwhile, the launch team prepared to start the long Apollo 8 count-down tonight, aiming for a lift-off of the Saturn 5 booster rocket at 7.51 a.m. next Saturday on what the astronauts call the riskiest space flight yet. The Saturn 5, the mightiest rocket ever built, is to hurl the astronauts into an initial orbit 119 miles above the earth with the third stage still attached. Three to four hours later, after making certain everything is in perfect working order, the mission control is to signal the restart of the third stage engine. This five-minute burst will increase Apollo B's speed from 17,433 to 24,196 miles an hour, sufficient to escape the influence of the earth’s gravity. For 66 hours Colonel Borman, Captain Lovell and Major Anders will coast outward, making necessary course corrections to aim for the moon, 220,074 miles from earth. Early on Christmas eve they will zip behind the moon and fire their spaceship engine to inject Apollo 8 into an orbit ranging from 69 to 196 miles above the surface. Later they will fire the engine

i again to make the path circular at a 60-mile altitude. The astronauts will circle the moon 10 times in 20 hours, conducting key navigation tests, scouting potential astronaut landing sites and snapping hundreds of photographs of both the front and the hidden dark side. A major goal is to determine how well the astronauts can navigate in lunar orbit and how accurately ground stations can track them.

There are large concentrations of material beneath the surface of the moon that inflict subtle changes on the orbit of a spacecraft. With present knowledge astronauts attempting to land on the moon could miss their target by as much as 50 miles.

“The more we learn about the moon’s gravitation field, the less will be our error

when astronauts try to land next year,” Major Anders said recently. Their exploration • completed, the astronauts will fire their engine to shoot out of lunar orbit for the 58-hour return trip to earth. Landing is scheduled in the Pacific Ocean on December 27 after a trip lasting 6 days, 2 hours 55 minutes. The astronauts admit the flight is the riskiest ever attempted, but they are confident. “We’ve come to the point in our programme when we must make this next step toward a lunar landing,” Borman said. “I feel the mission is a conservative one and that the risks are acceptable. I wouldn’t get in the thing unless I knew it was a safe vehicle.”