ASTRONAUTS READY FOR MOON FLIGHT

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31991, 19 May 1969, Page 13

ASTRONAUTS READY FOR MOON FLIGHT

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) CAPE KENNEDY, May 18. Three American astronauts are to take off from Cape Kennedy today on a flight round the moon that will take man closer to earth’s natural satellite than ever before.

Space officials hope that Apollo 10, the second round - the - moon flight in five months, will be the last preparatory mission before they achieve their goal of a moon landing before the end of the decade. ■"

The count-down for the launch (due at 4.49 a.m. Monday, New Zealand time) was proceeding smoothly after engineers last night solved a technical problem which had threatened to postpone the mission.

During some 61 hours in moon orbit, the astronauts, Tom Stafford, John Young and Eugene Ceman, will duplicate almost every manoeuvre of the Apollo 11 flight planned for next July—except the landing. Testing the lunar module—a four-legged ferry craft designed to take two men from their orbiting spacecraft to the moon and back—Stafford and Cernan will twice swoop to within eight nautical miles of the lunar surface, travelling at about 2000 statute miles an hour. The astronauts will check sophisticated radar landing equipment, range-finding devices and other instruments, as well as make visual and photographic surveys of the area of the Sea of Tranquillity, chosen as the most likely Apollo 11 landing site. Space scientists also hope the Apollo 10 flight will tell them more about the mys-

terious “mascons”—mass concentrations beneath the lunar surface which affect the orbits of spacecraft circling the moon.

Stafford and Young, both 38, and Cernan, 35, are all veterans of previous earth orbital space flights and have spent about five hours in training for every hour of the eight-day Apollo 10 mission. Today, final rehearsals and flight plan reviews completed, they were awakened six hours before they were due to fly into space on top of a giant Saturn-5 moon rocket The Saturn rocket’s 7.6 million pound thrust first-stage

engines will lift the astronauts on their flight to the moon. (

The five first-stage engines, drinking up more than 29,500 pounds of a mixture of liquid oxygen and paraffin a second, will boost the 2000-ton space vehicle to a height of 36 nautical miles and a speed of 5434 nautical miles an hour in two minutes and 40 seconds, before falling away. The five engines of the second stage, burning liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for six minutes and 32 seconds, will carry the craft to an altitude of about 102 nautical miles, increasing speed to

more than 13,400 nautical m.p.h. before it, too, is jettisoned. Finally, the single engine of the third stage will fire for about 156 seconds to place it and the Apollo spacecraft into a circular parking orbit 100 nautical miles above the earth 11 minutes and 49 seconds after lift-off. In case of any problems on the launch pad, the astronauts have an emergency escape system using a wide slide that would carry them into a flameproof shelter. If anything goes wrong after launch, the spacecraft is fitted with a pencil-shaped 33ft tall escape tower which contains separate engines that could pull the Apollo to safety in case of rocket malfunction. The spacecraft could also use its own engines to get away. A spray system on the launch pad provides a million 'gallons of water for cooling and fire prevention during lift-off. Immediately after take-off control of the spacecraft is transferred from the launch control centre here to the Manned Spacecraft Centre in Houston, Texas, which will guide the remainder of the mission. A network of ground stations, ships and aircraft round the world will be used to communicate with and guide the spacecraft. All telemetry commands and voice communications will originate from Houston and be passed to and from the spacecraft through whatever station is convenient. After about two hours and a half in Earth orbit the command will be given for the third stage to fii;e again to send Apollo-10 on its way to the moon.