Exact Landing Site Not Known

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32048, 24 July 1969, Page 1

Exact Landing Site Not Known

(N.Z.P.A.-Steuter—Copyright) HOUSTON, July 23. The Apollo 11 mission controllers are still not sure exactly where the astronauts, Mr Neil Armstrong and Colonel Edwin Aldrin made their historic landing on the moon.

During an exchange with the spacemen as they headed for home last night, a spacecraft communicator Mr Bruce McCandless, himself an astronaut, asked them to have another look at their moon maps to try to identify the landing patch. “For 64,000 dollars, we’re still trying to work out the exact location of your landing site,” he told the spacecraft’s pilot, Lieutenant-Col-onel Michael Collins. “We think it is slightly west of West Crater. We were wondering if Neil or Buzz had observed any additional landmarks during descent lunar stage or ascent which would confirm or disprove this.” The astronauts agreed that they might have moved across West Crater, in the Sea of Tranquillity, during the landing run, and they hoped that their 16 mm. camera was working efficiently at that point in the descent and would be able to confirm the exact touch-down position. Mr Armstrong told mission control: “We thought that

during ascent we might be able to pick up some recognisable objects close to the

landing site. We did see a number of small craters and crater rows, and things like that, which we may be able to pick out, but we haven’t been able to yet.”

Asked to comment on the moon rock samples they had gathered during their walk on the lunar surface, Mr Armstrong said: “Initially, I started on the side of the lunar module that the television camera was on. I took a number of samples of rocks off the surface and several that were just sub-surface, about 20 feet north of the L.M. Then I recalled that the area had probably been swept pretty well by the exhaust of the descent engine, iso I crossed over to the southern side of the L.M. and took a number of samples from the area round the elongated double crater that we commented on. “I tried to select as many different rock types as I could identify with the naked eye. There were a number of other samples that I had seen earlier on our stroll round the L.M. that I had hoped to get back to and pick up, but I didn’t get those. I’ll be able to comment in detail when we get into the debriefing session.”