Astronauts returning with moon booty

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32525, 8 February 1971, Page 1

Astronauts returning with moon booty

(N.Z. Press HOUSTON, February 7. The men of Apollo 14 rocketed away from the moon today and streaked homeward with 1081 b of precious rock, some of it from a lunar hill the moon walkers tried and failed to conquer.

The astronauts, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa, tired from their adventure, and yearning for home, fired the engine of their command ship, Kitty Hawk, to start a two-and-a-half day coast toward earth and a splashdown on Tuesday in the South Pacific.

“Okay, we got a good bum,” Shepard reported after the spacecraft reappeared from the back of the moon after the rocket firing. “We are on our way home.” Hours earlier Shepard and Mitchell had left the moon after 33 J hours on its surface. Although they could not climb to the top of a 400 ft cone crater, they accomplished their other tasks so well that scientists called the mission the most successful of man’s three moon trips.

Smooth docking Kitty Hawk and the lunar lander Antares docked smoothly on the first try a relief to all. It had taken six attempts to dock the craft after launching last Sunday. This time there was no mistake, and earth viewers watching the whole manoeuvre on television direct from the command ship could see the slight jolt as the two vehicles locked hard together. The offending docking probe will be stowed in the command ship and brought back to earth this time for

inspection, instead of being jettisbned with the empty lunar module.

Antares waj abandoned in lunar orbit and then performed its last duty for science self - destruction

against the moon's surface. The craSh, not far from the Apollo 14 landing site, was detected by seismometers and radioed to scientists on earth.

Hard climb Referring to the failure to climb -the crater, Mitchell told ground control: “I think we just entirely underestimated the difficulty of going that far and getting that high in such a short period of time. “It’s a dam hard climb to try rapidly, and the soil is a little bit thin and mushy and suits are bulky,” Mitchell said.

“It’s all those problems rolled in . . . it’s just too ambitious, I guess.” The two explorers also found that it was very easy to get lost among the rolling hills of crater-scarred Fra Mauro. “It’s so dam undulating . . . we couldn’t even see Triplet crater (near the spot their spaceship landed). “We knew it was there but you can walk in some of these undulations and get lost from each other if you’re not careful.”

Men gasping It had been the men’s biggest disappointment being forced to turn back, gasping and exhausted, before they achieved the top of the 400-foot slope of Cone Crater. They had started the walk two hours early, anxious to get it started. The aim was to seek at the crater’s rim clues to the birth of the solar system. However, scientists held out hope that the rocks picked up during the climb may have been just as fruitful as those they hoped to find on the rim.

The steep rise jammed with ragged boulders was just too much for them. Oxygen was limited, and time and strength gave out. Bulky suits Wrapped in their bulky suits, weighed down by their heavy back packs and tools, they struggled upward for 90 minutes, their breathing rapid and their words coming occasionally in choking gasps. Their two-wheeled tool carrier, the first vehicle man has tried to use on the lunar surface, proved a burden on the rocky slope. Often they had to carry it up the boulderstrewn grade.

Even so, they gave up reluctantly. Shepard, his heart beat soaring from a normal of 84 to about 150 beats a minute, was the first to suggest they stop and turn back. They had fallen behind on their time schedule, he said. Perhaps they should give it up. Rock samples Finally, mission control ended the struggle 1000 ft from the rim, telling them to give it up, gather rock samples and start back down hill. After the rocket firing that started them homeward, the astronauts showed the strain and exhaustion of their long work day.

When mission control asked them to try again with a camera which had malfunctioned earlier, there was a long, long silence from space. Finally, Shepard asked: “Are you really serious about dragging out the hycon (camera)?” Rest period Mission control told them to “just forget the whole thing.” The astronauts made only a few other exchanges before mission control said that they were settled to begin a 10hour rest period. And Apollo 14 spun quietly through space toward earth.