Astronaut ready for space walk

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32678, 6 August 1971, Page 1

Astronaut ready for space walk

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copvrtphn HOUSTON, August 5. Endeavour sped homeward today as its pilot prepared to slip from his cabin for a walk further out in space than any man has yet attempted.

Although, for the first time since Apollo 15 blasted off from Cape Kennedy 10 days ago, Major Worden will occupy the television starring role, his walk will not be simply a spectacular show mounted to capture the attention of home viewers.

Unless he succeeds in bringing the film into his cabin, invaluable records will be lost.

The scientific bay in which they are housed is part of the command service module which will be jettisoned and left to bum up in the earth’s atmosphere on Saturday while Major Worden and Colonels Scott and Irwin, in their heat-protected cabin, move through earth’s airblanket to splash down in the Pacific, 285 miles north of Hawaii.

After six days and 74 lunar orbits. Endeavour broke out of the moon’s grip yesterday afternoon with a final two-minute, 22-second bum of its main rocket engine and began heading for earth. Alfred 'Worden, the 41-year-old Air Force major who remained in splendid isolation above the moon while his fellow astronauts Colonel David Scott and LieutenantColonel James Irwin roved last week-end through the foothills of its Apennine range, will float outside Endeavour and clamber 18 feet along the side of the spaceship to retrieve two cassettes

of exposed film from its science bay. It will take two trips fot Major Worden —hanging like a weightless fly from handholds—to bring the film packs back into the cabin and give scientists back on earth the most extensive mapping and high-resolution pictures taken of the near side of the moon.

Major Worden’s walk—due to be televised live to earth —will cap the Apollo 15 mission. Before setting course for earth the Endeavour’s crew

sent a daughter satellite orbiting around the moon. A spring mechanism sent the 801 b scientific package spinning away from Endeavour's science bay. It settled into an orbital path, spinning at 12 revolutions a minute, after three booms were deployed automatically and is expected to revolve around the moon for a year, studying and recording the sun’s energy, the moon's mass and earth’s magnetism.