Apollo exploration

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32849, 24 February 1972, Page 13

Apollo exploration

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) HOUSTON, Feb. 23. America’s tiext men on the moon plan to begin exploring soon after they land on April 20.

In July of last year, the Apollo 15 astronaunts made a preliminary study of their landing site through an upper hatch soon after touch-down on the moon, and rested for seven hours before venturing outside. „ But one of the Apollo 16 astronauts, Lieutenant - Colonel Charles Duke, said yesterday that there would be none of this for the mission commander. Captain John Young,' and himself. “John and I felt that if we had to land on the moon and try to go to sleep, we

wouldn’t sleep a wink," Colonel Duke said. The spacecraft will do one less orbit of the moon before the landing—l 3 instead of the planned 14—to give them an earlier start. Tne post-land-ing check-out procedure has also been cut by about an hour to make a total saving of three hours.

Apollo 16, making man’s fifth visit to the lunar surface, is due to be launched on April 16 towards a landing in a highland area north of the Crater Descartes.

“Photographs indicate that the terget zone is from gently rolling to hummocky—and 1 hope it’s gently rolling,” Colonel Duke said. “We should be able to find an excellent landing site while (Commander) Tom Mattingly orbits above us in the command module. The main features to be

explored are two mountains, which the astronaut have named Smokey Mountain and Stone Mountain, and craters designated North Ray, South Ray, Flag and Spook New experiments to be done by the Apollo 16 team involve an ultra-violet camera mounted on a tripod on the surface to study radiation from the gases surrounding the Earth, the planets and the stars; and a cosmic ray detector to study particles emanating from the sun and from outside the solar system.

The astronauts will also use what is being called a dust cloth, a velvety material stuck on the bottom of a pan, to gather a sample of the topmost fine layer of the moon, in an attempt to discover what makes this layer brighter than the sub-surface material.