WORLD OF SCIENCE
More men on the moon
DR. T. V. PADMA
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Immediately on take off, Apollo 12 was struck by lightning. Would it affect the flight?
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Apollo 12 was launched on November14, 1969. Its crew consisted of Mission Commander Charles Conrad Jr., Command module pilot Richard Gordon and LM pilot Alan Bean.
When the astronauts arrived at the pad the skies were overcast. On the ground the observers saw the lightning. Apollo 12 was struck by lightning! For a few seconds the spacecraft’s fuel cells did not work. Fortunately power was restored. In the
beginning there was anxiety that the lightning strike might have inflicted damage so that the Mission would have to be aborted. On checking the command and the Lunar Module were found to be perfect.
Landing
It had been decided that they would select a place in the Moon and attempt to land there. An accurate landing was important because this would enable future Apollo missions to decide their landing place beforehand.
Conrad was the first to get out of the Lunar Module. They had to deploy the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package. It had a seismometer to detect lunar quakes, a magnetometer to measure the Moon’s magnetic fields, a solar wind spectrometer to measure the energy, velocity, and direction of the solar wind, a lunar atmosphere detector, and a lunar ionosphere to search for ions in the Moon’s vicinity.
Conrad and Bean commenced their second moonwalk 13 hours after completing their first one. On their second walk they collected rocks. They had received special training in the identification of rocks and minerals and the proper techniques for collecting samples, which they photographed and described. They had been asked to collect as many different kinds of rocks as possible.
They astronauts returned safely to earth after their mission was accomplished. They were able to add to the growing store of information about the moon.
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