Boldly Going Part 23
Though it would nominally spend as long on the surface as an Apollo J-class mission, Minerva 2’s Class-A sortie mission plan was considered by the Minerva team as more of a test flight. There would be no equivalent of Apollo 10’s near-landing dry run. On its first flight beyond Earth orbit, a
Conestoga lander would descend to the lunar surface. Eileen Collins and Rick Husband would be engaged in a test pilot’s mission, a trial of radar, engines, and human nerve in a complex ballet that would end, if all went well, with the touchdown of a vehicle massing more than 20 metric tons on the lunar surface. Beside that challenge, three days of EVAs and limited surface science operations were a secondary concern, however much it frustrated selenologists. In order to maximise the chances of success for the
Conestoga lander’s trial by fire, any plans for a landing site which might complicate the initial descent were suspect. For all of Minerva 2’s large sortie habitat and the Class-A sortie’s ability to match an Apollo J-class mission for duration and time on the lunar surface, lunar scientists felt like Minerva 2 wasn’t a small step forward, but a giant leap back. They found little sympathy from the mission commander when advocating for a more exciting landing site or reserving less mission margin for descent trajectory contingencies and more for surface exploration hardware and in-situ experiments. While Collins had enjoyed the weeks of geology field training crammed in around landing simulations and surface contingency training, she had set the tone of the mission by studying meter-by-meter orbital photographs of any potential landing site looking not for geological sites of interest but for any concentrations of boulders or aggressive slopes which could impair her crew’s successful landing and safe return. In one heated discussion about conducting multiple fully-integrated tests of each EVA for each potential site to evaluate potential scientific return and the need for site-specific hardware to be fit into the limits of the Class-A sortie’s payload mass, Collins snapped that “we need to focus more on what we’re doing to make sure we land and open the hatch and less on what we do when we get out.” Lunar scientists knew a lost cause when they saw one.
With such a limited scientific capability, Johnson and the science team eventually came to the conclusion that a lower-risk landing site would be preferred. Many of these sites were also of lower geological interest, and thus represented a lower opportunity cost for the limited scientific planning for Minerva 2. Revisiting an Apollo landing site had been suggested, thanks to past “ground-truth” experience of landing risks and potential science on the effects of hardware in-situ on the lunar surface for nearly three decades. Many of the most interesting sites Apollo had considered or visited (such as Taurus-Littrow, Descartes, or Hadley/Apennines) had been visited by J-class Apollo flights which were more capable than their 30-year-advanced successor. Thus, the site team focused on the earliest Apollo landings, where there might still be good returns for relatively minimal time on the surface, and saved their wishlist Apollo revisits and untested ground for the later flights. As had often happened on Apollo, the commander’s influence helped set the mission plan. Thus, the landing was targeted for a site on the surface near Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3 at Oceanus Procellarum, laying the groundwork for the precise surface rendezvous necessary on Class-B and Class-C missions.
The preparations for the descent were covered live on every channel, carrying the footage from the LSAM’s interior and exterior cameras. Unlike the nonstandard television cameras used on Apollo, the footage from
Grimaldi and the LSAM
Pioneer was broadcast using normal television cameras, similar to satellite TV broadcasts from remote reporters on 24-hour cable news. The footage, filmed at full “standard definition” was relayed to Houston via the LDRS and TDRS networks for processing into NASA’s live broadcasts and cable television’s live coverage--but along the way, it was also received in real time by the crew of
Space Station Enterprise. The scene was captured in a famous photograph of the crew clustered around the television in the habitat’s wardroom/galley, attentive to footage on their projected television screen as
Grimaldi and
Pioneer separated for the final orbit before descent initiation. However, once again the footage recorded by NASA astronaut Don Pettit on the station’s VHS camcorder captures better the true atmosphere. Though the crew had been focused before their launch on preparing for their stay on
Enterprise, all had spent at least some time thinking about the chance to fly to the moon. Some had participated in early design activities, procedure testing, or found a way to sneak time in the simulators in Houston. Almost by definition every astronaut in the corps was someone whose memory of watching Neil and Buzz land on the moon 30 years prior had been a formative experience. However, they were no different from the audience watching the mission on their home televisions: aboard a station remote from Houston or the moon, there was nothing they could do to support the mission. The crew was as well-informed and tense as anyone in mission control as they watched their fellows proceed to the surface of the moon. It was a rare astronaut who hadn’t spent some time thinking about getting a spot on a future mission, and most knew the procedure manual for Collins’ crew almost as well as the astronauts on the flight.
The reactions of the eight astronauts diverged. Pettit seemed devoted to documenting the scene, panning between his fellow crew and the scene onscreen, often distracted by the events shown in the process. Other astronauts took places at the wardroom table or clung to the handgrips on the walls. For some of the trained aviators, laser-like focus and the odd tapping of fingers was the only sign of their concern. Others made their nerves more apparent: in the background of Pettit ’s shot, one of the scientist astronauts constantly moved from wall to ceiling to floor of the module as if pacing or searching for a better view as
Pioneer began its descent. As the seconds of the descent ticked past, the crew watching
Pioneer’s descent from aboard
Enterprise could only follow the checklists in their mind and imagine or recall every possible failure drummed into them by SimSups in their own lunar training. The moon in the images relayed to them grew larger, the limb turning into a horizon as the spacecraft pitched up. As Collins bled off
Pioneer’s lateral velocity, craters no longer sped past, and instead the landing site slowly slid into place under the lander’s windows and the cameras carrying the feed back to Earth.
The major systems tested in Earth orbit on STS-100-C all performed within expectations. However, flying by internal navigation and the ragged detectable edge of Earth’s GPS bubble, the lander’s computer faced an unexpected headache. In addition to internal guidance, the mission was intended to demonstrate the use of the weak signals from the medium-Earth-orbit GPS satellites which passed by the Earth in establishing a GPS “fix” throughout lunar descent. Though demonstrations on the cruise out to the Moon had shown successful reception and integration of the signals and confirmed accuracy of the “fix” within a kilometer, the receivers experienced larger problems during the actual landing with acquiring and processing the signals while under thrust in the short window after coming out from behind the lunar limb. The result was that just when Collins and
Pioneer needed it most, the GPS accuracy vanished. Husband reported to Houston who confirmed they also saw the positional accuracy degrading to more than five kilometers--effectively useless. With a calm that left the issue barely detectable to the average viewer but which sent pulses skyrocketing on
Enterprise, Collins shut the GPS out of the control loop, leaving the spacecraft “flying blind” with only internal guidance. Finally, it descended down to altitudes where radar and identification of surface features could get them the rest of the way.
In the VHS tape, Expedition Commander Michael Foale can be seen nodding along as if checking off items in his head as Collins called out surface features and he matched the craters and rilles to the landing profile. Bursts of static occasionally mared the image, both from interference in communications caused by bursts of thruster fire as Collins guided the spacecraft down to the surface and the degradation of one of
Space Station Enterprise’s most famous home movies. The fractal pattern of craters and rocks was finally obscured by a sheath of dust, the ground all-too-suddenly revealed to be only meters away below as the spacecraft’s shadow shot into the frame shown on
Enterprise television. The crew in the camcorder recording went unnaturally still, as
Pioneer settled the last meters to the surface. As the camera view from the moon bumped, shuddered, then went steady, the entire crew held their breath waiting for Collins and Husband to finish checking their status. The words which much of the crew had spent three decades imagining and nine years anticipating brought a round of cheers: “Houston,
Pioneer has landed at
Intrepid base.” The crew burst into flurries of fist pumps and celebratory zero-g acrobatics, only half-captured on the video. In the exuberance of success, Pettit had lost his grip on the camera while pushing off the galley wall, and the camera went spinning end over end lazily as the crew celebrated their colleagues’ success.
Collin’s and Husband’s landing of the “first woman and the next man” on the moon was marked by a massive peak in viewership, shattering even the Public Affairs Office’s expectations. The surge came thanks to the amplifying effect of days of coverage on 24-hour cable news, headline articles in newspapers and nightly television coverage, as well as a surging interest on the ever-more-accessible internet. In all, over 2 billion people were estimated to have witnessed the landing live in one medium or another, nearly a third of the world’s population - a truly astounding number typically reached only by World Cup Finals and major benefit concerts. The success of a joint American-European return to the lunar surface was identified by many as a crowning achievement as humanity tallied up the events of the previous millennium. For all the build-up,
Pioneer’s stay on the lunar surface was not, by itself, particularly impressive. On the first mission, merely achieving a landing with reasonable accuracy was considered a valid goal, and the landing site at Oceanus Procellarum was specifically selected to offer minimal challenges to Collin’s descent. Though some selenogists had criticized the selection of a “milk run” landing site, the wisdom of the relatively low-risk mission plan was shown by its success in spite of the issues encountered on descent.The crew’s training and the spacecraft’s internal guidance paid off. Even with the GPS failure, Collins and the computers put
Pioneer down on a landing site less than one hundred meters - just barely more than a football field - away from the center of the targeted 2 km landing ellipse.
The surface mission began almost immediately once the landing was secured. After a few hours of scheduled meals and the obligatory speeches, Collins and Husband descended the ramp for the first of three EVAs they would complete during their stay on the surface. The landing, while historic, was only a minor improvement over the Apollo missions which had come before. A three-day, two-crew sortie to the lunar surface, with a small habitat in a loft over the airlock was a mission capability which would have been familiar to any J-class Apollo crew. The minimal provision for consumables allowed within the sortie lander’s performance meant the air and equipment for outfitting the two large hydrogen tanks as Habitanks was not practical, nor could the time be spared from surface science and more critical systems tests. Though still a home-away-from home,
Pioneer was little more than a tent on the lunar surface. By the analogy common in the program, the Class-A missions were “campsites” to be carried out only to prove landing accuracy and the basic functionality of the LSAM. With Collin’s success, NASA announced that further Class-A sortie flights would be curtailed. Instead, the program would move directly into the Class-B outpost series, the so-called “cabin in the woods''. These missions would see a cargo lander precede the crew to the surface, with the two landers and their Habitanks connected, enabling a relatively large habitat to support a full crew of four for more than a full month on the lunar surface. However, these would have to wait for the new millennium--the next lunar mission wasn’t scheduled until the following year in the summer of 2000. During the Minerva 2 mission, millions tuned in for the daily adventures of Collins and Husband on the lunar surface, their launch to rendezvous with
Grimaldi in orbit, and their return to Earth. However, when they touched down, many of the audience tuned out even as
Enterprise Expedition 11 continued their own mission in orbit around Earth.
Artwork by:
DylanSemrau &
@norangepeel (
Cass Gibson on Twitter) with support from
@nixonshead (
AEB Digital on Twitter)