Apollo 16 scientific debriefing: “It could be an alien star base or something”, 1972 (NASA audio, NASA-UAP-D025)

0:00 Again, the areas in black are the total area covered which we obtained from the mission. And the areas in red are the pieces which we missed due to the deletion of the plane change and the day early return. This little piece down here was a oblique pass which we had planned with the pan camera. It would have taken place on Rev 72 in order to get photographs of Jacindi which is an area of particular interest to the geology. So you can see that we did lose some data. On the other hand we did pick up some data that we would not have gotten. And I think overall the effectiveness of the coverage was about 90% of what we had hoped for pre-mission. I really want to express the thanks of the photo team to the flight planners here and

1:02 also to Ken for his operation of the cameras during the mission. I know that it was very confusing to be continually changing the flight plan and Ken probably wondered what the hell we were doing with all these on offs and so on. But really I think we did a very effective job of recovering almost all of the data that we had planned for the mission. May I have the next slide please. This is a diagram showing what the Apollo 15 coverage was like. This is the planned coverage for the 16 mission and in the dotted line is the planned coverage for the 17 mission. The only reason I show this is to indicate that the areas where we did lose data unfortunately are in the areas that were not covered by 15 and will not be covered by 17.

2:04 And the losses although small were real. May I have the next slide. Ken, during the film recovery EVA you reported that the stellar camera glare shield was hung up on the handrail. Now I'm not 100% clear as to exactly what that situation was. This is the stellar camera glare shield and this is a little cover that comes down and covers that when the mapping camera is retracted. Now maybe you've discussed this with the other people here at the center but for my own information I would like to know whether this is the cover that was hung up or this is the cover. Both of them, the shield at the forward end, that one. This one? No, the first one you looked at, yeah. That was sticking up. That was sticking up, uh-huh. Yeah. But the tip out here was mashed against the handrail. Mashed against the handrail out along here. Yeah, the rail isn't in this picture. The rail is not installed. It would have been along here. That's right.

3:04 And this lip was up against it and bent back out of the way. I see. It was not in the full extend position. It looked like it was a partial extension. Uh-huh. Could you tell whether this was bent, whether this rail was bent, this extend rail? No, but I think we have a photo that will probably tell you that. I don't know. I don't remember. The end of the shield was bent. Now, whether that rail- Up here. No. Here. In the next section of the equation. The next section was bent. Yeah. Now, whether that rail itself was bent, I didn't notice. Uh-huh. The implication, of course, is that if this had happened early in the mission and this shield were bent down, we might get excessive light into the stellar camera and our background density would be low or would be higher than we expected and we might not see as many stars. Uh-huh. The other indication of malfunction that we had, of course, was in the exposure control on the pan camera. And, uh, that, uh, would indicate that, uh, the pictures away from the terminal may be

4:07 overexposed. That situation is also being looked at. And, again, we're going to talk about it this afternoon before we actually process the film. Uh-huh. The next slide. This is the information which I have with regard to the laser altimeter operation. The first row across here is what the nominal mission would have been. And the second row is the, uh, actual results from the Apollo 16. Uh-huh. We had planned a total of 20 hours and a few minutes of operating time. We got 14 hours and a half. So that we are down about 25% in the total operating time. This is the total, uh, revolutions in longitude that we had planned, uh, 10.3 and we got 7 and a half. So, again, we're down about 25% in that regard. Uh, a total number of firings, 3283 and 2106 is the actual number that, uh, was recorded.

5:08 So we are down, uh, nearly 30% in the total number of firings. Also, the number of valid elevation, uh, readings that we got was appreciably, uh, less than the total number of firings. So that we, the actual mission in terms of altimeter observations, uh, gave us a little bit less than half of what we had actually planned. Uh, that's, that's really not as serious a, a, uh, shortfall as it sounds just from the numbers, uh, because the readings were quite well distributed throughout the mission. Uh, the general operation that we saw on the altimeter, uh, the first several revs were completely nominal. All of the elevation readings were valid. Then it began to fall off about 75%, 65%, and down to about 60%, except on the last data pass on rev 62, where it was only about,

6:08 uh, uh, 10% effective. Uh, the, uh, generally what we seem to observe is that there would be one good shot, then one bad shot, then one good, one bad, and then maybe several good ones in a row. Uh, we can talk about the reason for that, but, uh, that's more appropriately covered in the systems review tomorrow. Uh, the effect that it will have on the data is simply to give us a, a, a larger spacing between data points. So far as the, its effect on the reduction of the photography is concerned, that's absolutely inconsequential. So far as its effect on the, uh, correlation between the tracking and gravity data and the, uh, profiles, it's a little bit, uh, more of concern. Uh, they do have a little bit more smoothing to do between the data points that they got. But essentially I don't think that it really hurts us so far as the scientific return, uh,

7:09 from the mission is concerned. Uh, I would like to say, uh, just a word or so about the utilization of the photography. The, it has been proceeding much more slowly than I had anticipated in reducing the pictures from Apollo 15. However, the work which is being done by the ACIC in St. Louis is indicating that the photography, photographic reduction will provide, uh, positional coordinates of features on the lunar surface with the, uh, the accuracy of 10 to 12 meters in position and in elevation. And that seems to coincide very well with what we had predicted pre-mission. So, uh, we are quite confident that, uh, that we're getting very good information from the pictures in that regard. Uh, the tracking data, uh, generally, uh, is consistent within an orbital pass, but we do find, uh, discrepancies of, uh, up to a

8:12 kilometer between adjacent photographic passes. So that the, uh, reduction of the photographs is giving us a much better tie between orbital, uh, passes than we get from the, from the tracking data, uh, itself. Uh, consequently, we do expect eventually to come up with a, an internally consistent coordinate system, reference system, figure of the moon with an accuracy on the order of 12 to 15 meters. Uh, that's, uh, highly gratifying to me. Uh, so far as the pan camera utilization is concerned, there have been some, uh, map compilations done. Uh, the indicated precision of those is on the order of three meters, which again is about what we had expected. But that is a precision and not an accuracy number because, uh, the geometric problems with the pan camera photography. However, so far as the resolution of the pan camera is concerned, that has held up to just about what we had expected.

9:14 Uh, from one and a half to three meters at the, uh, sub-vehicle point and decreasing off to about five to six meters at the limits of the, of the film. Uh, so, so far as, uh, our indications at the moment are that the results from 16 are quite satisfactory. We do have these problems that we have to resolve in the processing of the film. And, uh, once that is done, we will be able to say exactly what we did obtain. But again, I want to express the photo team's thanks to you particularly, Ken, for the, uh, uh, time and attention, uh, that you gave to the camera. And the results that we have obtained. Thanks, Fred. Any questions, uh, before? Could you, do you have a plot of the, uh, altimetry? You know, last time someone had drawn up a rough hand sketch of, of the altimetry. You know what, did anyone do that this time? Uh, the profiles? Yes, sir. Uh, no, I don't, Ken.

10:14 I think maybe, uh, Sjogren has one of those, uh, and, uh, I don't, is he here? Okay. Bill? Yeah, Bill. Do you have a plot? Yeah, I thought you had one. Okay. He'll show that. Okay, and these, uh, particles that you found in the mapping camera, that, is that handfuls, or, or a couple of shavings, or? I don't know how extensive they, uh, they were, uh, they were enough to concern the, uh, uh, the people in the processing lab. Uh, uh, all I know, that's about all that I know about it. We're supposed to have a review of that this afternoon. Uh, it could have, uh, very serious implications, obviously, uh, uh, one, one thing that I seem to recall from the, uh, during the mission is that we had, apparently, more film left for post-TEI photography than we had anticipated. And what that could mean, of course, is that the camera was not passing film when we

11:14 thought it was, and things were being chewed up pretty badly inside. So, uh, we're gonna have to look that over very carefully before we go ahead with the processing of the film. We expect the, uh, camera contractor to, uh, look at the shavings and tell us where he thinks they came from, and that may give us a better clue as to what they are, actually are. Do you have a processing schedule yet? I guess it's all in advance to figure out what to do next. Yeah, everything is in a hold until this afternoon, yeah, after our meeting this afternoon. Assuming you determined to go ahead and develop what will take you three or four days to process? Yeah, yeah. Uh, I think the, the anticipated schedule was to have, uh, the original film processed within this week, and all of the duplicate copies within four weeks distributed. What is the accuracy of the altimeter? The, uh, least count of the altimeter is, uh, one meter. Uh, the accuracy is, uh, dependent, uh,

12:15 pretty much upon the slope in the area which is illuminated, and, uh, a little bit, uh, on the albedo in the area which is illuminated. Uh, in general, I think it's fair to say that, uh, the reading that we get from the altimeter will be correct, uh, to within three to five meters. Have you figured out what to do with the pan camera for processing? I mean, got a correction for the exposure? For the overexposure. Uh, I don't know what has been figured out. We had a group working on it last week, and they're going to give us a report right after this meeting. We'll decide what to do. Yeah, I could comment, uh, what a lab has made their recommendation, you know, to report back, and, uh, they think that there will be some flight loss in the other generation, if they could do that. Uh, in other words, that they can handle the over the exposure, uh, but at some penalty, where, uh, we have the flight.

13:15 And the question is whether there's nothing else you've said about that penalty, like, how do you know the pictures of the camera, which is not funny? The situation is really that, uh, near the Terminator, the pictures are underexposed anyhow, because we can't open the slit wide enough and so on. Uh, so the camera was wide open at the Terminator, uh, but it was open wider than it should have been when we were away from the Terminator, so that the Terminator pictures are a little bit underexposed, then they become properly exposed, and after that, uh, they will be overexposed. So what we would really like, of course, is a variable, uh, processing, uh, through each photo pass, but that's probably not a feasible thing to even contemplate. Thanks, Fred. The next subject will be the particles and fields of the subsatellite, and, uh, I think Jim McCoy is going to cover that. Is he here? Yeah. Ah, there he is.

14:26 We got a mic right over there. Can we have anything at all? Yeah, they'll, they'll project it up there in the back booth if you want to. Uh, Dick? Yes. Where's, where's Baldwin? ones which could you get this projected up there okay can you hear me okay okay yes quickly the subsatellite was deployed successfully our spin rate was nominal about five and a ninth second spin period we want five plus or minus a couple

15:28 the attitude was good according to preliminary indication from the sun sensor we have a couple of degrees tip off from the ecliptic which is well within the limits we needed the operation of all of the electrostatic analyzers and both solid-state telescopes is good we don't seem to have the noise problem that we had on Apollo 15 and a couple of the analyzers and we've gotten rid of our accumulator counting error the characteristic 15 it's given us some problems in our data analysis now from that satellite the quick look results on our first magnetotail pass in the presence of these rather unexpected rather high fluxes of low energy protons which have also been seen now

16:31 with a new imp series I satellite experiment too and on this magnetotail pass we appear to have the remnants of a small solar event in the form of some high energy solar cosmic ray electrons and protons around which should prove interesting for our shadow interpretation particularly on electric fields in the magnetotail beyond that if they have those slides there I'd like to briefly describe some of the results we got from Apollo 15 which would hope to be similar for this one our primary experiment was to examine particle shadow configurations in the magnetotail that be while we're passing through this region back here where we are in the earth's

17:34 magnetic field and use that to examine the question of openness and access through the magnetotail and access through the magnetotail to the magnetic field lines and ultimately to the Van Allen belts where theory generally holds that the Van Allen radiation must somehow come in and then be trapped and exhilarated the degree of connection back here with the interplanetary field has been in quite a bit of question and briefly stated the Apollo 15 results indicate pretty clearly that at least most of the time at the latitudes where we passed through the tail of course we only have a couple of passes that these field lines are in fact open out here connect directly into the interplanetary field and have direct access of solar cosmic ray

18:38 particles we have also observed the existence of a plasma sheet which is known to form in closer to the earth to extend out to the moon's distance and on at least a couple of occasions we have observed across tail electric fields which are important to the theoretical models accounting for aurora and for acceleration of particles into the radiation belts an unexpected observation which we found which we found interesting was was 30 keV or thereabouts protons in very large numbers which we observed quite frequently back in the magnetotail and also observe outside the magnetotail in very similar fluxes. our first feeling was that these must also

19:43 be some component of the solar cosmic ray proton spectrum there of course very low energy would be stopped by even the thinnest piece of material but the numbers of them and the consistency of their flux densities make them very attractive as probably being indicative quite indicative of the source that they come from and the mechanism bringing them further examination however of the locations where we see them and of the almost constant intensities that we see almost force us to the conclusions that they must somehow be the protons from the outer Van Allen belt region here which are somehow coming loose from the earth's field and moving outward

20:46 and then getting onto the interplanetary fields and then moving out to where we see them in perhaps an inverse process of the postulated process where we bring solar cosmic ray particles in from the sun to populate the van Allen belts initially we were anxiously awaiting getting our data and now our computer program is at Berkeley in shape where we can examine this in detail we've unfortunately been delayed in that if i have the next slide i'll show you one orbit of data from the telescopes when these very steady fluxes of protons were present and during this period and actually for a period of a couple of orbits earlier these fluxes were almost

21:47 constant there is some some changing here there is a very very slight shadowing of protons not very much at all this motion electron phenomena but then these particles essentially turn off as though somebody closed a valve and this is characteristic of the way they behave when they appear they're suddenly there and when they disappear they're gone just as fast and we're very hopeful that we'll be able to make some sense out of what turns these things on and off and determine what where they're coming from and what the mechanism is and presumably now in the magnetosphere okay i think i'll just throw it open to any questions so now okay

22:48 what is the lifetime estimate of the 16th i wish you hadn't brought that up the next speaker will get that for us we had been very hopeful of getting another dozen or a couple of dozen my geotale passes out of this satellite since it works so beautifully um i think we're going to cover that and i think we're going to be able to do that and we're going to be able to do that

24:17 and we'll be able to do that

25:17 Okay, we've plotted days past deployment versus the parallel altitude Okay, we started out here in pretty good shape about 97 kilometers or 97 by 123 I guess and the prediction was a very rapid drop down to 30 some back up in good shape no real trouble until, here's the ground line until about 200 days when the probability was 50-50 of a crash through the error bars here you could say the probability was maybe one chance in 10 of a crash here and maybe one chance in five we've updated this plot

26:18 and the odds have changed considerably this was the prediction notice the time scale has been expanded greatly these are hours now instead of days here was the initial prediction at 37 kilometers and here are the actual data points this one was taken this morning around in here and if you can extrapolate by eye it looks like we have about four days left I guess Bill Sogren is taking 50-50 odds it'll crash if anyone's in the betting boot it's possible that we'll skim the surface and come back out even if we make it through this one that next dip is going to probably finish us off which is most unfortunate it might be out of your field but how come our prediction didn't match the

27:19 actuality I mean we we have a gravity experiment we don't know the gravity field that well and that's the business of this subsatellite initially to determine the gravity field you're going to know the gravity field right okay and we've been speaking all I can't about these pads that kind of go long out here at MSC to try to drive that point home so many times and I think we're really seeing it come man it just goes to show you you can't redo six months of planning in two days well in any event we have one month's worth of good data which we'll add to our pile of 15 results and to get some idea of what we're doing with this data I'd like to show the first slide which represents an average of 17 different orbits taken when the moon was in the Earth's magnetotail

28:19 and we've plotted the moon's longitude along the horizontal and the magnetic field in gammas along the vertical these numbers are representative of the Earth's tail field and of course if you subtract out an average value this residual would represent the lunar surface field and of course the big result is this really huge magnetic dip going over the Van de Graaff crater or a region right near the Van de Graaff crater also the other initial result we got out of 15 data was that most of the dips in the magnetic field seemed to be clearly associated with craters lined within a few degrees of the ground track defined by the orbit subsatellite we've numbered the seven most obvious local minimum and named five of them with associated craters initial results from Apollo 16 show the same type of structure although we don't see anything as big as Van

29:20 de Graaff we do go over Korolev again that's where the orbits intersect when we're in the tail and we see a few other Hertzsprung and Pavlov type bumps one is with a little tiny crater called Stein and one near Mendelev now if you repeat this procedure several times with different lunations so you cover different tracks over the moon and this allows a contour map to be made so if I could have the next slide this shows the ground track from where we found the anomaly here's one over Hertzsprung, Korolev here's Van de Graaff you can see we went right close to the northern border Pavlov and one over Milne so it was a pretty good one-to-one correspondence with large craters the initial 11th orbit of course is much near the equator the inclination goes up to plus or minus 11

30:22 so we saw one over Korolev and Stein crater is located right about here it's not too big the next map shows a compilation of a lot of these linear profiles next slide into a contour map it's a little hard to read the contours you can see this big black blotch here is a result of contours stacked on top of each other near this Van de Graaff anomaly you can see the numbers are hard to make out you can see the structure over Korolev a hint of some structure over Hertzsprung and the southern sea over here is actually an enhancement sticking out of the moon so to speak you can see Milne shows a definite structure now the Apollo 16 results should enable us to expand this map we'll get better resolutions throughout this area and be able to extend it along in here we'll probably still have a gap down in this region Murray, can you give us an idea of the

31:23 gradient you're measuring there oh yes, okay the numbers presented in the chart if you can see them are measured in tenths of gamma at an altitude of 100 kilometers so for example a good representative value is about 30 and the zero we've arbitrarily chosen at the bottom of the Van de Graaff dip since this is the lowest value of magnetism we observed we just called it zero and scaled everything relative to it so if you're at 100 kilometers you'll see a three gamma dip going over Van de Graaff on the average well we were fortunate also the near side of the moon does the gravity profile look can you correlate? I've looked at the gravity profile and it doesn't seem to correlate at all actually the laser data correlates better with you know there's no gravity in the back side okay but on the front side I understand it correlates pretty well with the laser

32:24 data which shows great big hole here in the back side of the moon around Van de Graaff and that's where we get our big hole but I can't see any scientific justification for connecting the two results I will add let's remind you of the gamma ray the secondary peak is also in Van de Graaff I don't know what it means it could be an alien star base or something I don't know anyway the next slide shows the front side of the moon and it's upside down the thing to contrast is the much smoother nature could we do a 180 on the slide please? can you hear me? can you turn the slide around please? oh he's on a coffee break okay anyway the front side of the moon is much much smoother than the back side the variations are oh an order of a factor of 10 smooth we don't see very much structure at all

33:25 it's very hard to even draw contours can you sort out the differences in that and the effects of running through the the earth's magnetic field effects? since you're the front side is always close to the earth can you sort out are we really measuring magnetic variations on the back side caused by being on the back side not due to our measuring environment? oh right the earth's tail field is very very constant when you're in the good second when you're away from the neutral sheet and that's where all this data is taken well I guess we never got the front slide complete okay this is a blow up of the Van de Graaff region in an attempt to pinpoint the exact source of this large anomaly we kind of suspected it was over the crater itself since we had always put forth the theory

34:26 that what we were actually observing in these dips was some sort of a meteorite impact that caused a rather uniformly magnetized crust to suddenly have holes in it and we're seeing the equivalent dipole of what was left over and this kind of shoots holes in the theory we see a this is the BX component which is the radial component and a plus number indicates a value sticking into the moon so we see this rather large hole here magnetically in between two craters and if you look at various models of double dipoles and stuff it just doesn't quite fit the other components B sub Y and B sub Z show that it can't be one of these angling dipoles from the crater and presently we're now conducting the same sort of studies over the rest of the anomalies to see if it checks out I've just yesterday completed the one over Korlev and that one is right in the middle of the crater which is promising for the Shakti

35:27 magnetization theory How much validity do we have in the ephemers? I understand there's no chance that we could be off by Oh, never anything like that It might be off a kilometer or two like I said but now you're talking about the final lead there that's 9 or 2 kilometers So it doesn't seem much chance We'll get maybe one more as the sub satellite comes crashing down on the moon the last 10 kilometers should give us a good swath of data which will give us another high resolution plot like this Other than that we're kind of out of luck Okay Okay, thank you Question?

36:27 There's the front side of the moon Okay, and our coverage from Apollo 11 will extend Yeah, I believe this is the equator across here Oh, I'm sorry Okay, this is zero degrees Okay, I'm going to go from zero to 90 east to 90 west It's the terminator This is the southern sea region which is about the only distinctive feature on the front side per se and even that's on the terminator And again, these are relatively high values of magnetic fields sticking out of the moon So you might say that the southern sea is a highly magnetized region Notice the 16 site is out of our coverage as were all the Apollo landing sites You have about a 3 gamma delta on the back side What do you see on the front side? Well, most of these values are about 30, 28, 27 which means they're all 3 gamma higher than that zero at Vandegraaff So I would say the maximum plus or minus is

37:28 about a half a gamma on the whole front side Why do you know these elongate parallel to the track? This is a function of not having quite enough data Instead of making physical looking contours we drew actual contours with the data and obviously if there's a little bit of offset from one orbit to the next it's going to result in elongated contours If we fixed this up and made some intelligent looking guesses they would be much more circular Do you have a data on the Apollo 12 and the 15 and 16 surface? Yes, with 12, 14, 15, yes How do you compare it with the information of the surface? Well, you see the surface data deals with much smaller scale size phenomena and so there's really no one-to-one correlation I suppose that the... Well, the Apollo 12 size supposed to be... was 30-some gamma supposed to be large scale

38:30 in several kilometers Well, if we could be sure that over a region of 100 kilometers that the average field was 30 in gamma, which no one would bet on then we could make some, you know, interesting predictions about other places on the moon But I suspect if you went down to Apollo 12 and went 100 meters away you'd find a much different value of the magnetic field We know this is the case, look at Apollo 14 They went one kilometer and they went from 43 gamma to 103 gamma So, who's to say what's a representative value for the magnetic field in a given area? How about 15? Apollo 15, they saw a steady field of 6 plus or minus 4 gamma, which is essentially zero But there again, you know, behind the next boulder probably could be 100 gamma probably, you know And the results in 16, I thought, were tremendous Tremendous gradients they got between one place and another That 313 gamma field really surprised me as far as getting a value that large

39:32 So, you know Yes Question Have you seen any distinctive features about, you know, say, the coral which might make you think that it was, say, a hot spot that had been near the surface and the nice soil covering which would change the surface temperature at that point which would then change the temperature? No, I'm not a, I'm not a, not a geologist type Well, I already know what I've said to you That would change It would seem to me that the, the, the younger a crater was the more chance it would have to produce a good, clean-cut signature on the magnetic field data I mean For example, Van de Graaff itself looks like a fairly young crater because there's no, there's very few secondary craters in the bottom of it so it looks fairly young

40:32 whereas, uh, things like Hertzsprung seem to be fairly old They're well blotched with secondary craters What is the distance from, uh, the center of Van de Graaff to the center of the hallway? Uh, it's 80 kilometers from the northern rim So from the center of Van de Graaff it's about 130, 140 kilometers Any other questions? Okay, thank you Larry And, yeah Last subject will be the transponder Still so good

41:35 Uh, this is a, uh, gravity experiment And, uh, we monitor the gravity by just monitoring the, uh, velocity of the spacecraft or the LEM or the, uh, sub-satellite Of course, on, uh, this particular mission we lost our LEM data on impact because it started tumbling and so that data was lost We do, however, have the, uh, CSM in the low-altitude orbit which is, uh, very interesting data Here's the orbital track and hopefully I can get this aligned about like that this profile just below it, uh, is the, uh, gravity anomaly that was detected And, uh, the, uh, gravity anomaly that was detected This line right here represents zero, uh, gravity anomaly that was detected Uh, uh, gravity anomaly that was detected zero, uh, gravity central isostatic equilibrium and, uh, anything below it, of course, that

42:35 would be negative gravity, uh, deviations Uh, here we are at Ptolemaus going, uh, essentially over the center with the track and, uh, we can see the large, uh, negative anomaly again, almost 100 milligalves Uh, uh, here we see, uh, some highland material where we have a positive then we drop down into a relative low in between these two old craters, the Parcus and Albatagnius and then a high in here Uh, at this point, this is Descartes, uh, the landing site and we're actually at about a 50 milligal negative anomaly in that region Uh, there's some nice correlations here with the, uh, laser altimetry measurements

43:35 I'll show them in the next, uh, profile But this is continuous I've just taken one small section here We have this thing from, uh, limb to limb So about 110 longitude plus to 110 minus And, uh, essentially three revs We have some revs three through rev, uh, 11, uh, eight revs Eight revs of data that, uh, were pretty good and then they started their station keeping and, uh, data kind of got garbaged up a lot with all the maneuvering that was going on Uh, let me point out one kind of interesting thing here Uh, notice that, uh, Ptolemaus here has an anomaly much, much lower than Nubium I'll know Nubium, which is this region right in here This Maronubium right in here Uh, it's still about minus 50 milligals Here's a altimeter profile

44:43 And, uh, going right to the Nubium Ptolemaus region Again, we see that Nubium, uh, elevation here is, uh, some By the way, the scale here is, uh, two kilometers per heavy line So we've dropped down here almost two kilometers from the floor of Ptolemaus to the floor of Nubium Yet the, uh, uh, gravity anomaly is just the opposite The Ptolemaus is some 50 milligals lower than, uh, the Nubium region And another interesting point is, Fred, on these ACIC maps Nubium is shown a kilometer higher than Ptolemaus And here we are two kilometers lower So we're talking about three kilometers discrepancy In just that little area right there So I think some of these guys were talking about the right thing When they said we really didn't know the altitudes too well I, I think that shows up quite dramatically when you look at the, at the low sun angle

45:43 view As you approach the Terminator, the things that were in Nubium didn't show up until significantly after we anticipated We missed our times on those things a great deal And that could only be called by having a discrepancy in our relative heights Yeah, this is not just, uh, this is Rev 28 We've looked at, there are five real good, uh, tracking, laser tracking passes over this region And we've looked at three of them And all three show the same, uh, consistency of the drop there Other interesting thing here, uh, Procolarum, Tranquilitatis, Fecunditatis They all seem to be about on the same level Smithii, again, being a low, about four and a half kilometers That was the same thing on Apollo 15 when we passed over it It was some four and a half kilometers below, that's mean radius here And we're still referencing this to, uh, a 1738, well, 0.1, uh, radius, uh, off the CG Uh, if you take this, uh, stuff and start

46:43 fitting it to an optical center with a CG offset You do indeed get, uh, the two kilometer shift again Of the CG being closer to the Earth by some two kilometers Let's say that, uh, Tranquility is about two and a half kilometers lower than Descartes That's right, yeah, and here's the landing site right in here And, uh, this is, we had a negative gravity anomaly in here Well, kind of, according to this, maybe that's the situation Because it looks like a topographic lobe Yeah This is the back side We had some, these are the limbs where the data was missing These are taken from those, this data is taken from that Thrift printout that we get in real time And there's some gaps in the data These will be filled in, uh, once they get the station tapes delivered But we can see the crater Hertz sprung here

47:45 very evidently with the central peak or something in it You, you don't have any data in that 100, uh, 120 degree region, huh? Not now We, we should have in the next week or so Whenever they get the tapes here Let me goose Uh, one of the things that Well, on Apollo 15 there was a definite, well, centered about 180 There was a definite, uh, big, uh, trough in here Which went down about some four and a half kilometers It was very jagged But it was centered just about here And on Apollo 16 now we do not really see that We see this highland material here which we had on six On 15 that's, that started about in here And showed a marked, uh, high region in there And this is holding on, on, on 16 also So this is kind of consistent with, uh, 15 Uh, here's, uh, another, this is orbit 38 on

48:46 the back side I'll just kind of lay it there to show you some of the consistency This is 10 orbits later And, uh, the profile is almost there, Smith the eye And, uh, oh, here we have some data in that So there's, there's your data Okay I don't know, uh, were you looking for some particular Yeah, I was looking for something around 105 105 Uh, not particularly Okay Uh, I do have some data on, uh, the sub-satellite from Apollo 15 But I don't know if that's the time to really show here I think I've shown enough stuff on 16, huh? Yeah, well, I'd like to stick to 16 Yeah Any of the problems we have or any of the data that we got for the crew Well, I'm very happy with, uh, all the data we've gotten on 16 And, uh, sub-satellite on 16, like, uh,

49:47 Larry mentioned just before me Looks pretty grim Although, there was, there was an OD solution just run out about an hour ago Where the last state vector was, uh, used as the, uh, position for, uh, running out the lifetime program And the lifetime program, if we believe that 15-8 model that we used initially back there when we ejected that thing Says if this thing should come back up Still says it's not going to crash But, uh This will be a very interesting thing to watch the next couple of days, I can say Right That's all right, because all the seismometers are up and ready Well, it's just not I asked, uh, Kovach about that And I don't know whether he can speak for Latham or not But, uh, I told him it was 50, uh, pounds And whether they can actually see an impact of 50 pounds I think that's all it weighs The central station Uh Let's see, it should hit about maybe some 20

50:51 or 30 degrees west longitude And five or six degrees north Is that right, Dick? Something like that About five or six north latitude And about 30 west That's what it looks like That linear extrapolation Okay Well, thank you, Bill Thank you gentlemen for attending This concludes our scientific debrief And I'd like to thank the crew for giving their time up to come on over to give us some information and also learn some things that would happen Okay, uh, let me say something for the crew For the crew I want to commend Ken for the way that he operated the sim bay I don't think you'll ever find a guy who's either more interested in it or more aware of what the operational problems were and who could do a better job He really did an outstanding job And I think he's well done The other thing I'd like to say is Since I've been on this program I've been continually impressed with the importance of what we're doing in our

51:54 support of you guys These experiments, they look way out right now And they're difficult for the man in the street to relate to But my feeling is From some of the things I've seen here And from the thrust of science and technology in this country That in our lifetime And I won't want to say when But I imagine it's going to be a damn sight sooner than anybody even here in this room can imagine There are going to be practical applications of some of these discoveries that have been made that will affect every one of us And I think you're to be congratulated The other thing is that I get out of all this That I think the United States ought to be spending two to three times the amount of money that we are spending on basic research and development And applied research and development And I think if you really look at the big picture of our energy requirements for clean energy in the future In order to improve the life of human beings on this planet We ought to do that and get on with it Thank you

52:58 During the next couple of months We'll probably have an opportunity to talk to a lot of people that helped to have some influence Or shape the pattern of our program and related programs And I would appreciate it very much I'm sure we all could use the data As you find out things We realize that you have preliminary data today And a lot of the things are only hints and suggestions of things to come I would personally appreciate it very much if you give us a call periodically and tell us what you found It's too easy for us to go through here and at the end of a week or so walk off and never really know what happened And never know what kind of data came out And I think that makes us very poor salesmen I think you could help us do the job to kind of feed back the quality of the data that you've been getting If you could keep us informed And please don't ever feel like you're

53:59 interfering with our operation Or don't be inhibited to call us If we can't come to the phone and take the data or talk to you about it The Secretary will take the number and we'll be glad to call you back And if there's any time when you have some question about the data It doesn't matter how trivial it may seem to you If you want to look at some data and you're curious to know whether we've ever seen a particular observation Or whether the spacecraft was moving at the time your data was taken Or I don't care how far out it might seem to you Questions are pretty cheap And not asking questions can be very expensive And so please feel like our job isn't finished until you guys have all the information you can use And I would like for you to feel like you can call any time Thank you very much I'd like to say, give you my thanks also I was very pleased with the way all the gear worked Especially my part on the lunar surface And the part I saw of Ken in orbit It was just a real pleasure to have him

55:01 placed all this stuff for all you people And glad it's working so well And thanks for the opportunity of going If you can gin up another one I'll be glad to go along again Thank you