Aug 12 1971
From The Space Library
USAF launched unidentified satellite from Vandenberg AFB by Titan IIIB-Agena booster. Satellite entered orbit with 402.3- km (250-mi) apogee, 133.6-km (83-mi) perigee, 89.8-min period, and 110.9° inclination and reentered Sept. 3. (Pres Rpt 72; SF, 2/72)
U.S.S.R. launched Cosmos 434 from Baikonur into orbit with 11 798-km (7331.0-mi) apogee, 187-km (116.2-mi) perigee, 228.2-min period, and 51.5° inclination. (GSFC SSR, 8/31/71; SBD, 8/13/71, 205)
Apollo 15 Astronauts David R. Scott, James B. Irwin, and Alfred M. Worden held press conference at MSC, during which they showed films and described mission. Irwin and Scott praised performance of LRV Rover and said it had exceeded their expectations. Showing film taken from Rover during traverse, Irwin said he hoped simulated ride didn't make viewers seasick. Ride on LRV, he said, "is kind of a combination of a small rowboat in a rough sea and a bucking bronco." Scott said only change he would recommend for Rover was "some manner of strapping yourself in the vehicle other than just pure seat belts." He also said moon should be explored to far greater extent than was currently planned, with "a whole base of scientists" and "a Rover that can carry 6 to 10 men. I think we can ... establish bases on the moon similar to those in the Antarctic and explore it and discover a vast amount of data that we don't even know we have up there." Core sample drilling, Scott said, was "one of the best things we ever did on the moon. It was very difficult, very time consuming and at times it was rather perplexing ... because we did not expect the regolith or the surface material to be quite as well integrated or packed as it was. There was nothing wrong with the equipment, it was just that we encountered the unknown. And we had to compensate for that and . . . that's why man goes to the moon. His subjective mind can evaluate the situation and come up with a fix far better than a machine. The machine would have stopped. It would have never gotten the drill." Scott said in closing, "We went to the moon as trained observers .. . to gather data, not only, with our instruments on board, but with our minds, and I'd like to quote a statement from Plutarch . . . : `The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted.' " Astronauts later revealed they had left plaque and tiny silver figure of a fallen man on moon as memorial to 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had died in pursuit of space exploration. Plaque, bearing names of eight astronauts and six cosmonauts, had been left in small crater about 6 m (20 ft) north of rille. (Transcript; AP, B Sun, 8/13/71, Al) [[ Aerobee 170]] sounding rocket was launched by NASA from WSMR carrying NRL experiment to conduct solar studies. Mission was partial success. (SR list)
LRL geologists Dr. William C. Phinney and Dr. Paul W. Gast described anorthosite rock from Apollo 15 sample bag No. 196 to press at MSC lunar sample briefing. Dr. Phinney, praising crew's descriptions of samples, said "as in all cases so far where we've looked at what the rocks are, it matches exactly what the astronauts said it was. It's about fist size, 269 grams-1/2-lb-anorthosite essentially pure plagioclase." Grain was quite coarse, 1-cm (0.4-in) grains, "about the coarsest grain size of any lunar rocks that we've seen so far." Its milky-white color suggested "that it has probably undergone a fair amount of stress, maybe a shock type of deformation." Rock, popularly called "Genesis rock," was significant because it supported hypothesis that moon had been extensively molten with anorthosite crystallizing from liquid, floating to top, and producing anorthositic crust. Although discovery did not prove hypothesis, Dr. Gast explained, it was "a long step in the direction" of determining moon's origin. "If results on the dating of this anorthosite and some of the chemistry on it . . . turn out that all point to the fact that it is essentially 4.6 or 4.7 billion years old, which is the time that we think the moon formed, . . . it gets to be rather difficult to argue with the hypothesis." (Transcript)
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