APOD: Apollo 14: A View from Antares (2024 Feb 03)

[APOD Robot]

Apollo 14: A View from Antares

Explanation: Apollo 14's Lunar Module Antares landed on the Moon on February 5, 1971. Toward the end of the stay astronaut Ed Mitchell snapped a series of photos of the lunar surface while looking out a window, assembled into this detailed mosaic by Apollo Lunar Surface Journal editor Eric Jones. The view looks across the Fra Mauro highlands to the northwest of the landing site after the Apollo 14 astronauts had completed their second and final walk on the Moon. Prominent in the foreground is their Modular Equipment Transporter, a two-wheeled, rickshaw-like device used to carry tools and samples. Near the horizon at top center is a 1.5 meter wide boulder dubbed Turtle rock. In the shallow crater below Turtle rock is the long white handle of a sampling instrument, thrown there javelin-style by Mitchell. Mitchell's fellow moonwalker and first American in space, Alan Shepard, also used a makeshift six iron to hit two golf balls. One of Shepard's golf balls is just visible as a white spot below Mitchell's javelin.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[Ann]

A view from Antares???

A View from Antares. Hey, Antares, you're looking the wrong way
to see globular cluster M4!

That’s the wrong view? Oh... right...

Apollo 14: A View from Antares. Image Credit: Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, NASA; Mosaic - Eric M. Jones

---

Ann

[wilddouglascounty]

If you expand the photo, you'll see a station set up a ways away from Antares landing site, located in the upper left of the photo, and the tracks that lead over to it all. Is this a seismic station and other instrumentation set up to operate after they left, set up far enough away to avoid being damaged by the exhaust of the lunar launch of the Antares module as it left the moon? Wondering what all the instrumentation that was set up over there doing?

[johnnydeep]

If you expand the photo, you'll see a station set up a ways away from Antares landing site, located in the upper left of the photo, and the tracks that lead over to it all. Is this a seismic station and other instrumentation set up to operate after they left, set up far enough away to avoid being damaged by the exhaust of the lunar launch of the Antares module as it left the moon? Wondering what all the instrumentation that was set up over there doing?

That station is the ALSEP ("Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package"). It does include seismic experiments so that's a good guess for why it and all the other instruments are 600 ft away from the Lunar Module!

You can read all about it here: https://www.nasa.gov/history/50-years-a ... 20moonwalk

And here:

Background
The instrumentation and experiments that would comprise ALSEP were decided in February 1966. Specifically, the experiments, institutions responsible, and principal investigators and coinvestigators were:[1]

• Passive Lunar Seismic Experiment: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Frank Press; Columbia University, George Sutton; Georgia Tech, Robert Hostetler
• Lunar Tri-axis Magnetometer: Ames Research Center, C. P. Sonett; Marshall Space Flight Center, Jerry Modisette.
• Medium-Energy Solar Wind: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, C. W. Snyder and M. M. Neugebauer.
• Suprathermal Ion Detection: Rice University, J. W. Freeman, Jr.; Marshall Space Flight Center, Curt Michel.
• Lunar Heat Flow Management: Columbia University, M. Langseth; Yale University, S. Clark.
• Low-Energy Solar Wind: Rice University, B. J. O'Brien.
• Active Lunar Seismic Experiment:[1][2] Stanford University, R. L. Kovach; United States Geological Survey, J. S. Watkins.
• SNAP-27 isotopic power system:[3] Sandia National Laboratories, Jim Leonard

[Avalon]

Items seem to be haphazardly lying around the landing site. Is their placement intentional?

[JimB]

Items seem to be haphazardly lying around the landing site. Is their placement intentional?

The ASLEP monitoring station is only visible as a small speck in the top left near the horizon. On the expanded view you can see it in more detail.

All that junk in the foreground is various bits of equipment the astronauts have just "parked" - so much for keeping the moon tidy.

[phillipbowers]

How did the astronauts transport the samples and tools theblossom word gamey collected on the lunar surface?

[wilddouglascounty]

Thanks, Johnny Deep for identifying the instrument station and the excellent links to more information. Exactly what I was looking for!