MSC-07631 24. Visual sightings
- Cernan
Countdown - It was dark and we didn't see anything until S-IC ignition, The CDR and the CMP could see out their small windows in the BPC the glow of ignition prior to lift-off.
Powered flight - During the actual powered flight of the S-IC you could not see anything at all. You couldn't see out the cockpit, as we had the lights up fairly bright. At staging, the S-IC shut down, something that you don't see in the daylight is that the fireball overtook us.
- Evans
It sure did.
- Cernan
When the S-II lit off, we literally for a nanosecond flew through the bright yellow fireball that was left over from the S-IC. Tower jett was very evident. You could see the flash and I could see the entire BPC. I could see underneath it. It was lit up underneath. The whole thing was lit up. I could see nothing on S-II until S-II shutdown. I could see the glow of S-IVB ignition. I say the glow of S-IVB ignition, it very easily could have been the fireball of S-II which tried to overtake us but couldn't quite make it. But there was a glow right during the period of S-II shutdown to S-IVB ignition. During the S-IVB burn, you could see the glow of the aft engines throughout the burn and throughout the orbital [operation?] Earth orbit - I might comment that the availability of stars for a mode II or mode IV abort was pretty poor for two reasons. Number one: night adaptability because we had lights very bright. When we turned the lights down in the cockpit, I could not pick out distinct constellations such as Orion, which I was planning on using for a mode IV abort. If we would have had an SCS and G&N problem it would have been very difficult to pick out stars for that abort.
- Evans
I should mention in Earth orbit you couldn't see the stars in the telescope in the daylight but they showed up nice and bright and clear in the sextant. I think that is probably a typical thing.
- Cernan
When we burned out of Earth orbit, we started the burn in darkness and flew right on through a sunrise during the TLI burn. This was pretty spectacular. We shut down in daylight and had no other visual sightings at that point in time.
Translunar/transearth - After CSM separation from the booster and docking with the LM several hours later, we could see something which may have been the S-IVB or SLA panels. As soon as we turned around for docking I could see three of the four SLA panels tumbling slowly in space. This is not unusual. That's been seen before.
- Evans
I never did see a SLA panel.
- Cernan
There seemed to be an awful lot of particles with us continually throughout the flight, both in transearth and translunar coast and in lunar orbit. These particles were obviously residue from the RCS. Others were from dumped residues. They seemed to be hanging around the LM as a result of pulling in and out of the S-IVB and they were always small particles. Some, initially, were pieces of Mylar from the S-IVB LM separation. The others were just like small dump crystals or residue. On the LM, particularly, when you fire the RCS you could see the RCS residue.
- Evans
That residue from the RCS didn't look a lot different than a waste-water dump.
- Cernan
That's right, except that it's less dense.
- Evans
Entry - Just the fireball, and the fireball is a lot brighter than I thought it was going to be. I almost wish I would have had sunglasses. It was really bright out of the rendezvous window just shortly after the .05g when you start picking up the greatest portion of the fireball. That brightness only lasted for maybe 30 to 40 seconds. Then either you became accustomed to the brightness or the brightness decreased. From that point on, I could see the instrument panel. Long after the brightness of the fireball decreased, I could look back up through the rendezvous window and see what to me was kind of like a tunnel with a bright spot in the middle of the tunnel. Way down the tunnel, way back behind, I could see the fireball.
- Cernan
The only unusual sighting I can recall during landing or recovery is when the CMP looked out the window and saw the superstructure of an aircraft carrier and said, "Oh, we've got a tin can with us."
- Evans
Well, it was kind of foggy on the windows.
- Schmitt
Transearth we had only a small crescent of an Earth and it was not feasible to do any extensive weather observations. We had light flashes just about continuously during the whole flight when we were dark adapted. I had one which I thought was a flash on the lunar surface. That one period of time when we had the blindfolds on for the ALFMED experiment there were just no visible flashes, although that evening, that night, before I went to sleep I noticed that I was seeing the light flashes again. So, it just seemed to be that one interval either side of it where the light flash was not visible to myself or to the other two crewmen.
Edits and errors by Eric Hartwell are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. The original NASA material is copyright-free.