Obama Cancels "Return to the Moon"

Apollo 8

Main article: Apollo 8

• On December 21, 1968 at 18:00 UT Amateur astronomers (H.R. Hatfield, M.J. Hendrie, F. Kent, Alan Heath, and M.J. Oates) in the UK photographed a fuel dump from the jettisoned S-IVB stage.^[20]
• Pic du Midi Observatory (in the French Pyrenees); the Catalina Station of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (University of Arizona); Corralitos Observatory, New Mexico, then operated by Northwestern University; McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas; and Lick Observatory of the University of California all filed reports of observations.^[20]
• Dr. Michael Moutsoulas at Pic du Midi reported an initial sighting around 17:10 UT on December 21 with the 1.1-meter reflector as an object (magnitude near 10, through clouds) moving eastward near the predicted location of Apollo 8. He used a 60-cm refractor to observe a cluster of objects which were obscured by the appearance of a nebulous cloud at a time which matches a firing of the service module engine to assure adequate separation from the S-IVB. This event can be traced with the Apollo 8 Flight Journal, noting that launch was at 0751 EST or 12:51 UT on December 21.^[20]
• Justus Dunlap and other at Corralitos Observatory (then operated by Northwestern University) obtained over 400 short-exposure intensified images, giving very accurate locations for the spacecraft.^[20]
• The 2.1 m Struve telescope at McDonald, from 01:50-2:37 UT observed the brightest object flashing as bright as magnitude 15, with the flash pattern recurring about once a minute.^[20]
• The Lick observations during the return coast to Earth produced live TV pictures broadcast to West Coast viewers via KQED-TV in San Francisco.
• An article in the March 1969 issue of Sky & Telescope.^[20]
• The first post-launch sightings were from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) station on Maui, and observed the TLI burn near 15:44 UT on December 21.
• Table Mountain, a Deep Space Network station, reports that they tracked all the Apollo lunar missions except 17.
• Bernard Scrivener (at Honeysuckle Creek) personally recorded forty-five to fifty hours of the radio conversation between Houston and Apollo 8. These are recordings of the raw audio, not what was released to the public through NASA.^[23]

[edit] Apollo 10

Main article: Apollo 10

• A list of sightings of Apollo 10 were reported in "Apollo 10 Optical Tracking", Sky & Telescope, July 1969, pp. 62–63.

[edit] Apollo 11

Main article: Apollo 11

• The Bochum Observatory director (Professor Heinz Kaminski) was able to provide confirmation of events and data independent of both the Russian and U.S. space agencies.^[24]
• A compilation of sightings appeared in "Observations of Apollo 11", Sky and Telescope, November 1969, pp. 358–359.
• The Madrid Apollo Station, part of the Deep Space Network, built in Fresnedillas, near Madrid, Spain tracked Apollo 11.^[25]
• Goldstone Tracking Station in California tracked Apollo 11.^[26]
• At Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK the telescope was used to observe the mission, as it had been many years previously for Sputnik.^[27] At the same time, Jodrell Bank scientists were tracking the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 15, which was trying to land on the Moon.^[28] In July 2009 Jodrell released some recordings they made.^[29]
• Larry Baysinger, a technician for WHAS radio in Louisville, Kentucky, independently detected and recorded transmissions between Apollo 11 astronauts on the lunar surface and in the command module.^[30] Recordings made by Baysinger share certain characteristics with recordings made at Bochum Observatory by Heinz Kaminski (see above), in that both Kaminski's and Baysinger's recordings do not include Capcom in Houston and the associated Quindar tones heard in NASA audio and seen on NASA Apollo 11 transcipts. Kaminski and Baysinger could only hear the transmissions from the Moon, and not transmissions to the Moon from Earth.^[24][31]

[edit] Apollo 12

Main article: Apollo 12