Eight Years to the Moon

by Nancy Atkinson

  Johnson was responsible for the design and development of the entry sequencing system on the SM, called the jettison controller.

  “The jettison controller would automatically fire a set of thrusters called the Minus X RCS jets,” Johnson explained, “and two seconds later it would fire the four RCS roll jets for 5.5 seconds to perform a spin-stabilization maneuver, while the Minus X RCS jets continued to fire. The idea was that the continued firing would use up the residual propellant in the service module.”

  But in analyzing this sequence during the investigation, data showed that under certain conditions (for example, if the propellent sloshed after separation), the SM’s trajectory could be altered in such a way that contact could occur. The investigators determined that if the Minus X jets turned off after twenty-five seconds and the roll jets turned off after two seconds, this would put the SM on the proper trajectory and prevent any chances of the vehicles colliding. Johnson recalls trying to get the engineering changes made as soon as possible, starting with Apollo 12. But by the time the investigation and analysis of how to fix the problem was completed, it was nearly time for Apollo 12’s launch, and the Apollo program made the decision to launch Apollo 12 without this change being made. The SM jettison controller changes were approved and completed for Apollo 13 and subsequent missions.

  But somehow, the details and documentation of this anomaly were lost for nearly fifty years.

  “Unfortunately, the NASA crew debriefs were classified, so this anomaly doesn’t show up in any of the mission reports, and the formal anomaly report wasn’t released until November of 1970,” Johnson said. “This is long after the Apollo 11 mission, which is probably why the anomaly is not mentioned in any of Apollo 11 mission reports.”

  Gary Johnson’s hand-drawn schematics for re-wiring the Apollo Service Module’s jettison controller. Image courtesy of Gary Johnson.

  Johnson said the official NASA Apollo 11 mission reports should have been updated to include the SM reentry anomaly, and the technical crew debriefs should not have been classified. Why the anomaly was forgotten is unknown. Perhaps with the relatively easy fix implemented, combined with the hectic atmosphere of that time at MSC—of needing to quickly move on to the subsequent Apollo missions—it was all but forgotten. In any event, Johnson feels this issue was never appropriately documented.

  “I had forgotten about this report as well, but in 2016 I was going back through my old files from Apollo when I came across the anomaly report,” Johnson said. “Only then did I remember this very significant close call.”

  In 2017, Johnson shared the details of this event with the engineers building NASA’s Orion spacecraft. This generated action on their part to make sure any new spacecraft returning from the Moon or beyond will not experience a disaster just as they are about to return home. Johnson also has gotten the word out to the current generation at NASA that mission anomalies or any “lessons learned” should not only be well-documented but also be openly available and shared.

  “We were lucky,” Johnson said, “there’s no other way to classify what happened on Apollo 11’s reentry except to say that we got lucky.”

  The Apollo 11 astronauts wearing their Biological Isolation Garments (BIGs) as they emerged from the helicopter that brought them on board the USS Hornet. Credit: NASA.

  IN THE PREDAWN DARKNESS ON JULY 24, Columbia splashed down 920 miles (1,480 km) southwest of Honolulu, 13 miles (21 km) from the prime recovery ship, the USS Hornet, giving Apollo 11 a mission duration of eight days, three hours, eighteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. Recovery crews arrived quickly via helicopter and the Navy frogmen tossed packages with the Biological Isolation Garments (BIGs) into the spacecraft. To avoid “infecting” the largest body of water in the world with any potential Moon bugs, the recovery crew sprayed a decontaminate over the CM, and the astronauts were each wiped down with a sodium hypochlorite solution after they got into the life raft. They were each lifted aboard the helicopter and whisked to the Hornet.

  Looking like space aliens in their BIG garb, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins emerged from the helicopter, waving heartily to the surrounding ship’s complement—even though they couldn’t see much through the fogged-over gas mask visors. They walked quickly to the Mobile Quarantine Facility. All three wanted out of those BIGs as soon as possible: It was a warm day, and inside the helicopter, they had started to heat up inside the rubber suits. “I can remember thinking, I’m giving these guys thirty seconds, and then I’m getting out of this goddamned suit,“ Collins said later. “I didn’t care how many bugs were coming with me. But I wasn’t ticked off; I was very pleased.”

  Apollo 11 astronauts wearing their Biological Isolation Garments (BIGs) after splashdown and recovery. Credit: NASA.

  Meanwhile, recovery crews brought Columbia on board the Hornet and connected it to a special containment area where all the materials from the interior of the craft (such as all the exposed film and sample return containers) were taken into the quarantine trailer then passed through a decontamination lock. The items were immediately flown to the nearest airport, located on a small atoll called Johnston Island, then flown to Houston. The Apollo 11 crew spent five days secluded in their Mobile Quarantine Facility as the Hornet transported them to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

  Around the country and the world—but especially in Houston—the celebrations began as soon as Columbia hit the water. In Mission Control, the MER and all the support rooms, cheers, handshakes and celebratory cigars abounded, along with the words, “We did it!” Thoughts turned to everything that had happened along the way: the hard work and long hours, the sacrifices, the fun, the camaraderie, the Apollo 1 fire and the rebuilding from tragedy. Glynn Lunney looked around at all the young faces—the average age of the flight control team in 1969 was twenty-eight. They had done something that started out as impossible, Lunney realized, and it was accomplished in eight years and two months from President Kennedy’s speech in May 1961.

  Celebrations in Mission Control after Apollo 11’s splashdown. Credit: NASA.

  It took several hours for everyone to wrap up their work and button up all the data from the mission. But by the time 5:00 p.m. rolled around, NASA Parkway was a complete gridlock. Everyone from MSC was heading to the bars and restaurants to celebrate, and all of Houston came to join them. Soon people just parked their cars along the side of the road and walked so they could join in at one of the now-legendary splashdown parties. By morning, many would wonder how they got home or where they might find their car.

  At about 6:00 p.m., Henry Pohl’s wife threaded her way through the parked cars and crowds to pick up her husband. “We just had to poke along because the streets were just solid, wall-to-wall people,” Pohl said. “Everybody was celebrating. I didn’t go to any celebrations, though. My wife had the car loaded and we took the kids out to the country and relaxed for a while. It had been a long, long stretch with not much sleep. Matter of fact, I lay down in the back of the station wagon and went to sleep.”

  Max Faget with an early model of the Space Shuttle. Credit: NASA.

  Milt Heflin (white shirt) sitting on the tug with the Command Module after it was off-loaded from the prime recovery ship. Image courtesy of C. Mac Jones.

  The Command Module Columbia loaded onto an aircraft for transport. Credit: NASA.

  Dottie Lee didn’t get home until late that night, and like Pohl, she didn’t join in the celebrations. Instead, she had been working late, on a secret project. On April 1 of that year, she was called in to a meeting, headed by Max Faget. And just like her meeting with him all those years ago when he jumped on his desk to drop models of the Mercury capsule, he brought out a model of a funny-looking balsa wood plane and flew it across the room. He told the assembled group of twenty engineers, “We’re going to build America’s next spacecraft. It’s going to launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. It’s going to be reusable.” That funny-looking plane would go on to become a project called the Space Shuttle.
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  But the day Apollo 11 landed, the shuttle group had been secluded, working on their designs. “I can remember saying before I knew I was going to be on the Shuttle project,” Lee said, “that I was going to really celebrate our successful return from the first Moon landing. But instead I worked past hours, got in my car to drive home, and cars were just everywhere. Everyone else was out celebrating. But I had to go home to relieve the babysitter.” But yet the excitement of challenges ahead stirred her enthusiasm, and she always viewed her work as “creating tomorrow today.” She said, “That’s what makes this job so fun.”

  The first Apollo 11 sample return container, with lunar surface material inside, is unloaded at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, Building 37, Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). The rock box had arrived only minutes earlier at Ellington Air Force Base by air from the Pacific recovery area. The lunar samples were collected by astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. during their lunar surface extravehicular activity. Credit: NASA.

  MILT HEFLIN MET THE HORNET WHEN IT arrived in Pearl Harbor, where the Mobile Quarantine Facility was lifted by a crane into a plane and flown to Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. Columbia was off-loaded at a separate isolated hangar at Ford Island, an islet in the center of the harbor, since removing all the fuels was considered a potentially hazardous event.

  It took forty-eight hours for the recovery team to “safe” the CM and prepare it for air transport back to the continental US. Heflin accompanied Columbia in the transport plane as the only NASA representative, and in one of the most uncomfortable flights of his life, he sat back in the cargo area of the Globemaster turboprop. “I have never been in an airplane before or since that made that kind of noise and vibrated as much as that thing,” he said. “Flying over the Pacific Ocean for over eight hours with all that racket and shaking was an unforgettable experience.”

  David Moore working at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. Image courtesy of David Moore.

  But the Globemaster completed the transoceanic trip without incident, landing at an Air Force base on the West Coast to refuel. Of course, everyone on the base knew what was on that plane. The base commander came out with an entourage to meet the plane and shake Heflin’s hand. The refueling crew began their work, and Heflin stood nearby, stretching his legs, when a colonel showed up and said, “Say, sir, it looks like we might have to delay you here—we have some mechanical issues that we need to check out on the plane.”

  Oh, good, Heflin thought, because he sure didn’t want to fly this priceless piece of history in a defective aircraft. He asked to use a phone, as he needed to notify Houston of the delay. When he returned, the colonel said, “Well, sir, it looks like we might have you stay here for about two or three hours.”

  “Uh, okay,” Heflin said, “I’ll need to let Houston know of the delay. Can I use the phone again?”

  “Oh, certainly.” And just as Heflin started to walk away, the colonel added, “Oh, hey, do you mind if we open up the back end of the plane’s cargo bay, maybe rope off the area, and let some folks come see it?”

  Heflin explained there was really nothing to see because there was a heavy, conical-shaped tarp that covered the CM, and it would take a crane to get it off.

  Phil Covington working in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. Image courtesy of Phil Covington.

  “Oh, that’s fine. We don’t mind,” he said. Heflin needed to get approval for the public “viewing” of Columbia from the NASA public affairs office, and as soon as he did, people started streaming in. Soon a huge crowd formed, coming to look at the Apollo 11 CM that they couldn’t see. For nearly three hours, Heflin stood and answered questions and posed for pictures as the throngs came to take a look at whatever they could see of Columbia. Finally, as the crowd started to thin out, the colonel came back and told Heflin the plane was all ready to go.

  As the Globemaster took off, Heflin got to thinking. “During the entire time we were there, I swear, I don’t remember seeing any damn work being done on that airplane,” he realized, shaking his head. He laughed and took his hat off to that base commander and colonel, because Heflin was pretty darn sure he had been duped into letting everyone on that base see the most famous spacecraft in the world, the one that had just returned from its historic journey to the Moon.

  THE SECURE BOX CONTAINING THE FIRST samples from the Moon was opened in the vacuum laboratory of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) on Saturday, July 26, 1969. Technicians working with gloveboxes unfastened the containers, and the samples were observed and photographed in vacuum before pieces were selected for analysis and scientific examination. Besides meteorites, these lunar samples were the first extraterrestrial materials ever studied.

  The samples were analyzed in state-of-the-art, sealed biocontainment glovebox cabinets that were under constant negative pressure to keep any potential pathogens from escaping, should there have been a containment fault.

  Chemist David Moore was assigned to the Gas Analysis Laboratory located on the LRL’s third floor within the lunar sample quarantine and processing area, and he performed chemical analysis on the lunar material to determine the gas content of the samples. Moore and his colleagues used spectrometers to analyze how the samples might react to Earth’s atmosphere and to determine the carbon content, which could shed light on any life-forms.

  Research analyst Phil Covington worked as part of the biomedical back-contamination avoidance protocol team, testing the lunar material on thirty-five different representative plant life-forms on Earth (such as algae, ferns, liverwort and various seedlings) to determine if any extraterrestrial organisms might be present. Other teams tested the lunar materials on mice and fish. While the astronauts remained in quarantine for another two weeks at the LRL, the samples went through a thirty-day test period in the individual labs in the LRL. Each lab had specific analytical equipment for evaluating the lunar soil. Both Moore and Covington felt extremely privileged and honored to be among the handful of technicians selected to work with the Apollo 11 lunar materials.

  “The amount of scientific analysis the LRL scientists were able to accomplish was limited somewhat due to the biocontainment hazard restrictions,” said Covington, “but that was their primary mission: to assure the world outside Building 37 in Houston did not get contaminated if ‘something’—some type of life-form or pathogen—had been present.”

  The public interest in the lunar rocks was intense, Moore said, and the lab technicians worked a two-shift operation to gather enough data to answer many questions raised by the scientists: Were the Earth and the Moon of the same origin? The same age? How was the lunar soil chemically different? Was there life or water on the Moon? It was determined that no life was present in the samples (with nothing that presented any danger to life-forms on Earth) and the Earth and Moon formed roughly about the same time (4.4 billion years ago). Initially, no evidence of water was found, but that has since been revisited, as the Apollo samples continue to be studied. Interestingly, some plant species grew better in the lunar regolith than in the sterilized Earth soil. Over the course of the Apollo program, with each mission landing at different sites on the lunar surface, the analysis on all the samples confirmed the lunar material was essentially sterile and showed no toxicity or pathogenicity; therefore, it appeared safe for human exposure.

  Besides the lab’s technicians, visiting scientists were eventually allowed entry to the lab to conduct their own studies. The LRL staff took great precautions for anyone coming in or going out of the LRL, including an elaborate security procedure and rigorous safeguards against contamination or the possibility that anyone would carry any potential pathogens outside the lab.

  To enter the LRL, the technicians and visiting scientists were required to strip off their clothes and replace them with white lab scrubs. Anyone leaving the lab had to strip off the scrubs, shower, then walk nude through an air lock immersed in ultraviolet light. Only then could they put on their street clothes again. Some of the p
lanetary scientists didn’t take the quarantine seriously, figuring the hard vacuum of space and the sun’s ultraviolet radiation that bombards the lunar surface already provided enough sterilization. But others took the procedures quite seriously. Or at least they tried.

  Several weeks after the Apollo 11 samples had arrived, the initial bustle of experiments and visiting scientists had slowed down. Covington was working alone in one of the small labs when he heard someone rapping on the glass panel on his door. Unlatching the door, he was faced with two men, each holding briefcases. And neither was wearing a stitch of clothing.

  “Seems there’s always someone who gets their wires crossed on procedures,” Covington laughed. “I got them straightened out and marched them back to get some scrubs. But I will always remember those two scientists, naked as jaybirds, for as long as I live.”

  FOR COVINGTON AND ALL THOSE WHO shared their stories for this book, after fifty years, some recollections of this incredible eight-year period have faded to fuzzy remembrances. Others have been forgotten altogether, but some memories will never be forgotten.

  Considered by many historians to be one of the greatest technological achievements in human history, the Apollo program became possible only because of the dedication of approximately four hundred thousand people around the world. The stories shared here portray just a small portion of the efforts required by Apollo, but this incredible achievement is a testament to what can be accomplished when people work together toward a common goal. Now, in the twenty-first century, humanity still reaps the benefits of the technological advances needed for the Apollo program, which accelerated innovations in computing, wireless communications and the development of many space-age materials and processes—as well as the awe-inspiring view of our home planet that forever changed humanity. From 1969 to 1972 the struggles, joys, conflicts and calm experienced in the cycles of life here on Earth was briefly interrupted by a fleeting, incredible period of time when we traveled to another world and walked on its surface.