EXPLORATIONS — a program in Special English by the Voice ofAmerica.
(THEME)
The summer of nineteen-sixty-nine was a special time in history.That was when men from Earth — American astronauts — flew theirApollo Eleven spacecraft to the moon, landed and returned homesafely. The world honored the astronauts as heroes.
Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were the first to land on themoon. But they were not the last. NASA — the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration — launched six more Apollo flights.
Today, Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant tell about the flights thatfollowed Apollo Eleven to the moon.
VOICE ONE:
Apollo Twelve lifted off only four months after the Apollo Elevenflight. Rain had fallen the night before. The clouds cleared, butmore rain was expected. Space officials decided the weather was safeenough for them to launch the spacecraft.
Thirty-six seconds after liftoff, lightning hit the huge SaturnFive rocket. The Apollo spacecraft lost electrical power to itscontrol system. The astronauts worked calmly to get the power backon. Then lightning struck again.
And power was lost again.
The lightning, however, did not affect the Saturn rocket. Therocket continued to push the spacecraft on its path. The astronautssoon fixed the electrical problem. The situation returned to normal.Apollo Twelve could continue its flight to the moon.
VOICE TWO:
All three astronauts of Apollo Twelve were Navy fliers. CharlesConrad was the flight commander. Richard Gordon was pilot of thecommand module. Alan Bean was pilot of the moon lander.
After four days, Apollo Twelve was near its landing area on themoon. It would land in an area called the Ocean of Storms. The Oceanof Storms was about two-thousand kilometers west of the place whereApollo Eleven had landed.
Richard Gordon remained in the command module circling the moon.Charles Conrad and Alan Bean flew the lander craft to the surface.They came down near Surveyor Three, an unmanned spacecraft that hadlanded on the moon two years before. Surveyor had sent backsix-thousand pictures of the moon before it stopped working.
Conrad stepped out of the lander onto the moon. He described thesurface as he walked away from the spacecraft. “Oh,” he said, “isthis soft! I don’t sink in it too far.”
VOICE ONE:
Alan Bean followed Charles Conradto the surface. The two astronauts collected about thirty-fivekilograms of rocks. They left five scientific instruments designedto send information back to Earth. And they visited the old Surveyorspacecraft.
The two astronauts spent more than thirty-one hours on the moon.Then they returned to the orbiting command module and started backto Earth. They landed in the Pacific Ocean, only six kilometers fromthe ship that waited to rescue them.
VOICE TWO:
The next flight in America’sApollo space project — Apollo Thirteen — never landed on the moon.Three days after launch, an explosion damaged the spacecraft. Theastronauts lost most of their oxygen.
They had to cancel the moon landing and use the moon lander as alifeboat. Oxygen from the lander kept them alive during the longtrip back to Earth.
Apollo Fourteen was launched in January, nineteen-seventy-one. Itlanded in the hilly Fra Mauro area of the moon.
Fra Mauro is a huge highlands east of Apollo Twelve’s landingplace. A large meteorite hit the area four-thousand-million yearsago. The force of the crash spread material from deep inside themoon. Scientists wanted to study this material. They believed itwould give them important information about the early history of themoon.
VOICE ONE:
The commander of the ApolloFourteen flight was Alan Shepard. He had been the first American inspace. Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell were the other members of thecrew. One piece of equipment on Apollo Fourteen was a light-weightvehicle with two wheels. The astronauts used it to carry tools andcameras while they were on the moon.
The vehicle made it possible for them to travel farther from thespacecraft to collect rocks and do experiments. They walked as faras three kilometers from the moon lander. Even with the two-wheeledvehicle, however, Shepard and Mitchell could not reach one of theirgoals — a crater called Cone. They did not have enough oxygen towalk that far. They had to return to the lander.
Apollo Twelve and Apollo Fourteen produced much new scientificinformation. And they increased the interest of scientists in thenext Apollo flights to the moon.
VOICE TWO:
The last three flights would permit astronauts to stay muchlonger on the moon. They also would provide a vehicle with fourwheels in which astronauts could ride. With such a vehicle,astronauts could explore a much larger area of the moon’s surface.The vehicle was called a Lunar Rover.
The lunar rover was powered by electricity. It could carry twoastronauts more than thirty kilometers from the lander. It couldcarry more than one-hundred-ten kilograms of equipment. The LunarRover also had a television camera and an antenna for sending colortelevision broadcasts back to Earth.
VOICE ONE:
David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin were the crew forApollo Fifteen. They landed at Hadley Rille near the ApennineMountains, northwest of the place where Apollo Eleven had landed.
Scott and Irwin were the first to use the Lunar Rover vehicle.They made several trips from the landing area to study the surfaceof the moon. They gathered seventy-six kilos of moon rocks. And theyplaced a small satellite in lunar orbit before they returned toEarth.
The Apollo Fifteen astronauts returned safely. Scientists wereexcited about the moon rocks the astronauts brought back. They namedone of them “the Genesis Rock.” It is believed to be more thanfour-thousand-million years old. Scientists say the rock was createdvery early in the life of the moon.
Soil brought back contained bits of orange glass. Scientists saidthe glass came from material created as deep as three-hundredkilometers below the moon’s surface.
Astronauts John Young, ThomasMattingly and Charles Duke flew Apollo Sixteen to the moon in April,nineteen-seventy-two. Young and Duke landed southwest of the ApolloEleven landing place. They spent forty-five hours on the moon. Theycollected rocks and set up scientific equipment.
VOICE TWO:
Astronauts Eugene Cernan, HarrisonSchmitt and Ronald Evans made the last Apollo flight to the moon.That was in December, nineteen-seventy-two.
Cernan and Schmitt landed in a valley almost directly north ofthe Apollo Eleven landing place. They spent seventy-five hours, inall, on the surface. More than twenty-two hours were spent workingoutside the lander.
The astronauts made three trips in the lunar rover to takepictures and collect rocks. The astronauts also left many scientificdevices that would continue to report information about the moon.
Cernan and Schmitt lifted off the moon on December fourteenth.Just before leaving, they placed a metal sign on the surface. Thesign was to remain forever.
It said: “Here man completed his first exploration of the moon,December, nineteen-seventy-two. May the spirit of peace in which wecame be reflected in the lives of all mankind.”
VOICE ONE:
Production of the Saturn Five rocket and the Apollo spacecraftended with Apollo seventeen. America’s manned explorations of themoon were completed.
It was the end of a special time in human history. It had beenthe first time people moved beyond their small planet into the hugesolar system. Now, once again, the moon was beyond human reach.
(THEME)
ANNCR:
You have been listening to the story of the United States’ Apollospace flight program that sent people to the moon. This program waswritten by Marilyn Rice Christiano. Your narrators were Kay Gallantand Harry Monroe. This is Shirley Griffith. Listen again next weekfor another Explorations program on the Voice of America.