Apollo 8 - Optics Tracking (Full Mission 24)

Apollo 8 - Optics Tracking (Full Mission 24)

This video covers the fifth orbit and the 77-79 hour point of the flight. During this pass Jim Lovell has been using the 16mm camera to obtain sextant views of the lunar surface.

An excerpt from the Apollo 8 Flight Journal (http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/14day4_orbits456.htm) explains this better than I can...

"As Apollo 8 moves around behind the Moon, Jim prepares for a series of tracking exercises. By the Flight Plan, this will require him sighting on a landmark on the far side known as Control Point 2 which is situated in the vicinity of crater Keeler. His subsequent comm after AOS shows that he also sights on Control Point 1, a keyhole-shaped pair of craters within Korolev. Using an adapter, he will attach the 16-mm movie camera to the sextant so that it can simultaneously film the sightings.]

[Part of the mission objectives for Apollo 8 is to demonstrate the ability of the spacecraft's optics and computer to determine the position of a landmark. Up to this time, much of the Moon's far side had been photographed by the Lunar Orbiter probes though the photography provided could not allow accurate determination of positions of surface features. Jim will use the computer to approximately aim the optics at the landmark. He will then aim them accurately and take marks. Using its knowledge of their orbit, the computer will calculate where it thinks the landmark really is with three parameters; latitude, longitude and altitude. Note that their computer is not programmed to deal directly with longitude. Instead it was programmed to work with longitude divided by two so that the limited range of its registers can deal with longitude to the required precision"

(Courtesy Apollo 8 Flight Journal)
Audio is presented in two channels at some points. Headphones are advised.

The video is presented in 16:9 to allow use of photos and captions on the right of the screen. Captions are used to show PAO and other events.

NOTE -

Orbiter Space Simulator is used to depict events as they were happening in real time, although I do not claim attitudes/spacecraft orientation are correct.

I sourced the Apollo 8 Flight Journal to assist with photo placement and audio editing. I would recommend the viewer using this as an aid whilst listening as it gives great descriptions of the technical details of the flight as it happened and explains, in laymans terms what is going on.

All Video, photos and audio is courtesy of NASA.

Видео Apollo 8 - Optics Tracking (Full Mission 24) канала lunarmodule5