Re: Apollo hardware locations

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 [email protected] wrote:
> This is from: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_tables.html

An informal addendum...

> The Apollo 11 SIVB was injected into heliocentric orbit...

As were those of Apollos 8, 9, and 10.  Yes, even Apollo 9's -- it did
multiple burns after dropping off the CSM+LM in LEO, and ended up in an
escape trajectory.  The other three maneuvered in smaller ways after
spacecraft separation, to put themselves on a trajectory ending in a lunar
gravity assist (although that term was not yet in use). 

>the Apollo 12 SIVB into Earth orbit.

Because its gravity assist was botched, due ultimately to those lightning
strikes during ascent.  (The hasty inertial-platform realignment in orbit
wasn't perfect, and while the spacecraft took the resulting small TLI
error out in midcourse corrections, either the S-IVB didn't have the
delta-V to do it or nobody thought of it in time.)  It spent 15 months
in a high, unstable Earth orbit, and departed into heliocentric orbit in
March 1971 (as reconstructed after it was rediscovered as J002E3).

> Impact Sites of Apollo LM Ascent and SIVB Stages

Apollo 10's descent stage is also presumed to have impacted, location
unknown.  Its ascent stage was ejected into heliocentric orbit during
engineering tests run (by remote control from Earth) after it was
abandoned in lunar orbit. 

> The Apollo 11 and 16 LM's were jettisoned into (temporary) lunar orbits.

In Apollo 11's case this was deliberate.  In Apollo 16's, a switch-setting
error disabled remote control and prevented it from being crashed after
separation.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       [email protected]