Word: aldrin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Exploring the area within 100 ft. of the LM, Aldrin will scoop up scientifically interesting rocks, while Armstrong photographs each site and takes notes about the specimens. Armstrong will also thrust a core sampler as far as 12 in. into the soil to collect subsurface samples uncontaminated by the exhaust from the LM's descent engine. Up to 60 lbs. of documented rocks will then be placed in a seeond aluminum sample box, along with core samples and the aluminum solar particle collector, and sealed...
...After Aldrin has climbed back aboard the LM, Armstrong will send the sample boxes up the nylon conveyor and re-enter the spacecraft, about 2½ hours after he first emerged. The astronauts will then toss their PLSS units, overshoes and a camera out of the spacecraft to reduce the possibility of bringing back equipment contaminated by any lunar organisms that might exist...
...Monday, after another 4-hr. sleep period sandwiched between two meals, Armstrong and Aldrin will fire the LM's ascent engine, using the four-legged descent stage as a launch pad. If all goes well, they will rendezvous with Collins and transfer to the command module, taking their precious rocks with them in sealed boxes and leaving the LM in orbit around the moon. From that point on, they will again follow the path of Apollo 10. After firing themselves into an earth-bound trajectory, they will splash down in the Pacific Ocean some 1,160 miles southwest of Hawaii...
...Apollo 11 manned landing will begin returning scientific dividends as soon as Astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin start to explore the lunar surface. Both are competent amateur geologists. They have had more than 120 hours of instruction from NASA geologists, and they have practiced collecting rock and soil samples in lunarlike terrain such as the Grand Canyon, California's Medicine Lake highlands, the Arizona meteorite crater, the arctic wastelands of Iceland, and Alaska's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Even their on-the-spot descriptions of the moon, to be transmitted instantaneously by radio to earth, should be of substantial value...
Other scientific benefits will flow immediately from the instruments that the astronauts will leave behind on the moon. As soon as Astronaut Aldrin sets up a seismometer on the lunar surface, for example, a command radioed from earth will activate it by releasing four suspended weights. In the future, whenever a quake or a meteor disturbs the lunar surface, the seismometer's frame will vibrate, while the suspended weights remain immobile. The seismometer, sensing the relative motion between the frame and the weights, will express it as digital data and transmit it to earth. The instrument is so sensitive that...