July 20 marks the 52nd anniversary of the first moon landing. A once-classified event almost killed them. The problem happened during Apollo 11’s return to Earth. It caused a discarded space module to nearly crash into the astronaut’s capsule.
Details of the anomaly can be found in “Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions.” A new book by science reporter Nancy Atkinson.
NASA’s Apollo 11 is rightfully hailed as an exceptional success for the US Apollo program. After all, the agency took humans to the lunar surface for the first time and brought them back to Earth alive.
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Apollo 11 Could Have Ended in Tragedy
Although there were quite a few close calls during the historic Apollo 11 mission that could have ended it in tragedy.
For example, minutes ahead of the lunar landing, alarms sounded inside the Lunar Module spacecraft, indicating that the flight computer was overloaded and might quit.
Next, a surprise crater threatened to ruin the landing, so Commander Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin used up almost all of their fuel navigating to safer lunar plains.
Those and other stories — a stuck hatch, frozen fuel lines, a busted switch required to leave the moon — are well-shared amid spaceflight enthusiasts and historians.
Nancy Atkinson Details Previously Classified Information
But according to the book, the mission’s three astronauts may have been in far more peril than previously reported.
A severe anomaly occurred as the Apollo 11 crew careened toward a landing back on Earth, according to Nancy Atkinson, an author and a science journalist, who details formerly classified information about the event in her book, “Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions.”
Through my research for the book, I uncovered a severe anomaly that occurred during Apollo 11’s return to Earth. Nancy Atkinson’s book described that the event was discovered only after the astronauts had returned safely to Earth.
The problem occurred just before Apollo 11 returned to Earth, causing a discarded space module to crash into the astronaut’s capsule nearly.
And what’s more, Nancy Atkinson’s sources suggest, that the same problem also threatened the astronauts of three other Apollo missions.
The Anomaly Occurred Less Than an Hour Before The Apollo 11 Landed
The anomaly occurred less than an hour before the Apollo 11 astronauts landed. According to Nancy Atkinson, most everyone at NASA did not understand the danger it put its crew in until weeks after they’d returned to Earth.
And for most of the crew’s eight-day mission, the astronauts of Apollo 11 rode inside a gumdrop-shaped capsule designated the command module. And this capsule sat on top of the SM or the service module. It is a huge cylinder that carried supplies, fuels, and a gigantic rocket engine. NASA called the two-part spacecraft the CSM or the command and service module.
The command and service module delivered a third part, called the lunar module, to lunar orbit. Then that lunar lander took Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to and from the lunar surface, while astronaut Michael Collins continued in orbit around the moon. The command and service module then rocketed everyone back toward Earth on a three-day journey.
The Command and Service Module Fully Separated Into Two Parts
Approximately 15 minutes before the Apollo 11 crew splashed into the Pacific Ocean, the Command and Service Module entirely separated into its two parts.
This was needed because only the command module (which held the astronauts) had a heat shield. The heat shield protected the crew by absorbing and deflecting the scorching energies produced by breaking through Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 25,000 mph — more than a dozen times as fast as a speeding bullet.
The service module became unusable and posed a collision risk after the two parts separated; therefore, it was thought to skip off Earth’s atmosphere like a stone thrown across a pond. But it didn’t.
The Service Module Trailed The Apollo 11 Astronauts Throughout Their Descent
Instead, as Nancy Atkinson explains in her book, the service module trailed the Apollo 11 astronauts throughout their descent to Earth.
“Houston, we got the service module going by. And a little high and a little bit to the right,” Buzz Aldrin, who was looking out of the command module’s window, told the Mission Control over the radio.
Later, Buzz added: “It’s coming across from right to left.”
And as plasma built up ahead of the capsule, its radio communications temporarily went out (as expected) yet stopped the Apollo 11 crew from offering any more details.
Yet an airplane pilot detected the returning command module and service module, the latter of which was tearing apart and shattering into gleaming pieces.
Gary Johnson, who served as an electrical engineer on the NASA Apollo program, told Nancy Atkinson that the service module should have been “absolutely nowhere close to the command module” as it descended.
We Could Have Lost The Apollo 11 Crew
And if the part had crashed with the command module carrying the Apollo 11 crew, it could have destroyed the vehicle or sent it flying out of control. Pieces of the disintegrating service module could have struck the capsule, which could have led to disaster as well, Nancy Atkinson wrote in her book.
“If things had gone really bad, we could have lost the Apollo 11 crew,” Johnson told Nancy. “We were lucky.”
The mission controllers, astronauts, and communications personnel didn’t realize there was a problem until after the agency (NASA) debriefed the three astronauts about their mission weeks later.
NASA launched an investigation based on their statements and found that two prior Apollo missions — Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 — had experienced the same glitch.
The astronauts did not see the service module outside their windows, so they didn’t report it, Nancy Atkinson wrote. A review of old radar recordings revealed the service modules on those missions did fly dangerously close to the command modules.
Why The Apollo 11 Jettison Anomaly isn’t Well Known
The problem’s cause turned out to be a lousy sequence in a controller that helped separate the command and service modules. The agency knew the same issue was baked into the Apollo 12 mission spacecraft, which took off in November 1969 but chose not to fix it due to time constraints, Nancy said.
According to engineer Johnson, NASA kept the Apollo 11 crew debriefs classified for some time. And an official report about the anomaly came out in November 1970, nearly six months after the nerve-racking Apollo 13 mission, and somehow managed to stay out of newspapers.
“The incident never made it into the Apollo 11 mission reports and somehow was mostly forgotten. Due to the frantic-ness of the time, of needing to move on to the next flight, etc.,” Nancy Atkinson stated. “The first time the fix for this anomaly was in place was for Apollo 13 mission. And you know what happened with Apollo 13, and I think the anomaly was probably mostly forgotten due to all the other excitement.”
More details about this anomaly can be found in Nancy Atkinson’s book.
Thanks for reading this article of the lesser known anomaly. If you want to learn more about Apollo program, then head over to this article; A Complete Guide to NASA’s Apollo Program.