Apollo 20 will liftoff from Kennedy Space Center on July 24, 1974 to the most adventurous site visited yet by Apollo astronauts; the rim of crater Tycho. Tycho is named for famed astronomer Tycho Brahe who’s lifetime’s collection of astronomical data allowed Kepler to formulate the laws of planetary motion that have helped make Apollo possible. Tycho is also the most recognizable and visible feature on the Moon. Its fresh impact rays extend all over the surface of the moon and can be seen by the naked eye. Tycho was the location of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly (TMA-1), and subsequent excavation of an alien monolith, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the science-fiction film by Stanley Kubrick and book by Arthur C. Clarke. Apollo 20 astronauts will land just north of this massive impact crater in lunar highlands to collect deep material thrown out by the Tycho impact and to sample lavas and highland terrain shaped by that event. Also of key interest is the return of samples from Surveyor VII, an unmanned probe landed at Tycho in early 1968. This will be the second manned landing near an unmanned probe. Apollo 12 landed near Surveyor III in November 1969. Surveyor 7 lifted off from Cape Kennedy atop an Atlas-Centaur rocket on 7 January 1968. It landed on 10 January at 40.9° south latitude, 11.4° west longitude, just 2.5 kilometers from its intended target and 30 kilometers from Tycho’s rim, on the ejecta blanket surrounding the crater. Less than an hour after touchdown, the three-legged solar-powered lander returned the first of more than 21,000 images it would beam to Earth. Some of these were stereo pairs, enabling scientists to precisely locate the many varied rocks and boulders visible in the field of view of Surveyor 7’s scanning camera. Other images were assembled into panoramic photomosaics that show lunar landscape features up to 13 kilometers away from the spacecraft. For Apollo 20, based on normal crew rotation, the crew would likely have been: * Stuart Roosa (Commander) * Paul J. Weitz (Command Module Pilot) * Jack R. Lousma (Lunar Module Pilot) Another possibility would have been: * Stuart Roosa or Edgar Mitchell (Commander) * Jack R. Lousma (Command Module Pilot) * Don L. Lind (Lunar Module Pilot) The Apollo missions were stretched out to six-month intervals, which would have placed the Apollo 20 flight in 1974 had it not been cancelled on January 4, 1970. Work was stopped on LM-14; CSM-115A was studied for use on a second Skylab mission; Saturn V 515 was earmarked for use on Skylab. Apollo 20's CSM was never completed and was scrapped. The LM was also scrapped before completion, though there are some unconfirmed reports that some parts (in addition to parts from the LM test vehicle LTA-3) are included in the LM on display at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

• published: 16 Jul 2015
• views: 625607