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Episode 97 Bob Heil’s Moon Bounce Experiment with NASA

By Gurbir Dated: October 8, 2021 Leave a Comment

Bob Heil

Bob Heil is a sound engineer and has been an amateur radio operator since the 1950s. In addition to working on live stage shows for some of the legends of rock and roll (including Grateful Dead, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Dolly Parton ..). His first job was playing the organ in a 4-star restaurant called Schneithorst where in around 1962 he bumped into America’s first astronaut Alan Shepard. By chance, Alan Shepard’s was had grown up in a family with an interest in organs.

What emerged out of this encounter was an unexpected Moon-bounce experiment that involved Bob at his home in Illinois receiving a phone call from NASA in Houston, he patched the phone call through his radio and pointed his 128 element array antenna operating at 2m to the Moon. The reflection was picked up by a receiver directly by NASA in Houston. This was in the early 1960s and Bob never quite understood why NASA asked for his involvement. It would have been very easy for NASA to conduct this experiment without it.

128 Element Array used for the Moon-Bounce experiment
That is Bob in the centre of the image!

Bob is a great storyteller and has many unique stories to tell from a career spanning 6 decades. A few of the other topics we cover include the advent of DTH satellite TV in the USA and some of the work done by Bell Labs. He can be contacted here k9eid@arrl.net

A longer version of this interview is available on Youtube. Bob shares many of the pictures that you can hear him discussing. Link below.

https://media.blubrry.com/astrotalkuk_podcast_feed/astrotalkuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Episode97BobHeil.mp3

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A video of this interview where Bob shares many images relevant to the themes discussed is available here.

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Declassified Files. Luna 16 Mission. USSR’s first robotic lunar sample return mission 24 Sep 1970

By Gurbir Dated: September 25, 2020 Leave a Comment

On 24 September 1970, the USSR’s robotic sample return mission, Luna 16 returning 101g of Lunar Soil to Kazakstan from where it had departed for the Moon almost two weeks earlier. Following Apollo 11 in July and Apollo 12 in November 1969, Luna 16 was the third mission to return lunar sample to Earth.

On the 50th anniversary of Luna 16 parachuting down to Earth, documents, (in Russian but Google Translate does a pretty good job) videos, illustrations and photos were made public on 24th September 2020. Direct link to archive here. This was brought to my attention by the USSR/Russia and China space specialist and author Brian Harvey.

In total, the USA brought back 380kg of lunar soil and rocks in 6 crewed Apollo (11-12, 14-17) missions and the USSR, 301g in three robotic missions. Another 2kg is expected to be added to this tally. China’s Change’5 lunar sample return mission is due to launch in late November.

A summary of all the lunar sample return missions below.

The 3 part film “Rocket and space complex” 8K82K – E8-5 “tells of USSR’s robotic lunar program return programme.

Part 1
Part 2

Part 3
Lunar Sample return Missions

  • September 1970 Luna 16 101g
  • February 1972 Luna 20 30g
  • August 1976 Luna 24 170
  • Total 301g (USSR)
  • July 1969 Apollo 11 22kg
  • November 1969 Apollo 12 34kg
  • January 1971 Apollo 14 43kg
  • July 1971 Apollo 15 77kg
  • April 1972 Apollo 16 94kg
  • December 1972 Apollo 17 110kg
  • Total 380kg (USA)

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Buzz Aldrin in Yorkshire

By Gurbir Dated: July 20, 2019 Leave a Comment

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11- reposting this 10-minute interview with Buzz Aldrin recorded on 30 April 2008. This was originally posted as episode 12. Some of the topics we spoke about were

  • Only became an astronaut after he failed to acquire a Rhodes scholarship.. twice!
  • Saw the Aurora borealis (Northern lights) from New Jersey
  • Saw more stars from Texas or Hawaii than when is space. The visor protection prevented him from seeing anything in the night sky except the Earth and the Sun from the lunar surface.
  • Dedicated his PhD thesis to the “the crew members of this country’s present and future manned space programs”.
  • Was concerned that his illness from Hepatitis may have impacted his NASA selection.
  • In 2002 he whacked a guy (persistent conspiracy theorists) at the “spur of the moment”.
  • Agrees that the film “In the shadow of the Moon” portrayed an accurate representation of the manned mission to the Moon

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Chandrayaan-2 – Back to the Moon

By Gurbir Dated: July 14, 2019 Leave a Comment

Pragyan Touchdown. – Scheduled for 01:55 IST on 7 September 2019

[ycd_countdown id=5360]

T+
Successful Launch on 14:43 IST on Monday 22 July 2019

Second Attempt: Monday 22 July 10:13 BST (14:43 IST)
First Attempt: Sunday 14 July – 22:21 BST. ** Launch aborted at T- 56M 24s**

Reason for abort: The third stage of the GSLV Mk3 uses a cryogenic engine where liquid Hydrogen and liquid Oxygen are the propellents. Loading these propellents (first Oxygen and then Hydrogen) is completed just minutes prior to lift off.  A Helium container above the Oxygen tank began to leak at a particular pressure. It was the detection of this leak at T-56 minutes that the mission was aborted. ISRO engineers have confirmed that they can make the fix at the launch pad without the need to return the launch vehicle to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Reschedule: The new launch date is 22nd July 2019 at 10:13 BST. Chandrayaan-2 was going to take 54 days to get to the Moon, the delayed departure will be compensated for during the Earthbound manoeuvres. It will now take 47 days to get to the Moon. The original landing date of 6th September will not change.


ISRO  Links

Web https://www.isro.gov.in/
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/isro
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw5hEVOTfz_AfzsNFWyNlNg
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/isro
Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ISRO
NASA Spaceflight Forum https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?board=62.0

Launch Live Stream 

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USpCu-Z1usk
[2] http://cdn.24fd.com/e19/07/isro/15/index.html


If all goes to plan (weather is looking a little dodgy) Chandrayaan-2, India’s second moon mission will lift off from India’s Space Port – Sriharikota at 22:21 BST. This will be India’s second Moon mission since Chandrayaan-1 launched in 2008. 

This mission consists of an orbiter, lander and a rover. It will be launched on a GSLV Mk3, India’s “heavy lift” launcher. To date, the GSLV-Mk3 has had 3 successful flights (one of which was suborbital). Click on any image to open gallery view.

Links

For more pictures and information see the gallery and the brochure. The orbiter has 8 instruments, the lander (called Vikram) has 3 and the rover (called Pragyan) has 3.

OrbiterLanderRover
1 Terrain Mapping Camera: An instrument for Lunar Seismic ActivityAlpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer
2 Chandrayaan 2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer Chandra’s Surface Thermo-physical ExperimentLaser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope
3 Solar X-Ray MonitorLangmuir ProbeLaser Retroreflector Array (LRA) – Passive experiment from NASA
4 Imaging IR Spectrometer
5 Synthetic Aperture Radar L&S Bands
6 Chandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2
7 Orbiter High-Resolution Camera
8 Dual Frequency Radio Science Experiment

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