Apollo 13 Saturn IVB Third Stage Crashed North of Mare Cognitum

Summary: The Apollo 13 Saturn IVB third stage crashed north of Mare Cognitum Wednesday, April 15, 1970, and carved a 30-meter crater in the lunar surface.

NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (LRO) Narrow Angle Cameras’ (NAC) image of Apollo 13 Saturn IVB upper stage impact site, north of the southwestern near side’s Mare Cognitum; NASA ID PIA12979; LROC NAC image M109420042LE; image addition date 2010-03-22; image credit NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University: May be used for any purpose without prior permission, via NASA JPL Photojournal

The Apollo 13 Saturn IVB third stage crashed north of Mare Cognitum Wednesday, April 15, 1970, and created a roughly 30-meter crater in the surface of the moon’s southwestern near side.

The expended third stage and instrument unit of the mission’s mighty Saturn V moon rocket deliberately crashed into the lunar surface Wednesday, April 15, 1970, at 01:09:39. The crash happened at a Ground Elapsed Time (GET) of 077:56:39.7 (77 hours 56 minutes 39.7 seconds), according to the Apollo 13 timeline in freelance space writer Richard W. Orloff’s NASA-published Apollo by the Numbers (2000). Ground Elapsed Time (GET) expresses time duration in hours, minutes and seconds (hhh:mm:ss) from Range Zero, the last integral second prior to liftoff.

The third stage’s deliberate crash into the lunar surface was expected to be sensed by the Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE) station located at Surveyor Crater in the southeastern Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. (June 2, 1930-July 8, 1999) and Lunar Module Pilot Alan LaVern Bean (March 15, 1932-May 26, 2018) had deployed the seismometer Wednesday, Nov. 19, 1969, during the Apollo 12 mission’s first extravehicular activity (EVA).

The Apollo 12 seismometer assembly “successfully detected the Impact,” according to NASA’s Post Launch Mission Operation Report No. 1, released Tuesday, April 28, 1970 (page 2). The Passive Seismic Experiment’s data was transmitted to the Mission Control Center (MCC) at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in southeastern Houston. The Manned Spacecraft Center was renamed Feb. 19, 1973, as the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in honor of the 36th President of the United States.

The Apollo 13 mission’s desired radius for the impact point was 189 nautical miles (350 kilometers) from the Apollo 12 seismometer. The impact point had been targeted at 125 nautical miles (NM) from the Passive Seismic Experiment station.

The actual impact site lies about 74 nautical miles (NM) west-northwest of the Apollo 12 seismometers. The impact site’s coordinates are 2.4 degrees south latitude, 27.9 degrees west longitude.

The S-IVB Stage angled for impact at about 80 degrees to the horizontal. The booster rocket dove into the lunar surface at a velocity of 8,465 feet-per-second (fps). The impact had an energy equivalency of 11.5 tons of TNT (trinitrotoluene). The report placed the booster rocket’s weight at about 30,700 pounds.

Post Launch Mission Operation Report No. 1 compares the PSE’s data on the S-IVB impact with its data on the Apollo 12 lunar module (LM) ascent stage’s lunar collision Thursday, Nov. 20, 1969, at 22:17:16 (5:16 p.m. EST). The Apollo 12 LM impacted at a distance of 42 nautical miles east southeast from the seismometer. The ascent stage’s flight path angle at impact was 3 degrees to the horizontal. Its energy equivalency approximated at one ton of TNT.

The Apollo 12 LM ascent stage had attained a velocity of 5,502 feet per second, according to Apollo 12 Post Launch Mission Operation Report No. 1. Weight at impact was 5,254 pounds.

The Apollo 13 Post Launch Mission Operation Report finds similarity in the “overall character” of the two impacts’ seismic signals. But the Apollo 13 booster rocket’s higher energy increased its seismic signal to “20-30 times larger than the LM impact and 4 times longer in duration (approximatey 4 hours vs. 1 hour)” (page 4). In fact, the clear signal recorded on the seismometer’s three long period components allowed for absolutely certain distinction of events. The report notes: “Thirty seconds elapsed between time of impact and arrival of the seismic wave at the seismometer; peak amplitude occurred 7 minutes later.”

Richard Orloff notes in Apollo by the Numbers that the international designation for the S-IVB was 1970-029B (pages 138, 274). The Apollo 13 Command and Service Module’s designator was 1970-029A. The lunar module was designated as 1970-029C.

The international naming convention for satellites is known as the COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) system. The International Council for Science (ICSU) established COSPAR in 1958. The COSPAR designator comprises the launch year, the launch number of the year and the launch component.

The takeaways for the Apollo 13 Saturn IVB third stage’s crash north of Mare Cognitum in the moon’s southwestern near side are that the lunar landing-deprived mission left an impression, albeit not footprints, on the lunar surface and that the Apollo 12 mission’s Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE) station, distanced 74 nautical miles from the impact site, successfully detected the event.

Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE) station in Apollo 12’s ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package) site is located 125 meters northwest of the Apollo 12 lunar module (LM); NASA ID AS12-46-6817: Apollo 12 Image Library, No copyright asserted, via NASA History

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (LRO) Narrow Angle Cameras’ (NAC) image of Apollo 13 Saturn IVB upper stage impact site, north of the southwestern near side’s Mare Cognitum; NASA ID PIA12979; LROC NAC image M109420042LE; image addition date 2010-03-22; image credit NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University: May be used for any purpose without prior permission, via NASA JPL Photojournal @ https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12979; Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Video Library @ https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA12979

Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE) station in Apollo 12’s ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package) site is located 125 meters northwest of the Apollo 12 lunar module (LM); NASA ID AS12-46-6817: Apollo 12 Image Library, No copyright asserted, via NASA History @ https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/a12/AS12-46-6817HR.jpg (image URL);
Apollo 12 Image Library, No copyright asserted, via NASA History @ https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/a12/AS12-46-6817.jpg (image URL);
Apollo 12 Image Library, No copyright asserted, via NASA History @ https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/a12/images12.html (gallery URL);
via NASA LRO @ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc-20100322-apollo13booster.html;
NASA/Johnson Space Center (NASA-JSC), via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/NIX-AS12-46-6817

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