This is page 3-108a from the Apollo 11 flight plan. The sheet is from the detailed timeline section located at the beginning of hour 150 in the mission. The flight plan was the most significant documentation used by the astronauts on Apollo 11.
The page has a grid of terms and values associated with mid-course correction engine burn number 5, including pitch and yaw rates, attitude deviation, engine shutdown time, and residuals.
The MCC5 was an eleven second burn using Columbia’s Reaction Control System thrusters which were fired at 150 hours, 29 minutes into the mission. The retrograde maneuver changed Columbia’s velocity by approximately 4.8 feet per second in order to fine-tune the flight path angle into the entry corridor of the earth’s atmosphere.
The burn was small in relation to Columbia’s velocity of 4,075 feet per second at that time, but was critical to align to the center of the corridor. Too shallow and the spacecraft would skip off, too steep and it would burn up.
I particularly like this page because this MCC5 burn is described on page 424 in Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot Michael Collins’ book Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey.
Wow, I had no idea you had a NASA blog. I would've asked a question related to this during our interview! I met Gene Cernan a couple years ago and have a few meteorites, but nothing like your collection.
Posted by: Adam Sullivan | December 14, 2010 at 10:22 PM