Lunar Accident Site Investigation (1967)

While his crewmates were away on the moon in the Lunar Module (LM), the Apollo Command Module Pilot (CMP) was the loneliest man alive. How much lonelier would he have been if the LM never returned? A 1967 study looked at how the CMP might photograph a crashed LM from lunar orbit to provide accident investigators with essential data before returning to Earth alone.

All alone in the gray: Apollo 17 Lunar Module Challenger (center) as photographed by its crew at a distance of two miles. Image: NASA.
The early Apollo missions were a rapid series of test flights. Apollo 7 (Oct. 11-22, 1968), the first manned Apollo, saw a Command and Service Module (CSM) spacecraft and its three-man crew put through their paces in low-Earth orbit. Apollo 8 (Dec. 21-27, 1968), originally planned as a test of the CSM and the Lunar Module (LM) in high-Earth orbit, might have been postponed because the LM was not yet ready; instead, Apollo 7′s success and the perceived threat to American prestige of a Soviet manned circumlunar mission induced NASA managers to make it a lunar-orbital CSM test and a trial run for the Apollo tracking and communications network.
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