APOLLO 11 - THE DIFFICULT TASK
It is only when you look at the Moon that you realize how crazy and challenging the Apollo 11 mission was. There is a team trying to land on a celestial body 400 thousand kilometers away from Earth, where no human has ever set foot.
Today, the airplanes that people use for air transportation, despite many improvements and comforts, continue to crash due to accidents or technical problems. Imagine that you are stepping forward to land on a celestial body for the first time. While you feel the excitement and fear reaching their peaks, think that you have set out on this path for a sublime purpose… No matter how much you practice, memorize everything about this subject thousands of times, do tests over and over again, you do not know whether those instruments will work at the moment of landing, whether one of the rockets will start burning and throw you into the void of space, or whether that pile of metal you are in will crash into the moon. Of course, vehicles like Apollo 8 or Apollo 10 were sent to the moon before and they circled the moon and returned to the world successfully. Put yourself in the shoes of those astronauts and think. Would just these 2 attempts give you confidence? There is a pitch-black space, three people in a tiny pile of metal, an army of scientists, engineers and technicians on Earth who designed and planned this work, and of course billions of world citizens watching this on their screens.
With only 1800 meters left to land on the lunar surface, the computer in front of you starts giving an error alarm. The alarm code you read on the screen is: 1202 …
As you prepare to land on the lunar surface with an alarm code you don't see, you begin to wonder whether you will survive or not.
Now let's begin to explain this adventure in detail.
The vehicle that went to the moon with the Apollo 11 mission consisted of 2 parts. The one that will land on the moon The LM : EAGLE module and the CSM : COLUMBIA vehicle that would remain in lunar orbit were parts of this vehicle. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins made a total of 30 orbits from the lunar orbit after arriving at the moon. In the meantime, they had the opportunity to examine the “Sea of Tranquility” region determined as the landing area from orbit. These 30 orbits lasted approximately 19 hours and at the end of this period, Eagle had separated from the Columbia vehicle. Like many people, I was saddened by Michael Collins. Because he remained in the Columbia vehicle. They will go that far to the moon but will not be given the task of landing on its surface. Of course, we need to know that there is a point of sacrifice in this situation. There must be a sense of duty.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began their descent to the lunar surface. Other than Eagle’s landing a little faster than expected, there seemed to be no problems. That is, until Eagle’s guidance computer started giving an alarm code 1202 after starting its descent and at 1800 meters above the lunar surface . When this alarm was seen during simulations from the ground, it was decided to cancel the mission and bring the astronauts back to Earth within the simulation. The importance of this code was that important and vital. With the cancellation of this mission, all the money and effort spent would be wasted. Now imagine the sadness of the team carrying out this mission…
The team that organized this mission on Earth had files containing these codes. In these files, the code was written as “ Executive Overflow – No Vac Areas ”. In other words, there was no memory left in the guidance computer. Therefore, the computer could not find enough memory to perform the operations requested of it. The computer that controlled the landing of the Eagle vehicle and gave the 1202 error was only 17cm by 32cm by 61cm. It was hundreds of times faster than computers of its time, but it was thousands of times slower than computers today. Returning to our main topic, the Eagle’s memory was designed very well and had enough memory to perform what was requested. So why did its memory fill up and give the 1202 error code? Because co-pilot Buzz Aldrin had made a mistake that he would confess years later. There was a radar called the rendezvous radar in the landing module. The task of this radar was to locate the Columbia vehicle in orbit after takeoff from the moon and then dock the team with that vehicle. This radar was supposed to be off during landing, as it was useless. However, Aldrin left it on entirely on his own initiative, as he thought there might be an emergency during landing and wanted to ensure he could return immediately.
Aldrin knew that this radar needed to warm up for a while in order to operate at full performance. He had left it on for fear that the Columbia rover would not be found if he turned it off, because it would cool down, and he considered it dangerous to wait for it to warm up again in an emergency. No matter how prepared you are, no matter how many tests you do, when you are working at the edge of science and technology, and especially when you are setting out to go where no human has ever set foot and risking your life in the process, your most basic survival instincts kick in. These instincts can keep you alive, or they can cost you your life. That was what happened to Aldrin. The decision he almost made was costly.
And ultimately, this mission was completed successfully. In this space flight of the United States, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the lunar surface at 20:18 (EEZ) on July 20, 1969 .
These people made decisions at the cost of their lives to take humanity beyond the world and enlightened the horizons of many.
We must continue to strive to take civilization beyond the stars. If nothing else, for the sake of those heroes who risked and gave their lives to take science one step further.
Of course, for our future generations.
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