Apollo training photographs from the 1960s have recently surfaced, showing some of the nation's best-known astronauts preparing for their journeys to the moon.
Hawaii was a training area for the missions, and these newly re-discovered images show the astronauts preparing for the lunar surface in the Aloha State. The space travelers are seen in the photos collecting surface samples, and testing out the lunar buggy.
They were taken as astronauts took part in exercises conducted on new lava flows as well as the older Mauna Kea volcano. At that site, lava deposits, subjected to erosion, have turned to a fine powder, reminiscent of top layers of lunar dust. Astronauts scheduled for Apollo 13 to 17 trained at the site, along with some members of the back-up crews for those missions.
Rob Kelso, executive director of the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems in Hawaii, found the decades-old photos at Johnson Space Center in Texas.
NASA still uses Hawaii as staging grounds for tests of space vehicles traveling to the moon or Mars. Some of these tests involve extracting oxygen from volcanic basalt. This is the same type of material which makes up much of the surfaces of both our lunar companion and Mars.
If space travelers are able to extract oxygen from the native soil and alien ground, they will not have to bring vast supplies of the gas from Earth. The vital element is needed not just for breathing, but also for producing fuel for a return journey, growing crops and creating water from hydrogen. This capability would make sending humans to these worlds much cheaper and easier than if they need to bring the gas as cargo.
Lava tubes and skylight holes, recently seen in high-resolution photographs of the Martian surface, are a future target of exploration for a human mission to the Red Planet. When lava flows in a confined area over hours, the material can form a solid roof, called a lava tube. Occasionally, part of the roof will cave in, creating a skylight hole. Similar structures are present in Hawaii, and astronauts currently train in these structures, laying the groundwork for a flight to Mars.
The training for the first, and so far only, human journeys to Mars ran through most of the 1960s and into the 1970s. Northern Arizona was another location used by NASA to equip astronauts with the skills they needed to survive on the lunar surface.
"[S]cientists transformed the northern Arizona landscape into a re-creation of the moon. They blasted hundreds of different-sized craters in the Earth to form the Cinder Lake crater field, creating an ideal training ground for astronauts," officials with the Astrogeology Research Program wrote on their website.
The Apollo training photos are now on display at the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems.
