Quote:
Originally Posted by multiweb
Thanks Dennis. I'll behave...
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Hi Marc
Here are some photos of the Lunar Module (LM) at the exhibition showing various views of the LM and its instrument panels.
The close-up of the Rendezvous Radar Panel shows the Switch that led to the near abort of the Apollo 11 moon landing during the descent phase of the Eagle – be sure to take a look at this switch.
Reources:
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.1201-pa.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Garman
https://www.abc.net.au/science/moon/computer.htm
https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html
During the descent and landing phases, Neil Armstrong, (Commander) stood on the left side of the LM cockpit whereas Buzz Aldrin, (Lunar Module Pilot/Systems Engineer) stood on the right.
Most folks may have read about the 1201 and 1202 program alarms that occurred whilst Neil and Buzz were descending to the lunar surface in the Lunar Module during the Apollo 11 moon landing, leaving the Command/Service Module (CSM) behind with Michael Collins in lunar orbit.
During the LM descent phase, the LM's Rendezvous Radar (RR) was powered up, a safety step designed to lessen the crew's workload in case of an abort during the descent. The RR tracks the still orbiting CSM, so it knows where to direct the LM in the event of an abort. The RR switch settings on the Apollo 11 LM “should” not have caused any problem during the descent of the Eagle.
The Rendezvous Radar switch has 3 settings: SLEW, AUTO and LGC as can be seen in the close up I took at the NASA Exhibition.
In SLEW and AUTO modes the Rendezvous Radar operated under the control of the crew, independently of the LM Guidance Computer (LGC). This was the method that would be used during ascent and rendezvous if the primary guidance system failed. In SLEW mode the rendezvous radar antenna could be steered manually, but otherwise was stationary. Once the antenna was pointed near the target, the AUTO (automatic tracking) mode could be used to acquire and track the target (CSM).
During the descent, the LM crew left the Rendezvous Radar on in SLEW mode meaning it had to be manually positioned by an astronaut and meant that it wasn’t (shouldn’t be) sending data to the Guidance Computer. However, neither the astronauts nor the people in Mission Control knew that radar Coupling Data Units were flooding the Guidance Computer with counter interrupt signals, (the result of an uncorrected problem in the Rendezvous Radar interface) resulting in an unexpected flow of signals concerning Rendezvous Radar data (that were not really there).
This resulted in spurious pulses being sent to the computer, causing unnecessary interrupts which consumed about 15% of the computer's available compute time, whilst the rest of the (important) landing tasks were consuming about 85% of the available computer time.
So, the Guidance Computer ran out of time to process all of its queued jobs in a single cycle, as various programs competed for limited resources; eventually the LM's Guidance Computer began sounding program alarms and resetting.
The Guidance Computer had been programmed to recognize this unexpected flow of radar related data as being of secondary importance and to ignore it whilst executing the more important jobs. The software rebooted and reinitialized the computer, and then restarted selected programs (like steering the descent engine) at a point in their execution flow near to where they had been when the restart occurred.
The system was designed to retain crucial information if it needed to reboot, which allowed important command information to be processed even if the computer crashed. This allowed the computer to maintain critical tasks, such as running the digital autopilot, even if other parts of the software failed or caused problems. Non-essential programs were flushed out in the restart.
In all, it triggered four 1202 alarms and one 1201 alarm.
Subsequently, the MIT IL design team responsible for the Guidance Computer phoned NASA and asked them to call the LM and ask for the Rendezvous Radar switch to be placed in the LGC position before lift-off. This by-passed the problem and the program alarms did not recur.
A happy ending to this remarkable exploit.
Cheers
Dennis