Remember that time a rocket was struck by lightning in flight?
You probably don’t.
So I’m gonna tell you about it!
Hey everyone!
Amy here with you on DNews today and we’re doing this fun thing for DNews’ fourth birthday.
We’re all updating our first episode!
… so yeah, mine was a recap of Apollo 11… and there’s not much new on Apollo 11 because,
well, history… so can’t really revisit it.
But you could say that Apollo 12 revisited Apollo 11 by returning to the Moon, and it
was actually a pretty electrifying mission…
As the second lunar landing mission, Apollo 12 was tasked with doing a little more than
just getting to the Moon.
One of the goals was for the crew to make a pinpoint landing on the Moon’s Ocean of
Storms so Pete Conrad and Al Bean could walk over and recover pieces of the Surveyor 3
probe that had landed almost three years earlier.
And they nailed it!
The scoop from Surveyor 3 was recovered and is on display at the visitor’s centre at
JPL in Pasadena.
But they almost didn’t bring it back.
In fact, they almost didn't make it to the Moon at all…
The morning of Friday, November 14, 1969, was a very cloudy one at the Kennedy Space
Centre, but nonetheless the Saturn V rocket’s launch was perfect.
Then, 37 seconds after leaving the launchpad, the crew saw a flash and felt a shudder.
At the same time, their headsets filled with static and all the displays in the command
module and mission control suddenly displayed gibberish.
Then came the warning lights and alarms.
It looked like the spacecraft’s power system was so badly damaged it was running on batteries,
which meant the crew was in a dying spacecraft that had been forcibly separated from the
rocket by the launch abort system.
They’d be coming straight home; they wouldn’t even go into orbit.
But the crew hadn’t felt the jolt of a launch abort, and they could still feel the steady
acceleration of the rocket, so contrary to their gibberish data they instinctively knew
they were still riding a functioning Saturn V.
On the ground, meanwhile, observers knew exactly what was going on.
They saw not one but TWO lightning strikes ride the rocket’s contrail all the way down
to strike near the launch pad.
Flying through the clouds, the Saturn V had become a lightning rod, generating electricity
by friction.
But this didn’t help NASA flight controllers fix the fact that they’d lost all data from
Apollo 12.
One guy did know how to fix the problem though, a 24-year-old engineer named John Aaron.
He’d seen the same gibberish data pattern during a test when a controller dropped the
simulated spacecraft’s power below normal levels.
The low power had upset the signal conditioning equipment, a box of electronics that translates
information from sensors into data on displays, so that's why all the displayed data went
haywire but didn’t disappear.
And he’d learned from that test that the SCE would be tripped up by low voltage in
the normal setting, but in the auxiliary setting could work in a low voltage situation.
And so he passed on the command to fight director Gerry Griffin: Try SCE to Aux.
And Griffin had no idea what he was talking about.
Neither did the cap com Gerry Carr.
And the crew didn’t get it either!
When they got the call to turn “SCE to auxiliary,” Pete Conrad’s reaction was “what the hell
is that!?"
But Al Bean somehow knew where the switch was, flipped it, and alllllllll the data come
back beautifully.
The crew laughed about it all the way into orbit, and went on to fly a successful mission.
So what did NASA do to stop another lightning strike giving everyone involved in a launch
a heart attack?
Well, because lightning struck the Saturn V in flight they couldn’t exactly ground
it; and besides, Apollo 12’s launch really just proved that the Saturn V was a hearty
machine!
But the agency did include lightning protection for its next generation spacecraft, the space
shuttle, on the launch pad.
A mast was installed on top of the service structure so any lightning was diverted down
wires and away from the spacecraft.
Because, really, you can’t do anything about a rocket turning into a lightning rod but
not launch through a storm.
You just gotta build rockets that have failsafes to stop a lightning rod situation from turning
disastrous.
Apollo 12 was the mission of deep space porn, questionable tuna, and possible hypnosis to
prevent cursing on the Moon!
I've got LOADS of Apollo 12 videos over on my channel, Vintage Space, some come learn
about some weird with me!
And if you want to learn all about Apollo 11 check my first ever DNews video.
Tell us your favourite Moon moments in the comments, don’t forget to like this video
and subscribe right here for DNews every day of the week.