To Fra Mauro and Beyond

THE national mood has changed sharply since Neil Armstrong made the first human footprints on the lunar soil 18 months ago. Public concern has shifted from space to more pressing earthly problems. In addition, the Russians have dramatically demonstrated that unattended robots like Lunokhod 1 --still alive and moving after eight weeks on the moon--may eventually achieve some of the goals of manned flight at a fraction of the cost and with none of the risks to life. Thus, as it prepares to launch Apollo 14 and Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stu Roosa and Edgar Mitchell on man's fourth mission to the moon, NASA is keenly aware that the future of the manned space program may well be riding on the outcome of that shot. A disaster--or a near disaster like Apollo 13's aborted mission last April--could provoke a noisy clamor for cancellation of the three remaining Apollo flights. Said one space-agency official: "If anything goes wrong this time, you'll really hear the hounds baying at the moon --literally."

Ancient Highlands. Apollo 14, scheduled to lift off on Sunday, Jan. 31, at 3:23 p.m. E.S.T., will head for the same hilly region near the crater Fra Mauro that was the target of its ill-fated predecessor. If all goes well, the Apollo 14 astronauts will become the first human visitors to the lunar highlands. There they may be able to recover rocks dating back to the birth of the moon, more than 4.5 billion years ago. The lunar landing maneuvers will differ in important details from the two previous successful manned lunar expeditions. For one thing, the command ship Kitty Hawk will descend to within 11.5 miles of the moon's surface before releasing the lunar module. Cutting down on the customary 67-mile altitude will conserve some of the lander's limited fuel reserves for the riskier touchdown on the rugged terrain.

As it swoops downward, the moon ship Antares (named for the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius) will travel at a slightly flatter trajectory than in the past, letting Astronauts Shepard and Mitchell keep a steadier fix on their target. Although the landing will still be essentially under computer direction, Shepard will probably take over the vertical controls at an altitude of 300 ft. The actual touchdown, in a flat region between small features called Triplet and Doublet craters, should take place at 4:16 a.m. E.S.T. Friday.

Shepard and Mitchell plan to spend 331 hours on the moon, including 9 hours or more in the lunar outdoors. Many of their activities should be visible back on earth. As Shepard climbs down from the lunar module, he will pull a cord to open up an exterior equipment bay, thereby switching on a color TV camera, which will later be carried around to record the astronauts' work. For insurance against an Apollo 12-type television breakdown, a black-and-white camera has been provided as a spare. Shepard, who will be recognizable by red arm and leg bands, plans to take his first steps on the moon at 9:05 a.m. E.S.T. Friday. Mitchell will join him a few minutes later, and both astronauts will set up the most complex network of scientific experiments ever deployed on the moon (see chart).

Rock Festival. This time the EVA (ExtraVehicular Activity) will include some fireworks--real ones. Earlier lunar seismic experiments have been largely passive; that is, the seismometers have usually depended on the occurrence of moonquakes or other natural rumblings to make readings. Now, with the help of a new gadget called a "thumper," which resembles a heavily weighted walking stick, Mitchell will create some miniature moonquakes of his own. As he walks past three widely spaced seismic listening devices called geophones, he will place the thumper on the surface and detonate one of 21 explosive charges in its base plate.

Later Mitchell will deploy a more powerful explosive device: a mortar containing four rocket grenades that will be fired after Apollo 14 returns home. Together with the shock waves that will be generated in the moon when Antares' abandoned ascent stage and Apollo 14's discarded S-4B rocket hit the lunar surface, tremors from the explosives should give seismologists many more clues to the structure and composition of the moon.

On Saturday, at an unmercifully early hour for most Americans (5:50 a.m. E.S.T.), Shepard and Mitchell are scheduled to emerge for their second EVA and load up their new collapsible two-wheeled lunar handcart with cameras, hand tools, shovel and sampling cores. Then they will begin their major geological traverse: a rock-collecting hike up the side of 400-ft.-high Cone Crater, nearly a mile away. Although the two lunar mountaineers will not descend into the crater itself, they will conduct a kind of rock festival on its rim: they will chip stone from large boulders and roll some smaller boulders down the crater's side (the tracks will give earthbound scientists an indication of the mechanical characteristics of lunar soil). At the end of three hours, if all has gone well, the astronauts will be allowed to take a roundabout route home, including further sampling stops at nearby Weird Crater, which was named for its unusual shape, possibly the result of three or more overlapping meteorite impacts.

Zero Gravity. As he circles above in the command ship, Roosa will also have his hands full with scientific chores --taking closeup photos of the moon, aiming his cameras at more distant astronomical targets, including interstellar dust clouds, and bouncing radar beams off the lunar surface to further determine its characteristics. On their voyage home, the astronauts will subject a number of terrestrial substances to the effects of zero gravity, including organic chemicals that are used in making vaccines. Such tests, scientists hope, may eventually lead to the production of vaccines in earth-orbiting labs; weightless conditions should facilitate the chemical separation processes that are essential for manufacturing vaccines.

To prevent a recurrence of Apollo 13's troubles, NASA has drastically altered the design of Apollo's oxygen tanks, incorporating such safety features as stainless-steel-sheathed electrical wiring, heat regulators controlled by the astronauts, and external cutoff switches. In addition, NASA has added a third oxygen tank, a long-lived storage battery and extra water supplies as reserves for the command ship. Even Mission Control will profit from the $15 million safety overhaul. If any of Apollo 14's critical systems go awry, as did the defective oxygen tank in Apollo 13, loud beeping alarms will sound on the monitoring consoles in Houston as well as on the spacecraft's instrument panel.

The tightening up is also affecting the lives of the astronauts on earth. Ever since T-minus-21, or three weeks before liftoff, Shepard and his two crewmates have been kept in relative isolation at Cape Kennedy. Only people absolutely essential to their mission have been allowed to come in contact with them (only exception: their wives). Others, such as NASA scientists, must brief them from behind glass partitions in their sealed-off crew quarters. With the quarantine, NASA hopes to avert another Apollo 13-type measles crisis, which nearly caused a last-minute cancellation of the mission after one of the back-up astronauts contracted the disease on a preflight visit to Houston and exposed the prime crew.

Apollo 14 is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific south of American Samoa nine days after its liftoff. If its mission is successful, NASA hopes it will rekindle dwindling interest in manned lunar exploration. Space officials feel that if it is a failure, it may well be the last such moon mission of the decade.

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