Dave Scott’s flown and heavily annotated Command Service Module Updates checklist that was carried into lunar orbit during the historic Apollo 15 mission. The ring-bound 5.5 x 8 CSM Updates book, “Part No. SKB32100115-330, S/N 1001," is flight-certified and signed on the cover by Scott in blue ink, "Flown in lunar orbit for 6 days during Apollo 15, July 26 - August 7, 1971. Dave Scott, Apollo 15 CDR.” The purpose of the CSM Updates book is to provide the crew with formatted data pages for manual entry of initial values and changes in operations and location data relayed up from the Mission Control Center (MCC) during the lunar-landing mission. Of the 172 total pages within the checklist, there are an impressive 54 pages bearing handwritten data and notes made by all three members of the Apollo 15 crew; a large portion of the handwriting can be found in the opening section entitled "P30 Maneuver." The other major sections include: "P37 Block Data," "Earth Orbit," "P27 Update," "P24 LDMK Tracking," "Flight Plan Update," “Photo Log, 16 MM DAC,” “Photo Log, 70 MM EL,” and “Photo Log, 35 MM NK" ; the latter photography sections offer interesting mentions of well-known lunar landscapes such as craters Tsiolkovskiy and Aristarchus, and Mare Serenitatis and Hadley Rille.
Throughout the duration of an Apollo moon-landing mission, large lists of numbers, otherwise known as PADs (Pre-Advisory Data), were read by mission control up to the crew to provide them with the necessary information to accomplish a given maneuver. Houston had decided long ago that, in case of loss of communications, the astronauts should never be without the coordinates to return to Earth manually. P30's importance was to predict the change (or anticipated change) in velocity associated with burning the Command Service Module's main engine.
Accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from Scott, who states: “I hereby certify that the Apollo 15 ‘CSM Updates’ book included with this letter was used throughout the 12-day Apollo 15 mission, including lunar orbit for six days during the first extended scientific exploration of the Moon, July 26-August 7, 1971…As the mission commander of Apollo 15, after the mission, I was responsible for the handling, use and dissemination of the Flight Data File (FDF) including this ‘CSM Updates’ book which has been in my personal collection since NASA presented it to me upon our return to Earth.”
This item is Pre-Certified by STEVE ZARELLI
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