Make Your Civilian Weekend Better JAY’S PACKAGE STORE For Your Student Discount At The Saber Inn (With this ad or Student ID) OPENING WEDNESDAY NIGHT the Maroon Bippy BEER POPCORN GOOD MUSIC SOFT LIGHTS TOUCH DANCING Open 4-12 Tues. - Fri. 4-1 Sat. 1313 S. College Ave. Bryan Right next to the Casa-Chapultepec Restaurant. Phone 822-2204 for information Page 8 College Station, Texas Wednesday, April 19, 1972 THE THE BATTALIQ Apollo 16 overcomes minor problem SPACE CENTER, Houston CP) — Apollo 16 astronauts heading toward a moon landing worked with ground controllers Tuesday and overcame a guidance prob lem that briefly froze their spaceship in one position and an antenna problem that affected radio communications. Systems worked out at Mission Control were promptly put into effect by the spacemen to cor rect both deficiencies. “One of the things we need in this program is some octopuses,” astronaut Thomas K. Mattingly II commented at one point while the men were busy resetting a series of switches. The men thus spent part of the day dealing with the third and fourth problems they have encountered since they were launched Sunday. The others in volved peeling paint and a faulty latch, neither of which turned out to be of serious concern, either. Their spacecraft has been gradually slowing since it rock eted out of earth orbit. But it will begin picking up speed Wed nesday morning when the moon’s gravity starts tugging it for ward. The command ship, Casper, and its lunar lander, Orion, will hurtle around the moon Wednesday aft ernoon and the astronauts will fire a long rocket burst to settle the spacecraft into lunar orbit. Astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr. will guide Orion to a landing on a crater-scarred volcanic plateau high in the southern mountains of the moon Thursday. Touch down is scheduled for 3:41 p.m. EST. Officials said an errant elec trical surge confused a space ship computer early Tuesday and caused it to send commands which locked the guidance sys tem. This, in effect, wiped out the basic reference needed by the spacecraft to locate and steer itself in space. Mattingly fed instructions to the computer which then rea ligned what is called the inertial guidance system platform. The system was operating properly again within 18 min utes. The astronauts were in no dan- / Moon may have had volcanic past SPACE CENTER, Houston (A>) — The moon is calm and peace ful now but Apollo 16 astronauts think they’ll find evidence on a rugged plateau where they land Thursday that she had a hell raising past. The site is interesting and im portant, says Dr. Leon Silver, lunar geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasa dena, because in the highlands he believes there are clues that the moon was violent and exciting in her youth. Astronaut John W. Young is scheduled to set the landing ship down in the Descartes region, on a tableland 8,000 feet above the level of the lunar mares. With fellow moonwalker Charles M. Duke Jr. he believes he will step down on a bed of lava spewed out in the explosions of ancient volcanoes. Dr. Paul W. Cast, chief of the NASA Planetary and Earth Sci ences Division, says that in the first billion years of the moon’s life, when she was being battered by tbe fiery impact of countless meteors, volcanic rock boiled up through fractures in the lunar surface. Many scientists are convinced, he added, that a boiling, bub bling sea of lava with a scum of rock on top may have covered the moon’s mares at a depth of 30 to 60 miles and in cooling it formed the lunar crust. But if such a layer existed, it had to be 4.6 billion years ago, Cast believes, and “Descartes almost surely is not any older than 4 billion years.” By that time, he thinks, volcanic rock on the moon was being formed like that on earth — melting deep below the surface, being squeezed out like a boil, and erupting through volcanic cones. The Cayley Plain on which Young and Duke will touch down is believed to be a layer of lava that poured out of such cones. Although the moon has cooled from the outside, it is believed that it still has a hot, active in terior like the earth. “But I doubt that there is still volcanic activity,” Cast said. “There may be cold gas eruptions coming out of the moon today. But the liquid material could be 800 miles deep. It couldn’t come all the way up without freez ing.” fey JOI IlattalH ger from the guidance pnl; S', -phe v because the spacecraft lia!»i. u n le£ backup system. 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