Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday
on Twitter 40 years ago on December 19, 1972, Apollo 17 splashed
down on Earth, marking the end of the manned moon missions. The
astronauts came back with a treasure trove of rocks collected in
22 hours of extra-vehicular activity on the lunar surface,
including “orange” soil that ended up coming from an ancient
volcano. Twitter wasn’t around back then, but anyone tuning into
several Twitter accounts recently week would have a chance to
experience what it could it have been like. Using mission
transcripts and historical accounts of Apollo 17, these folks
took it upon themselves to tweet the Apollo 17 mission, moment
by moment, as “live” as possible. Researching a mission is
divided into two parts, prelaunch and flight. For prelaunch, I
use whatever official NASA documents, histories, and relevant
astronaut and mission controller autobiographies I can find.
From what I’ve seen on the missions I’ve tweeted, until Apollo,
no prelaunch conversation