A New PastChapter 51 Landings
“Down two. Fifteen meters,” Todd Walton, the landing pilot on ‘Selene’ said calmly over the radio. The image on the screen showed a split view of the landing radar display and the image outside the spacecraft as it neared the lunar surface. I gripped the edge of the desk and watched the telemetry display on my own console. With the nearly one-and-a-half second transmission lag, there was little real-time advice any of us at Learmonth could give them. We all watched intently, trying to will...