If you have not seen [Ken Shirriff]’s teardowns and reverse engineering expeditions, then you’re in for a deal with. His explanation and demonstration of the Apollo digital ranging procedure is a interesting examine, even if classic computing and engineering aren’t element of your regular fare.
The ordinary Hackaday reader need to be familiar with the thought of determining the length of a faraway object by measuring how very long it usually takes a seem or radio wave to be reflected, these as in sonar and radar. Going another stage and measuring Doppler Shift – the difference in the returned signal’s frequency – will explain to us the velocity of the object relative to our place. It’s so uncomplicated that an Arduino can do it. But in the times of Apollo, there was no Arduino. In actuality, there ended up no Integrated Circuits. And Apollo missions went all the way to the moon- much much too distant for fairly very simple Radar measurements.
How could array (distance), placement, and speed then be measured? The solution is one particular that [Ken] aptly describes as fractal: Each layer of complexity hides beneath it one more layer of complexity. Employing equations dating from 3rd century China as well as cutting edge weak sign telemetry, Apollo engineers devised a intricate but workable process that utilised an S-Band transponder to get knowledge transmitted from a strong ground station and mail it back again on one more frequency. One terrific hack was to use Phase Modulation to encode the downlink instead of Frequency Modulation so that Doppler data attained on the uplink wouldn’t be dropped on the downlink.
By figuring out the specific place of the floor station and the incredibly massive parabolic antennae, not only could the length and pace be calculated, but a fantastic estimation of the spacecraft’s situation in 3d area could also be experienced.
From the use of hold off line memory to aggregate weak alerts to a state equipment laptop or computer designed up of discrete transistor logic, all the way to the cutting edge transponder on the Command Module, the Apollo digital ranging procedure is an exceptional illustration of terrific hacks coming out of a method with restricted specialized constraints.
We remarkably suggest providing [Ken]’s blog a read and be positive to verify out the interactive demonstration world-wide-web internet pages he’s put up to enable us grasp the genius of the Apollo engineering teams. [Ken]’s been highlighted on Hackaday a quantity of times reverse engineering these kinds of assorted issues as a Yamaha DX7 Synth chip.