 Oblique Lunar Orbiter 5 image | |
| Coordinates | 47°00′S147°24′W / 47.0°S 147.4°W Coordinates: 47°00′S147°24′W / 47.0°S 147.4°W |
|---|---|
| Diameter | 58 km |
| Depth | Unknown |
| Colongitude | 148° at sunrise |
| Eponym | Gus Grissom |
Grissom is a lunar impact crater that lies on the far side of the Moon. It is located just to the south of the huge walled plain Apollo, and to the northeast of the crater Cori. The rim of Grissom is eroded in places, particularly along the northeast where a pair of small craters lie along the sides. There is a clustering of small craterlets located to the south of the crater midpoint. A small crater lies along the northeast edge of the floor.
Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth's Moon. The Moon's surface has many craters, almost all of which were formed by impacts.
An impact crater is an approximately circular depression in the surface of a planet, moon, or other solid body in the Solar System or elsewhere, formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller body. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact craters typically have raised rims and floors that are lower in elevation than the surrounding terrain. Impact craters range from small, simple, bowl-shaped depressions to large, complex, multi-ringed impact basins. Meteor Crater is a well-known example of a small impact crater on Earth.
The far side of the Moon is the hemisphere of the Moon that always faces away from Earth. The far side's terrain is rugged with a multitude of impact craters and relatively few flat lunar maria compared to the near side. It has one of the largest craters in the Solar System, the South Pole–Aitken basin. Both sides of the Moon experience two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of night; even so, the far side is sometimes called the "dark side of the Moon", where "dark" is used to mean unseen rather than lacking sunlight.
The crater is named after astronaut Gus Grissom, killed in the Apollo 1 fire. The nearby craters White and Chaffee were named after the other two astronauts killed in the disaster, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom was one of the seven original National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Project Mercury astronauts, and the first of the Mercury Seven to die. He was also a Project Gemini and an Apollo program astronaut. Grissom was the second American to fly in space, and the first member of the NASA Astronaut Corps to fly in space twice. In addition, Grissom was a World War II and Korean War veteran, U.S. Air Force test pilot, and a mechanical engineer. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster, a two-time recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and, posthumously, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was the first crewed mission of the United States Apollo program, the project to land the first men on the Moon. Planned as the first low Earth orbital test of the Apollo command and service module, to launch on February 21, 1967, the mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module (CM). The name Apollo 1, chosen by the crew, was made official by NASA in their honor after the fire.
White is a lunar impact crater. It lies on the far side of the Moon from the Earth, to the southwest of the huge walled plain Apollo. About one crater diameter to the south-southwest is the small crater Hendrix.
