Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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72
O'Keefe -
I think this is swamp and it's very shallow.
Gill - You never would see it then.
Shoemaker - In photographs I've seen from previous flights, both
Glenn's and Carpenter's flfghts, I think we got some pictures on
Africa, and I was quite interested in these because they begin to
show up the structurep the bedding, etc.
Schirra ~ Yes, I was looking for this particularly over Africa and
South America because this was supposed to be real prime in transi ­
tion on the northwest part of South America which was really a
beauty when you visualize how you hit that with the 6th orbit, and
I didn't have that prerogative either.
Yes, when you come down to
it, this was all primed for geologic study, I thought ... Even
Cuba was hard to see. (Laughter)
Cameron - Did you see anything -on the order of craters?
Schirra - No, this is not the map I flew with by the way - sort of
blocked out for specific attention.
I frankly was very disappointed
about the cloud cover.
I think you've detected that anyway.
That doesn't go too far No rth and South you are in this tropical
zone which is the cloudiest part of the earth.
>
Schirra - Yes.
O'Keefe - It is most systematically cloudy.
If you can go just a
little further north and south, the chance of get ting this weather
will be better, although this would probably always be true, just
as you've said, that most of the earth at any one time will be
cloudy.
This belt goes from about 35 degrees North to 35 degrees
south.
You didn't quite get an inclination of about 33 degrees.