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Luminary — Sunburst — Sundance Lunar Module Flight Software |
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Luminary
is the program which
was run on the Apollo Guidance Computer installed in the Lunar Module
(LM). In order to be loaded into the AGC—actually, to be
converted to the "core ropes" within the AGC—it was necessary to
"assemble" Luminary's source
code into binary machine language, using a computer program called YUL. In the context of the
Virtual AGC project, of course, the process is somewhat
different: Luminary
source code is assembled by the yaYUL
program, and then loaded into the yaAGC
simulation.| Mission | LM Number | Mission Type |
LM Program | Version | Source Code |
Mission-specific
documentation |
Where is it now? | |||
| Apollo 5 |
LM-1 |
Sunburst |
TBD |
GSOP (R-527) "Apollo Experience Report—Guidance and Control Systems: Lunar Module Mission Programer" |
Apollo 5 was an unmanned mission to test the LM, and as such
it had a working AGC. Due to software bugs, it was necessary for
ground controllers to deactivate the AGC at certain points in the
mission. Who knows if we'll ever see a copy of it? The "Programer"—yes, that's the real spelling!—was the gadget that was the stand-in for the crew. |
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| Apollo 9 |
LM-3 |
D |
Sundance |
306 |
GSOP (R-557) Flight Plan |
Here is
some info from James Kernan, on of the LGC developers, in response to
my question about correct versioning of Sundance: Sundance 306 is
correct. I was the "rope mother" for Sundance-Apollo 9.
... Sundance was not only the Apollo 9 LM flight program, it was
also the development bed for the Lunar orbit and landing
software. At some point we created a version and called it
Luminary. I think the last few revisions of Sundance were devoted
to disabling crew access to the Lunar orbit and landing software that
was present in the build.
Jim also tells me that a copy of Sundance 306 may still "be in the building". I'm not certain which building he's talking about, but it's nevertheless interesting news that a copy of the program does exist somewhere. |
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| Apollo 10 |
LM-4 |
F |
Luminary
1 |
069 |
GSOP (R-557) |
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| Apollo 11 |
LM-5 |
G |
Luminary
1A |
099 |
As colorized,
hyperlinked,
HTML As scanned page images (very big!) |
Erasable pad loads Excerpted LM Systems Handbook The 1201/1202 alarms The Apollo 11 Adventure Operational Data Book Crew Debriefing Flight Plan |
Page images
have been taken from a hardcopy from the Charles
Stark Draper Historical Collection, MIT Museum, and then converted to
source code by a team of volunteers.
The MIT Museum copy is dated 14 July, 1969, which seems odd at first glance, since it would be far too late to actually have been included in the Apollo 11 mission. Hugh Blair-Smith speculates that this is the date of the printing rather than of the program build, and that seems plausible. One of the original AGC programmers, Mr. Allan Klumpp, also has a copy. Allan's copy is awaiting scanning to be made available online at klabs.org, which we are eagerly anticipating. A comparison of memory-bank checksums ("bugger words") has been made between the MIT and Klumpp listings (thanks to Paul Fjeld and Allan Klumpp), and it has been found that these two listings have a small difference in memory bank 6. In other words, they are not precisely the same! So one or the other of these is not the software that was actually flown. Mr. James Kernan, another of the original AGC developers, has sent us some facts that may explain the confusion, if not to tell us which version was actually flown. I'll let Jim tell it in his own words: I was an employee at
Draper Lab, and was in charge of the Lunar Module LGC computer
programming group and also in charge of Assembly Control for the flight
software
during the Apollo 9-12 software development period. The latter
responsibility included reviewing all proposed
alterations to the flight software and the YUL assembler inputs.
I can explain the confusion over the Luminary version that flew on Apollo 11. We were aiming for Luminary Revision 99 as the Apollo 11 Lunar Module flight software. There was a tradition (or rule) that the flight software version should have no revision, so we renamed Luminary Revision 099 as Lum99 Revision 0. At the last minute, Dan Lickly, our chief engineer, appeared with ephemerides updates and it took two tries to get it right. The result was that we created Lum99 Revision 1 and Lum99 Revision 2. We made a no-change version of the later and named it Lum99R2 Revision 0. The tapes and ropes were made from that. That is my recollection. Unfortunately, I did not have the foresight to keep a printout of the flight version. |
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| Apollo 12 |
LM-6 |
H |
Luminary
1B |
116 |
Excerpted LM Systems
Handbook Operational Data Book Flight Plan |
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| Apollo
13 |
LM-7 |
H-2 |
Luminary
1C |
131 |
As colorized,
hyperlinked,
HTML As scanned page images (very big!) |
GSOP (R-567) Pad loads for LM-7 Excerpted LM Systems Handbook Operational Data Book |
Mr. Paul Fjeld has also told me (or speculated) that the listing from which these scans were created was originally preserved by Don Eyles (one of the programmers), and then copied/reduced by Hugh Blair-Smith (whose name appears frequently on this site), via James Kernan (another of the original programmers), for David Craig (whose ex libris appears on p. 2 of the scan, and who is apparently a great collector of Apollo artifacts). Somehow it was passed to Mr. Gary Neff, who created the scans, which he gave back to Mr. Craig, and which were then placed online at MIT's History of Recent Science and Technology website. Unfortunately, the quality of the page images was somehow greatly reduced in the latter steps, and the high-quality page images that Mr. Neff produced were discarded in the process. MIT's HRST website has subsequently disappeared, but eventually was mirrored elsewhere on the web, and is partially mirrored here. However, we choose to present this listing as a set of individual page images rather than as a single gigantic PDF file you'll find elsewhere on the web. (Whew! "Many hands make the work Luminary.") By the way, Mr. Neff also kindly provided me with a replacement for a page which is garbled in the MIT version, and consequently is probably available only here. | |||
| Apollo 14 |
LM-8 |
H-3 |
Luminary 1D |
178 |
Excerpted LM Systems
Handbook The solder ball Operational Data Book |
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| Apollo 15 |
LM-10 |
J-1 |
Luminary
1E |
210 |
LGC Data Cards Program Notes Delco Manual GSOP (R-567) Operations Handbook
Crew Debriefing Flight Plan Checklists LM Familiarization Manual |
Allan Klumpp (one of
the AGC programmers) tells me that he believes
Luminary 1D build 209 was used for these flights, and he was certainly
in a position to know. But it does contradict the statements in
the A17 Flight Readiness Review (Fabrizio Bernardini tells me), which
agree with the information to the left. Regardless, Mr. Klumpp's
copy of 1D build
209 is the closest thing to the real Apollo 15-17 LM software I'm aware
of. It is awaiting scanning to be made available online at klabs.org, which we are eagerly
anticipating. |
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| Apollo 16 |
LM-11 |
J-2 |
Luminary 1E | 210 |
Program
Notes GSOP (R-567) Operations Handbook Operational Data Book Flight Plan LM Familiarization Manual |
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| Apollo
17 |
LM-12 |
J-3 |
Luminary 1E | 210 |
Excerpted
LM Systems Handbook Program Notes GSOP (R-567) Operations Handbook Operational Data Book Crew Debriefing Flight Plan LM Familiarization Manual |
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(The
data in this table originally came from on-line sources, but in the
form shown contains many corrections supplied by Mr. Paul Fjeld. Please don't take this information as
authoritative!)
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| Filename.agc |
Source code for major subdivisions of the Luminary program. |
| MAIN.agc |
Organizer which treats all of
the other assembly-language files (*.agc) as include-files, to form the
complete program. |
| Filename.binsource |
Human-readable form of the
Luminary binary executable, as an octal listing. |
| Filename.bin |
Binary executable created from
binsource (octal listing) file. |
Technically speaking....A point which may not be completely appreciated is that Luminary131.bin was not created from the assembly-language source files. Therefore, the byte-for-byte equivalence mentioned above actually has some significance. In fact, both the assembly-language source code and Luminary131.bin (or Luminary131.binsource) come from separate readings of the original Luminary assembly listing scan, so their equivalence provides an important check on validity. (See below.) The file Luminary131.bin was created from the human-readable/editable ASCII file Luminary131.binsource by means of the program Oct2Bin, with the following steps:cd
Luminary131
./Oct2Bin <Luminary131.binsource mv Oct2Bin.bin Luminary131.bin Admittedly, few people are likely to perform any processing of this kind unless contibuting a new version of the Luminary code to the Virtual AGC project. |
