The Secret Department Of Defense Experiment For Apollo.

I don’t know if anyone has heard of the classified Chapel Bell Experiment which was conducted during Apollo 14 through 17 missions. All included in their mission objectives a project called Chapel Bell, which, although has been highly classified to this day by the Department of Defense, is well known to have involved the placement of more advanced seismic devices. Check out the objectives for Apollo 16, as per a NASA web site.

Operational Tests - Manned Spacecraft Center and U. S. Department of Defense.
1. Chapel Bell (classified, Department of Defense test).
2. – 7. ---------------

So what was this classified Chapel Bell experiment of the Department of Defense? Does NASA know that the Moon may be a hollow artificial satellite that it’s trying to figure out by highly classified advanced seismic experiments?

I’ve not be able to get hold of the details of this experiment so far. Can anyone throw some light on this? Or am I reading too much into this classified NASA military experiment?

history.nasa.gov...

Could have been anything.

Sad thing is there is probably no way to tell.

I haven't had the time yet, but here's a report:

www.hq.nasa.gov...

Do a search and see what you get... Some very cursory research suggests it was an experiment to see why the moon would ring like a bell after an impact (and no, I don't think it was hollow), and there are some seismic experiments mentioned here...so happy hunting...

Oddly, if I try to save this file, or search it, it seems to freeze... Don't know if it's my PC yet or what, but I'll keep trying.

I couldn't find any references specifically to chapel bell, but it sure sounds like the experiment summarized on p.278. They were puzzled by the change in speed of the P-wave after the explosions, and this goes back to earlier Apollo missions, and finally explained in Apollo 17 as basaltic lava flows... Of course, this is just a guess....

[edit on 22-5-2007 by Gazrok]

Gazrok, thanks. But darn! that file is all of 650 pages long. Anyway, it is on page 35 and just a paragraph. It says nothing of the classified Chepel Bell experiment. And if it is such a big deal that it has been classified by the Military, then surely there is helluva lot more to it than just a paragraph!

I believe a Saturn booster was made to crash on the Moon as part of this experiment, but I cant seem to find the link anymore.

Cheers!

Mike -
The Chapel Bell experiments were already discussed last year on ATS: Chapel Bell - Apollo.

Also- the full Apollo 15 report only goes into substantial detail regarding the experiment (you have to dig through Chapter 2; it only mentions it by name once). Here's the entire nearly 300-page Mission Report for Apollo15:
Apollo 15 MR. Be patient - takes a while to download (~7.5 mb).

Chapel Bell was (and remains) a classified DOD S-band microwave transponder experiment. It utilized frequencies in a micro-satellite test to evaluate signal integrity primarily to evade Russian eavesdroppers.

Although several FOIA requests are outstanding regarding the experiment, so far no full disclosure of documents is evident. This is understandable, especially with the increasingly hostile posture the Russians/Putin are currently displaying.

Lots of speculative explanations out there, but this seems to be one of the more acceptable ones:

"Chapel Bell" was with regard to their having similar usage
of transponder deployments as situated within the mutual gravity-well
(EM-L2/ME-L1 nullification zone), intended as accommodating their
S-Band-->Microwave transponders that were easily deployed…

Such S-Band-->microwave transponders as afforded by their relatively
small - Chapel Bell - deployments would have been nearly impossible for
others to have detected and, as such providing all of the necessary
directional signal capability along with wherever the required delay of
microwave data needed to get transmitted from that zone so as to appear
as if such were coming from near or even on the moon. Thus even the
best of Russian and/or amateur tracking and/or via whatever methods
would not have [been capable of detecting the signals].

ME-L1 is roughly 58~64,000 km away from the moon, thus so close that it
would be nearly impossible for ground radar to have detected such a
small item unless you were fully aware of the exact transponder
frequencies and timing or coded bytes or even analog data easily hidden
within the gauntlet of S-Band radar signals that everyone fully
expected to being targeted at the moon.

Note: Gazrok is essentially correct in that Apollo also included several experiments designed to test the seismic resonance of the moon by "ringing" the surface. Not sure how closely those experiments may have been related to Chapel Bell, however.

Thanks! I was scouring the S-Band part of the report too, as that was the second theory, and it seems S-Band tests were also part of all the other Apollo missions... The S-Band idea is more likely, and would be more related to DOD concerns and classifications.