Fra Mauro 1984 and now in a private collection, probably in France. The crater Fra Mauro and associated Fra Mauro formation of the Moon are named after him. The Apollo 13 lunar mission was intended to explore the Fra Mauro formation, but – due to the explosion aboard the spacecraft – Apollo 13's crew had to return to Earth without landing on the Moon. The formation was instead explored by astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell of the Apollo 14 mission in February 1971. Fra Mauro Fra Mauro, O.S.B. Cam., (died 1464) was an Italian cartographer who lived in the Republic of
Apollo PGNCS Apollo PGNCS The Apollo Primary Guidance, Navigation and Control System (PGNCS) (pronounced "pings") was a self-contained inertial guidance system that allowed Apollo spacecraft to carry out their missions when communications with Earth were interrupted, either as expected, when the spacecraft were behind the Moon, or in case of a communications failure. The Apollo Command Module (CM) and Lunar Module (LM), were each equipped with a version of PGNCS. PGNCS, and specifically its computer, were also the command center for all system inputs from the LM, including the Kollsman Instrument built alignment optical telescope, the radar system, the manual translation and