NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2019 Jul 20, 10:07 -0400
There were two different sextants, one on the Command Module and a different one on the Lunar Module. In general they were used to reorient the gyroscopes in the Inertial Measurement Unit, since the alignment would drift over time. Nowadays they use automated star trackers. They also had the ability to completely reset the IMU by themselves in case it failed, but they only did that once during the flight of Apollo 8, when Jim Lowell accidentally zeroed it out.
I have a much more detailed explanation of how each of them worked, and con post them if folks are interested.
Paul Dolkas
From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Zane Grey
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 6:02 PM
To: Paul Dolkas
Subject: [NavList] Apollo Sextant
Haha! Just found out that the Apollo program used space sextants! Wrecking my brain trying to imagine how they worked! Did they have to look at starts on the far side of earth to them???
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/06/the-story-of-the-apollo-sextant
