Lightning Hits AS-507

[Big RI Joe]

Where the Apollo 12 crew advised that the batteries controlling their parachute system might have been damaged by the lightning strike?

[MattMason]

Where the Apollo 12 crew advised that the batteries controlling their parachute system might have been damaged by the lightning strike?

I suspect you're asking that question as it was mentioned in "Is That All There Is?", the Apollo 12 episode from HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon."

I can find no information supporting this probability. The program was a docudrama, although the Apollo 12 mission transcript was used thoroughly in that episode as the crew's actual exchanges were quite illuminating and funny with little need to change much of it.

An analysis of the Apollo 12 lightning strike, including very minor damage suffered permanently on the CSM, is noted on the mission here in the Apollo Flight Journal, a NASA history website.

https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap12fj/a12-lightningstrike.html

[DaveS]

Where the Apollo 12 crew advised that the batteries controlling their parachute system might have been damaged by the lightning strike?

Wasn't the batteries that powered the pyrotechnics that they worried about but rather the pyros themselves. Those can only be checked on the pad through continuity testing. No way to do such a test in space, the bare minimum equipment required would be a basic multimeter which wasn't part of any flight equipment I'm aware of until the shuttle program, which did have some basic In-Flight Maintenance (IFM) tools.

[Big RI Joe]

But was the crew advised about that fact anytime during the flight?

[DaveS]

But was the crew advised about that fact anytime during the flight?

No. No need to worry the crew about something that no-one could do anything about. If the lightning strikes had triggered the Earth Landing System (ELS) pyros, there was no fixing them. If the pyros were gone, they were as dead that day as they going to be 12 days on the actual EOM day as both required a fully functional ELS for a safe landing. Can handle a single-chute out situation as Apollo 15 showed (RCS dump turned one of the main-chutes into a streamer) but not a dual or all chutes out, those are fatal.

[djellison]

Reviewing https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/a12/AS12_TEC.PDF  ( the mission transcript ) I see mention of lightning during ascent "I'm not sure we didn't get hit by lightning".

Ground tells them that they did get struck by lightning but there's no reason why they can't continue at 01:50:51

The crew spot what they think is where the vehicle was struck at 06:01:28:48 but don't discuss damage.

They discus it with the ground again at 07:22:11:58 in response to Houston reading them some news and they describe where they think the strike was but again - don't discuss any risk to 'chutes etc..

Based on that....I don't think they discussed it with the crew during the flight.