Word: apollos
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...months before Luna 15 was launched, rumors had circulated in Moscow that Soviet scientists would in one way or another try to steal some thunder from Apollo. Speculation intensified last month when Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov told Japanese newsmen that he expected his country to exhibit rocks from the moon-gathered by an unmanned spacecraft-at the 1970 world's fair in Osaka. Three weeks ago, reports were heard in Moscow that two earlier versions of Luna 15 had exploded prematurely-one on the launch pad early in April, the other shortly after launch on June...
First details of the Russian shot came not from Moscow but from the irrepressible English astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell. "Listening to Apollo with one ear and Luna with the other," as Lovell put it, he tracked the loudly signaling Soviet ship with the 250-ft. Jodrell Bank radio telescope. Soon after launch, he determined that the spacecraft was traveling more slowly than previous Russian moon shots, was on a different trajectory and was transmitting "heaps" of information with a new kind of signal that he could not interpret. The slower velocity indicated to Lovell that the Russians were trying...
Whatever the fate of the Soviet craft, its launching on the eve of Apollo 11's lift-off underscored the fact that the controlling element in Soviet-U.S. space relations is still competition, not cooperation. Yet the question remains: With man now venturing to extraterrestrial bodies, how good are the chances for future joint efforts by the two superpowers? Said Lovell: "The time will come, within ten years, when considerable amounts of equipment will be left on the moon and lunar bases established, and international cooperation will become essential. Otherwise, a very serious situation might arise, both scientifically...
...Earlier in the week, NASA Administrator Thomas Paine had publicly voiced the hope "that the juxtaposition of two lunar missions in such a close time frame points out the desirability of close cooperation in space between the Soviet Union and the United States." During his recent tour of Russia, Apollo 8 Astronaut Frank Borman called for wider exchanges of scientific information and the joint tracking of satellites. He advocated a halt to "unnecessary duplication" in planetary exploration and suggested that when orbiting laboratories are lofted into space, they be manned with scientists from a number of different countries. A Soviet...
...brief time this month, as the Russians atypically heaped good wishes and praise on the forthcoming Apollo 11 flight, it appeared that a turning point had been reached in U.S.-Soviet space relations. Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin even accepted a NASA invitation to witness the Apollo 11 launch at Cape Kennedy-the first Russian official to do so. Under normal diplomatic protocol, his attendance might have obligated the Russians to invite an American to a launch in the Soviet Union. But early last week, the Russian embassy in Washington revealed that Dobrynin would be out of the country at the time...