Word: canopus
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Launched on a near-perfect trajec tory toward the moon, Orbiter 2 briefly lost and then regained its navigational lock on its guiding star Canopus; other wise it was not bothered by glitches. As it sped toward the moon 93 hours later, some 2,770 miles above the lunar sur face, Orbiter's retrorocket fired, slowing the craft enough for lunar gravity to draw it into an elliptical orbit...
...second-stage Agena engine reignited and kicked the orbiter into its precise moon-bound path. Two antennas and four solar-power panels snapped out, giving the space craft a windmill look. Guidance sensors aligned it with the sun; some six hours later, a star tracker began hunting for Canopus. When the sensor repeatedly failed to lock onto the guidance star, ground controllers made do by using the moon instead...
...signaled for a checkout of Mariner's photographic apparatus. The commands turned on and then turned off power to the tape recorder, and pointed the TV camera as it would have to be when it got close to Mars. Everything functioned well. Recalling the dust problem with Canopus sensors, JPL engineers decided to remove the TV lens cover then, instead of waiting until the final encounter. If there was any dust on the cover, they did not want it shaken loose to endanger the sensors at a critical moment...
...fixed its gaze on Regulus. Another roll on its axis, and Mariner picked out Naos, then a multistar cluster near Naos. Finally, when Mariner was 360,000 miles from earth, its electronic eye found a star bright enough to send the proper radio report: Mariner had locked on Canopus...
...came none too soon. Besides being a guide on the way to Mars, Canopus also served to aim Mariner's directional radio antenna back toward earth, enabling Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists to calculate the craft's flight path. Knowing that path, the rocketeers were able to plan a correction for Mariner's original course, which would have taken it past the red planet at a distance of 151,000 miles-too far for it to shoot any meaningful television pictures. But shortly before that correction could be made last week, Mariner went into an unexpected roll...