Word: earthness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...dispute over moonquakes began when the seismometer left behind by the astronauts suddenly began acting up. The squiggly lines transmitted from the moon, Press concluded, resembled the tracing of the surface waves of a moderate-sized quake on earth. Other geologists, including U.C.L.A.'s George Kennedy, who took up Press's champagne challenge, had different ideas. The shock, they said, might have been caused by a meteorite. Another possible cause: the moon's natural "groaning" under the tug of the earth's gravity...
Behind the argument is an important issue. A quake would suggest that the moon, like the earth, has a molten interior and earthlike stratifications. These common characteristics, moreover, would strongly suggest that the earth and the moon have similar evolutionary histories. Apollo's seismometer may not have much more time to supply answers. Near week's end, as the two-week lunar day approached its hottest point (240° F.) the small instrument package seemed to be heating up and verging on a breakdown...
...Apollo experiment also ran into difficulty. Astronomers at the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas, the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, Calif., and the Haleakala Observatory on Maui, Hawaii, were unable to locate the lunar reflector, an arrangement of 100 prisms that they hoped would reflect laser beams from earth. The beams were to be used as a precision measuring tool that would yield, among other things, the exact distance between earth and moon, proof of whether there is really any drift between continents and accurate figures on the earth's wobble. The major reason for the trouble...
WITH remarkable clarity, the words reached the earth from a quarter of a million miles away in space. "Houston," the distant voice announced, "Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed." Though somewhat overlooked in the drama of the lunar landing, the intricate electronics systems that brought Neil Armstrong's voice back from the moon were almost as much of an engineering triumph as the rocketry that carried him there...
...long, electronic link with the earth started with tiny microphones carried inside the astronauts' space helmets. Their voices were fed from the mikes into a small, 3-ft.-sq. box directly behind them in the lunar module. Despite its deceptively simple appearance, the 100-lb. package was the heart of the LM's communications system. Known as a signal processor, it accepted the astronauts' voices as well as 900 other signals-telemetric data on heartbeats, for example, pressure readings in the cabin, data from the computers-and imposed them on a single "carrier" frequency...