Word: kuiper
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Though Luna 9 successfully disposed of the hypothetical thick layers of lunar dust, said University of Arizona Astronomer Gerard Kuiper, some parts of the moon could still present a hazard to landing spacecraft. Photographs from the U.S. Ranger 9 moon probe show that between 5% and 10% of the lunar surface is covered by depressions, apparently areas of thin crust that have sagged into caves or voids under the surface. Should a spacecraft land on such a crust, he believes, it might crash through into the cave below...
...angle lens from about 10 ft. above a porous, pumicelike surface, the pictures showed a barren, forbidding crust, littered with jagged rocks and tiny pebbles that the Russians later revealed were as small as 1 or 2 millimeters wide. The lunar view suggested to University of Arizona Astronomer Gerald Kuiper that Luna 9 was probably resting on the floor of a small crater, that the rocks were only about a foot high, and that the horizon in the picture was actually formed by the crater's rim, apparently less than a mile away...
...during the past several years has stood nearly alone in insisting that there is little or no lunar dust: "There was never any basis for believing it anyway, but the idea seemed to fascinate people in the same way as flying saucers." The surface of the Ocean of Storms, Kuiper said, seemed to have been formed by lava flow during volcanic activity billions of years ago. "It must be nasty stuff to walk on," he said, "brittle, sharp and full of little holes." The first lunar explorers, he feels sure, will have to be equipped with some form of snowshoe...
...Small Star. To Astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who directs the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, there is only one satisfactory answer. "Like a small star," he says, "Jupiter is still contracting somewhat under the force of its own gravity." As the planet contracts, Kuiper speculates, the compressed and solid hydrogen mantle that envelops its molten core occasionally cracks open, releasing the vast amounts of heat that brew Jupiter's mysterious storms...
Atop Hawaii's clear, cloud-free Mauna Kea (13,784 ft.), new telescopes sweep the skies from a site that Astronomer Gerard Kuiper terms "the finest in the world-I repeat, in the world." Five space-tracking stations in the islands now spot missiles and satellites. A hundred miles northeast of the island of Maui, a place where the ocean is three miles deep has been chosen for the $71 million Project Mohole-an attempt to drill three miles through the earth's crust to the underlying mantle. A recent business-sponsored survey projected a possible annual income...