Word: lm
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...NASA to tighten its quarantine procedures. During Apollo 10, Correspondents Lee and Neff questioned NASA's announcement that ground controllers had tracked the lunar module to a point 9.4 miles above the moon's surface in its lowest pass. The definitive figure should have come from the LM's radar, which must accurately gauge the spacecraft's distance from the moon. Digging further, Lee and Neff found that the lunar module had indeed seen things differently, and reported correctly that the spacecraft entered an orbit with a pericynthion of 8.9 miles...
...will spend 61 hours and 35 minutes in lunar orbit, three times longer than the Apollo 8 astronauts. Stafford and Cernan will separate the lunar module from the command module and fly it for the first time in the lunar environment, some 240,000 miles from home. During the LM's solo flight, it will descend from the command module's orbiting altitude of 69 miles to a height of only 50,000 ft. above the moon, the closest that man has been to the lunar surface...
Spotlight on Snoopy. Then why not go all the way with Apollo 10? George Low, manager of the Apollo spacecraft program, explains that all Apollo systems have not been tested together in the vicinity of the moon. There has been no rendezvous in lunar orbit, no testing of the LM's landing radar or of the entire communications system at lunar distances. In addition, NASA scientists are recalculating trajectories and orbital paths to take into account irregularities in the lunar gravitational field that caused Apollo 8 to stray from its course. "We looked at all these things," says...
Even without a landing, the flight of Apollo 10 promises to have spectator appeal. Command Pilot Stafford openly lobbied for the installation of a color TV camera aboard the spacecraft and finally won approval. "A color shot of the spidery LM patched gold and black against a background of the gray, cratered moon would be fantastic," he says. Eleven 15-minute telecasts have already been scheduled for the flight...
...three astronauts seem voluble and anxious to describe their forthcoming adventure as it unfolds. "We can't show you television from 50,000 ft. above the moon because we don't have it on the LM," says Cernan. "But we certainly hope to share the view through words and tell you what it really looks like." It may be only a dress rehearsal, but Apollo 10 promises to monopolize the attention of a worldwide audience from its liftoff in Florida to its splashdown off Samoa in the Pacific...