Word: luna
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...whirled in orbit around the moon, the instrument-crammed Soviet spaceship Luna 10 was busily recording and reporting man's first continuous supply of data about the lunar environment. Though the Russians did not tell all they learned, the information they did release confirmed that their distant capsule was carrying out its fact-finding mission with singular success...
...Luna's gamma-ray measurements indicated that the moon has a crust some what similar to the earth's. The satellite also established for the first time that both the number of meteorite particles and the strength of the magnetic field in the vicinity of the moon are higher than in interplanetary space. It also discovered 70 to 100 times as many energetic electrons as are expected in outer space. Russian scientists attributed the electrons to the "earth's magnetic tail...
...magnetic field extends as far as the moon, 239,000 miles away. Earlier observations by U.S. satellites and space probes established that the magnetic field is shaped like a comet with a tail that stretches at least 120,000 miles into space. Now it seems that the electrons Luna encountered near the moon are temporarily confined there by the earth's magnetic tail in much the same way that the electrons and protons of the Van Allen radiation belts are trapped in areas of the magnetic field closer to the earth...
Aiding Pioneer. Lovell's latest space scoop came only two months after Jodrell Bank successfully intercepted television signals being transmitted from the moon's surface by Luna 9, reproduced them on a newspaper facsimile machine, and immediately released them-a full 24 hours in advance of the Russians (TIME, Feb. 4). Before that, he was first to announce that Luna 2 had hit the moon, and that earlier lunar soft-landing attempts by the Russians had ended in failure. He has also beaten the Russians to the punch in revealing some of the first details of their manned...
When the Russians finally broke their silence, they revealed that Luna 10 was in an orbit that took it around the moon once every two hours and 58 minutes. Though the Russians described several devices aboard the craft's 540-lb. instrument capsule, and reported that they were sending back useful information, they made no mention of a television camera, thus lending support to Lovell's conclusion that no pictures were being transmitted...