Word: lunar
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...NASA released the first color photographs from the Apollo mission. The still shots in particular displayed the harsh beauty of the barren landscape around Tranquillity Base as strong unfiltered sunlight etched myriad craters in deep shadow. The 16-mm. motion-picture films of Eagle's touchdown on the lunar surface brought back that dangerous moment with tense immediacy. The movies were so clear and sharp that they allowed scientists to pinpoint the landing area precisely. And with the exact coordinates to guide them, astronomers at California's Lick Observatory were finally able to bounce a laser beam...
...Lunar Receiving Lab (LRL), where the Apollo 11 astronauts are spending their postflight quarantine, teams of scientists are trying to put together bits and pieces of the lunar puzzle. Much of the work proceeds at a slow, painstaking pace. Last week, some NASA geologists seemed almost apologetic about their progress. "I've never been so frustrated in my life," complained Mineralogist Elbert King, the LRL's curator. "We've been working for years to get the lunar samples in our clutches. But I was unable to find a single mineral that I could immediately identify...
Even so, the face of the moon is slowly beginning to emerge. Poring over the moon rocks with their microscopes, spectroscopes and radiation counters, the LRL's scientists have already pried loose some of the moon's long-guarded secrets. By analyzing a pinch of the powdery lunar dust with a flame ionization detector, Chemist Richard Johnson of NASA's Ames Research Center found the first conclusive evidence of organic compounds on the moon. The presence of these carbon-containing compounds does not prove the existence of life on the moon-simply that its soil contains...
Perhaps the most fascinating find, geologically, was the discovery of tiny beads or grains of glass in the lunar dust -which seemed to explain what Astronaut Buzz Aldrin meant when he described the lunar surface as slippery. Geologists tentatively ascribed the abundance of the glassy material to meteors. Because of the immense heat generated on impact, speculated Harvard's Clifford Frondel, the invading material would have been vaporized, along with chunks of the lunar surface. After cooling, the vapor may have rained back in the form of glass spheroids. But that explanation raised a baffling question: Since lunar gravity...
...Apollo 12 for its November flight, and did not start their partying until the day's work was done. Then they poured into nightclubs and bars, waving flags, singing chorus upon chorus of God Bless America, and toasting the moon shot with potent concoctions called "Armstrong Benders" and "Lunar Cocktails...