Word: lunar
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...moon last April, Russia's Luna 10 achieved a first that the U.S. is striving to match. The Soviet spacecraft apparently lacked photographic equipment, and the U.S. now aims to take the lead by orbiting the moon with five picture-taking satellites in a row. Last week Lunar Orbiter 1 soared up from Cape Kennedy and successfully zeroed in on its 237,500-mile, 92-hour trip to the moon...
...orbiter's prime mission is to transmit some 350 medium-and high-resolution pictures of nine possible landing sites for U.S. astronauts near the lunar equator. It will also take an admiring look at Surveyor 1, which now sits silently on the moon's Ocean of Storms after prodigiously transmitting more than 11,000 close-up pictures last June. After dry-developing its own film, Lunar Orbiter 1 will use a light scanner one-twentieth the thickness of a human hair to send pictures back to earth for kinescope reproduction...
...reach a crucial point 550 miles away from the moon. There, plans called for firing its retrorocket for 9½ minutes and cutting its speed from 6,000 m.p.h. to 2,000 m.p.h. Purpose: to let the moon's gravity capture the spacecraft and pull it into "loose lunar orbit" on an elliptical course ranging from 120 to 1,150 miles above the moon...
...orbiter's systems will be checked out by transmitting pictures of the moon's previously unphotographed right edge. After the orbit has been determined, a blast from the spacecraft's 100-lb.-thrust engine is scheduled to lower it as close as 28 miles above the lunar surface. Then, zooming around the moon at a relative speed of 4,500 m.p.h. at its lowest point, the orbiter will snap its pay-dirt pictures during a week of low passes...
...tricky first orbit rendezvous over the Pacific with an Agena launched before the Gemini, simulating the critical Apollo-Lunar Excursion Module moon rendezvous...