Word: lunar
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...evidence of life is eventually found on the moon, it may well be because earthly microorganisms hitched rides on the Russian and U.S. spacecraft that have crashed on the lunar surface. To avoid similar celestial contamination that might obscure or alternative life forms before they are identified and studied, both U.S. and Soviet scientists plan to give future unmanned planetary probes a thorough cleansing before they leave the earth. At a conference on spacecraft sterilization sponsored by NASA at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists explained how the chances of contaminating Mars will be reduced to less than...
...symposium on remote sensing in Huntsville, Ala., last week, he theorized that Luna 7's radar may have failed to "see" a top porous layer of the moon's crust. As a result, the space ship crashed on its way to a landing on the hard lunar rock below...
Sophisticated Conjecture. Such lunar theorizing is based largely on earthly experience. Barringer has already designed effective radar systems to measure the thickness of antarctic ice, which is largely transparent to many low-frequency radars and radio altimeters, a phenomenon that results in incorrect altitude readings and has caused several plane crashes. Barringer is also conducting laboratory experiments for NASA to study the possibility of designing a radar system that would measure the thickness of the moon's surface layer from an orbiting vehicle. He has bounced radar pulses off simulated lunar crusts made of porous lava and compressed lava...
Scientists at both NASA and Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is building Surveyor, the first U.S. lunar soft-landing vehicle, remain skeptical of Barringer's theory. They say it is still largely conjecture. But it is conjecture that has made the problems of radar transparency a vital concern in the design of a sophisticated Surveyor altimeter that should have no trouble distinguishing the true surface of the moon...
...arches. He concluded that the holes formed a primitive eclipse computer. By placing a stone in each of six appropriate holes and moving them at appropriate times one hole around the circle, he decided, the Stonehenge astronomers had probably been able to tell accurately the dates when solar and lunar eclipses were apt to take place...