Word: lunik
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...said the Moscow radio. "Listen now to the signals coming in from the cosmos, from the third cosmic rocket launched today." Then came the signals, sounding like hoarse violin notes at A above middle C. By that time, 1 p.m. Moscow time Oct. 4 (6 a.m. New York time), Lunik III was already 67,000 miles from the earth. Britain's big radio station at Jodrell Bank, instructed where to look by a telegram from Moscow, picked up the signal too and held it for 20 minutes. Then the violin notes stopped suddenly as if shut...
Whipping around the moon and returning to the earth is considerably harder than hitting the moon, as Lunik II did. A little too much speed could toss the probe beyond the moon and into an orbit around the sun. Slightly bad aim or timing could make the probe crash into the moon. Even harder is putting an object into a permanent orbit around the moon, but the Russians apparently did not hope to do that-not this time...
...moon has no magnetic field. This was the major scientific finding made by Lunik II. The Lunik's instruments also failed to find any Van Allen radiation circulating around the moon. This was consistent. The earth's Van Allen radiation is made of ionized particles trapped by the earth's magnetism. If the moon has no magnetism, it should have no radiation...
...Russian announcement was a welcome change; in the past they have released little or no information gathered by their satellites. The Russians promised to publish Lunik's other findings as soon as the raw data has been winnowed...
...Lunik II's instruments was a moon altimeter designed to measure its faster and faster approach to the lunar surface. Lunik II, the Russians say, landed on the edge of the Sea of Serenity, near the craters Aristillus, Archimedes and Autolycus. They think the last-stage rocket hit the moon too, but they do not know where. Since it was much heavier (3,325 Ibs.) than the instrumented payload (860 Ibs.), it must have splashed a considerably bigger crater...