Word: lunik
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Word from the Moon. The Russians seemed eager to be cooperative and, except when military matters were touched on, surprisingly willing to describe Soviet discoveries in space rocketry. At a Washington meeting of the American Rocket Society, Academician Anatoly A. Blagonravov told in precise scientific terms how Lunik III was oriented by small gas jets to take its famous pictures of the far side of the moon (TIME, Nov. 9). Physicist Valerian I. Krasovsky gave a summary of scientific information that Soviet space shots have gathered so far. The Russians also showed a 25-minute movie of the behavior...
Next day the Russians released a picture of Lunik III and a fairly detailed explanation of how it took its epoch-making pictures. Lunik III, a notably sophisticated mechanism, proved to be a top-shaped 614-lb. object incrusted with antennas and solar cells, and packed with instruments. As Lunik passed 4,000 miles below the moon's south side, the moon's gravitation tugged at it, pulling it upward (south to north) and behind the moon. This was as planned, the Russians said, so that when Lunik III returned to earth it would come closest...
...Lunik's course and timing were chosen, the Russians said, so that on the far side it would come close to a line drawn between the moon and the sun. As it approached the line, an electronic signal from the earth started its automatic machinery-and all sorts of things began to happen. Lunik was spinning (for directional stability) with one of its ends pointing roughly toward the sun; the first thing the orienting mechanism did was to stop the spinning, probably by ejecting small spurts of gas through nozzles. Then optical viewing devices looking through ports...
After all its film was exposed, an automatic mechanism set Lunik to spinning again, so that sunlight during its journey would not scorch one side while the other side froze and upset the delicate mechanism inside. Then, having gone around the moon, Lunik swung back toward the earth, began to transmit the pictures. A slow system was used when Lunik was still at a great distance from the earth, a faster system when it came nearer and its signals were easier to receive. The transmission was done by a sort of TV camera that scanned the pictures electronically, line...
...hidden face is covered with what appears to be mountains, which always look brighter than seas. The Russians named one conspicuous series the Soviet Range; the rest of the area is probably, a Jacqwork of circular meteor craters. The published pictures were taken at almost "full moon" from Lunik's point of view, i.e., with the sun directly "overhead." At such a time, even steep slopes near the center of the moon's disk cast no shadows and are therefore hard to photograph. Other pictures may show many more craters, cracks, valleys and other features...