Word: missions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...brief period beginning around the first week in December. At that time, a spacecraft could be launched in daylight, streak around the moon, and return for a landing in Russia or the Indian Ocean during daylight hours, when it is easier to locate and reach the downed craft. The mission almost certainly will follow closely the trail of Zond-5 and Zond-6, the first craft to circle the moon and return safely to earth...
Tass, the Russian news agency, has confirmed that both Zonds were preparatory shots for a manned flight and carried living creatures to test radiation effects near the moon. U.S. scientists suspect that Cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy successfully tested life-support systems for a manned lunar mission during the earth-orbit flight of Soyuz-3. If so, a Soviet lunar spacecraft may finally be man-rated-ready to carry passengers to the moon in December...
...astronauts should be on their way moonward on or soon after Dec. 21. Colonel Frank Borman and Major William Anders, both Air Force officers, and Navy Captain James Lovell are already at Cape Kennedy, spending 16 hours a day in preparing for every detail of a complex mission that has been planned and plotted to the last second. They spend 20 hours a week in simulators, training their minds and hands to react almost automatically to every conceivable contingency...
...then turn to face it. During this maneuver, protective panels will be jettisoned from the S-4B, exposing the dummy lunar module (LM) carried in its nose. The astronauts will then simulate docking with the LM-an operation that will be particularly important on the lunar-landing mission next year, when an Apollo spacecraft will dock nose-to-nose with a real LM before taking it into orbit around the moon. Finally, after the astronauts have jockeyed their craft some 8,000 ft. away, the S-4B will dump its remaining fuel into space. That action will generate just enough...
...will take turns shooting still, motion and stereo pictures in color and black-and-white. They will study craters and ridges to see how easily they can be recognized as landmarks. They will plot their position for navigational fixes that will be useful for lunar-landing crews on later missions. On the seventh revolution, they will be able to survey a prime LM landing site at a time when illumination is ideal for observation: the sun will be 6.6° above the horizon, casting the long shadows that best bring out distinctive surface features. During lunar orbit, and on both...