Word: moone
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Clouds about 78 miles square. It was taken when Ranger was still 470 miles away, and Kuiper said that it showed just about as much detail as the best photographs obtainable with the biggest telescopes on earth. Picture by picture, as the spacecraft sped toward the moon, the scene expanded. Craters seemed to blossom on lunar plains that had looked perfectly smooth; in the next pictures even smaller craters appeared...
...pits showed up with edges that did not look as jagged as those of most lunar craters. As Ranger dropped lower, the clustered craters grew, and one of them showed black dots inside its rim. Nothing of the sort, said Kuiper, had ever before been seen on the moon. His guess was that the pits were made when a giant meteorite hit the moon and dug the conspicuous crater Copernicus, which is surrounded by "rays" that are believed to be splashed-out material. Astronomers used to think that this material was some sort of dust, but Kuiper now believes...
...scientists were questioned eagerly about what the pictures told about the moon, but they emphasized that they had not yet seen the first-grade pictures and had taken time for only casual study of the second-grade prints. Only a few things are obvious to the expert but hasty eye. The moon's "seas" do not seem to be covered with deep, fluffy dust, as many lunar experts have argued. If they were, the little 3-ft. craters would not have steep edges. There may be a layer of soft material an inch or so thick, but Dr. Eugene...
...important Ranger observation was the great number of small secondary craters that litter some parts of the moon. They seem to have fairly steep slopes that might topple any spacecraft that attempts to land on them. Dr. Kuiper thinks that regions splashed with rocks tossed out of big craters should be studiously avoided, but other parts of the lunar plains are probably smooth enough for landing. An encouraging sign is the comparative scarcity of small primary craters blasted by meteor impacts...
Surveyor & Orbiter. What will buoyant J.P.L. try next? Two more photographic Rangers are in preparation, and they will probably search for smooth lunar plains unscored by splashed-out rocks, and otherwise suitable for landings. Later, J.P.L.'s unmanned Surveyor spacecraft will soft-land on the moon, collect lunar material, analyze it on the spot and radio to earth reports of its chemical and physical character. For large-scale moon-mapping, J.P.L.'s Orbiter will whirl closely around the moon, transmitting thousands of pictures of its surface. With J.P.L.'s unmanned space, technology now in full flower, such...