Word: moons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Some 2,600 miles in diameter, Triton orbits Neptune at a distance of 220,000 miles, about the same distance as the moon is from the earth. But unlike the earth's moon and most other solarsystem satellites, Triton moves in a retrograde direction: it circles the "wrong" way-clockwise-around Neptune which spins counterclockwise on its axis. Nereid, only about 200 miles in diameter, revolves in the direction of Neptune's spin, but its orbital path is highly irregular, swinging as far as 6,000,000 miles into space and as close as 900,000 miles from...
...fabulous achievement of Sur veyor 1, which sent back more than 11,000 pictures from the surface of the moon, was a tough act to follow. In a disappointing performance last week, Surveyor 2 did not even come close...
Uncontrollable and lifeless, it plowed into the moon's Seething Bay at 6,000 m.p.h. and was completely demolished in the crash...
...ending for a flight that had made an impressive start. Launched by an Atlas Centaur rocket less than a second before its time "window" closed, Surveyor headed toward the moon on a near-perfect trajectory that would have set it down just 40 miles from its intended target in Central Bay. Their hopes buoyed, scientists at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory planned a minor mid-course correction and ordered Surveyor's three small vernier engines to fire briefly. Two of the engines performed obediently, but the third refused to work. The resulting unbalanced thrust threw Surveyor into...
...effect of failing batteries on its operation, then they opened the vents on the liquid helium tanks to test the system that pressurizes Surveyor's rocket fuel. In a last effort, they fired the spacecraft's big retrorocket while it was still 70,000 miles from the moon. The spin rate slowed, but not nearly enough. Then, while the retrorocket was firing, all contact was lost with the ill-fated lunar voyager...