Word: moons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...terminator line -the boundary between the daylight and nighttime hemispheres-which they had predicted would be fuzzy and indistinct because of the earth's atmosphere. Inspection of the first rough print of Orbiter's picture showed a terminator about as sharp as that on the moon -which has no atmosphere...
Displaying the precise control of a teen-ager over a spinning Yo-Yo, controllers at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory maneuvered Orbiter ever closer to the moon's surface in an attempt to eliminate the fuzziness of its high-resolution camera shots (TIME, Aug. 26). Acting after a suggestion from Eastman Kodak technicians that the camera might begin returning clear pictures of possible astronaut landing sites if it were operated from an altitude of 25 miles, they fired Orbiter's retrorocket for three seconds, reducing the low point of its orbit from 30.4 to 25.1 miles...
...basis of preliminary data reflecting eccentricities in the spacecraft's orbit, scientists came to an unexpected conclusion: the moon, like the earth, may be slightly pear-shaped. Instead of being a perfect sphere, the moon seems to be depressed about a quarter of a mile out of shape at its south pole and bulges out about the same distance at its north pole. Because the moon has a diameter of about 2,200 miles, the distortion would hardly be noticeable when viewed from the earth. Said a NASA official: "Let's not expect to go out and look...
Equipped with everything that it will carry to the moon except the astronauts and their sleeping couches, the Apollo system, weighing 56,900 lbs., or more than seven times the Gemini spacecraft, blasted off from Cape Kennedy riding the nose of a 22-story-high Saturn 1 rocket. After separating from the Saturn booster, Apollo fired its own rocket engine and soared to a peak altitude of 706 miles over South Africa. Then, as the space ship began to descend, its engine was fired three more times in successful tests of its capabilities...
When it finally splashed into the Pacific southeast of Wake Island, the charred Apollo was 230 miles short of the recovery carrier Hornet. But for all practical purposes, it was on target. It was obviously ready for the next step on its path to the moon...