Word: moons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...launch pad 39A, the entire sky was filled with an orange-pink glow, a false dawn against which gulls and pelicans wheeled and fluttered in aimless confusion. The awesome spectacle marked a fitting beginning to the mission of Apollo 17, which at week's end was approaching the moon, carrying Astronauts Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt and Ron Evans on what may well be man's last visit to the lunar surface for decades to come...
...stations refuse to touch such controversial material. So far it has been shown in public theaters only in New York and Boston, where most of the people who saw it were probably not surprised. It deserves time on national television, certainly as much as the latest romp to the moon, but has been aired only by an educational network in New York City...
...Apollo 17, four wholly new instruments have been included in the ALSEP package: a mass spectrometer to measure the moon's tenuous atmosphere; a detector that will let earthbound scientists monitor the bombardment of cosmic dust particles and micrometeorites on the moon's surface; an array of four listening devices-geo-phones-that can pick up shock waves from explosive charges that will be detonated after the astronauts leave and should tell much about the substructure of the landing site; an extremely sensitive gravimeter that is designed to pick up minuscule variations in lunar surface gravity...
Gravity Waves. Recording those tiny variations on the moon could go a long way toward settling an argument currently raging among physicists. Several years ago, University of Maryland Physicist Joseph Weber astonished his colleagues with the announcement that he had detected gravity waves. Predicted by Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity, such waves are the vehicles presumed to transmit gravitational energy across space. Critics have contended that Weber's detectors probably sensed some of the earth's own rumblings. But if sudden variations in gravity are now simultaneously picked up by a detector on the moon...
During their travels across Taurus-Littrow, Astronauts Cernan and Schmitt will also perform several new "traverse" experiments. They will take on-the-spot measurements to determine local fluctuations in the moon's gravitational field in hopes of learning something about the density and structure of the material under the site. With data from a device called a "neutron probe," scientists will be able to calculate how long a particular sample has been lying on or near the lunar surface. The astronauts will also send penetrating microwaves into the lunar surface with a new radio transmitting-receiving system. The pattern...