Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Apollo 12 is no less complex or hazardous than the earlier moon shots. This attempt will include a number of dangerous innovations. The trickiest is a free-flying approach to the moon that, if it is marred by an engine malfunction, could send the spacecraft into a deadly sun orbit...
Lonely Day. If the flight goes according to plan, the all-Navy crew will ride the nautically named Yankee Clipper into moon orbit after 83 hours in space. Then Skipper Charles ("Pete") Conrad, 39, and Space Rookie Alan Bean, 37, will board the module Intrepid for their trip to the moon's surface. While his fellow astronauts explore the Sea of Storms 69 miles below, Gemini Veteran Richard F. Gordon Jr., 40, will spend a lonely day and a half in orbit...
After 11 months in orbit, a satellite telescope designed here has mapped 7 per cent of the sky and is still sending back new information on ultra-violet light from distant stars. Analysis of data already received from the satellite has yielded several results...
...veteran of two earth-girdling Gemini flights, will fire the spacecraft's service propulsion engine, jolting the ship out of its "free-return" trajectory. No longer able to loop the moon automatically and return to earth, should its engine falter, Apollo 12 could be lost forever in an orbit around the sun. But NASA flight planners feel that the maneuver is worth the risk: it will save crucial fuel reserves on the way to the landing site in the Sea of Storms, roughly 860 miles west of Tranquillity Base...
Even the.departure from the moon will be somewhat different. Once they rejoin Yankee Clipper 69 miles overhead, Conrad and Bean will send Intrepid's ascent stage crashing into the moon rather than into a lunar orbit. This will eliminate a potential hazard to future lunar navigation as well as cause enough of a thud to give earthbound seismologists a good calibration test of the new lunar seismometer. Next, the astronauts will shoot a series of closeup photographs of the moon, using both ordinary and infra-red film to help NASA planners pick out landing sites for the remaining eight...