Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
...Lunar Orbiter 1 last week became the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the moon-and the first orbiter ever to transmit lunar photographs back to earth, where Americans could see them live on TV amid their afternoon soap operas...
While contending with the implications of that problem, Mission Project Manager Clifford Nelson was delighted with how easily the spacecraft had first kicked into lunar orbit. "It was like switching it from one railroad track to another," he bragged. As the week passed, the orbiter's original elliptical path slowly became circular because of irregularities in the earth's gravitational pull. Even so, the orbital change will apparently not endanger the spacecraft's mission of taking several hundred pictures of assorted lunar sites...
...problems, project controllers huddled at week's end, trying to decide whether to scrub the scheduled plan of lowering the spacecraft to within 28 miles of the lunar surface in order to photograph nine target areas where astronauts may some day walk (see diagram). At that height, the orbiter's high-resolution 600-mm. lens could shoot objects as small as a card table. At last they decided to go ahead, hoping that under different conditions of lunar orbit, the camera might well begin operating properly again...
...Dirt Passes. If all this works, the spacecraft will then be tracked for three to seven days in order to determine whatever variations exist in the moon's gravitational field. At the same time, the orbiter's systems will be checked out by transmitting pictures of the moon's previously unphotographed right edge. After the orbit has been determined, a blast from the spacecraft's 100-lb.-thrust engine is scheduled to lower it as close as 28 miles above the lunar surface. Then, zooming around the moon at a relative speed of 4,500 m.p.h...