Word: orbiter
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Awesome Views. Shots of the moon taken from Apollo 10 in its 69-mile-high orbit clearly showed that some areas of the moon have a brownish tint, confirming the astronauts' description. There were awesome views of rugged mountains, long canyons and deep craters with white walls glinting starkly in the sunlight. By contrast, the cloud-swirled earth looked warm and hospitable as it was seen rising above the moon's horizon. Shots of alternate landing sites in the Sea of Tranquility gave support to Stafford's observation that they were "very smooth, like wet clay...
Shortly after leaving earth orbit, the astronauts separated their command and service module (Charlie Brown) from the third stage S-4B rocket. Hurtling through the inky void, they pivoted their craft around and moved back to dock with Snoopy, still nestled in the rocket's nose. As the gap between the two craft narrowed, the newly developed 12-lb. color television camera focused on Snoopy during a live transmission 4,120 miles from earth. "This has got to be the greatest sight ever," said a capsule communicator in Houston. Turning toward the receding earth, the TV camera captured...
...first hint of more serious trouble occurred after Apollo 10 had slipped into its nearly circular 69-mile orbit around the moon. Crawling through the tunnel connecting Charlie Brown to Snoopy, Stafford discovered that the padding on Charlie Brown's hatch had been ripped during the pressurization of the lunar module early in the flight, allowing snowlike fiber-glass insulation to escape and drift around the tunnel interior. During Apollo's eleventh revolution, as Stafford and Cernan prepared to undock Snoopy for its descent toward the moon, the astronauts found that they could not depressurize the connecting tunnel...
...forthcoming eight-day mission is a dress rehearsal for July's lunar landing attempt. It is easily the most complex and ambitious flight yet scheduled for the U.S. manned space program. Astronauts Thomas Stafford, Eugene Cernan and John Young will spend 61 hours and 35 minutes in lunar orbit, three times longer than the Apollo 8 astronauts. Stafford and Cernan will separate the lunar module from the command module and fly it for the first time in the lunar environment, some 240,000 miles from home. During the LM's solo flight, it will descend from the command...
Spotlight on Snoopy. Then why not go all the way with Apollo 10? George Low, manager of the Apollo spacecraft program, explains that all Apollo systems have not been tested together in the vicinity of the moon. There has been no rendezvous in lunar orbit, no testing of the LM's landing radar or of the entire communications system at lunar distances. In addition, NASA scientists are recalculating trajectories and orbital paths to take into account irregularities in the lunar gravitational field that caused Apollo 8 to stray from its course. "We looked at all these things," says...