Word: orbiter
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THIS week, still hopeful that they can achieve the goal set by President Kennedy but aware that time is fast running out, U.S. spacemen will begin their final lunar thrust. Barring last-minute delays, Astronauts Walter Schirra, Walter Cunningham and Donn Eisele will be shot into earth orbit aboard Apollo 7 in the first manned flight of the spacecraft that will eventually carry astronauts to the moon. If Apollo lives up to NASA's expectations during its eleven-day mission, it will clear the way for a possible flight around the moon in December and the landing of astronauts...
Housekeeping Chores. When Apollo 7 takes off this week, the conical NASA command module, carrying the three astronauts, and the attached cylindrical service module, will be launched into orbit by a Saturn 1B rocket, which is not powerful enough for the moon mission. "Simply flying the vehicle will be a major test in itself," says Flight Director Lunney. "The men will do the works-move around and eat, manage the housekeeping chores and keep the cockpit running." In the process they will be fully occupied keeping track of 24 instruments, 566 switches and 40 "on-off" in dicators that show...
...lunar landing, space experts say, the Soviets will probably want to test two techniques that they have not yet attempted: 1) manned rendezvous and docking in space, and 2) an unmanned soft landing on the moon. Unmanned Russian spacecraft have twice rendezvoused and docked auto matically in earth orbit, but the technique would be far more difficult near the moon, 240,000 miles away from terrestrial control stations. And the Russians have yet to demonstrate a soft-landing system as reliable as the one that lowered five U.S. Surveyor spacecraft gently to the lunar surface...
...meanwhile is proceeding with plans to launch the first manned Apollo into earth orbit next week on a ten-day mission to check out spacecraft and ground control systems. If all goes well, the following Apollo flight, scheduled for late December, may take three astronauts for as many as ten orbits around the moon before returning them to earth...
...news of Russia's latest space venture came, as it has so often in the past, not from a Moscow spokesman but from a distinguished British scientist. Closemouthed Soviet scientists announced only that a space craft called Zond 5 had been launched into deep space from a parking orbit around the earth. But after Astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell trained his 250-ft. Jodrell Bank radio telescope on the receding craft and analyzed its signals, he told the world exactly what the Russians were trying to do. Zond's mission, he stated, was to fly around the moon...