Word: orbiters
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Launched on a near-perfect trajec tory toward the moon, Orbiter 2 briefly lost and then regained its navigational lock on its guiding star Canopus; other wise it was not bothered by glitches. As it sped toward the moon 93 hours later, some 2,770 miles above the lunar sur face, Orbiter's retrorocket fired, slowing the craft enough for lunar gravity to draw it into an elliptical orbit...
Dipping to within 112 miles of the moon at its perilune, or closest ap proach, and swinging out to 1,145 miles at its apilune, or farthermost distance, Orbiter will remain "parked" in high or bit until late this week. Another blast of its retrorocket will then place it in an orbit that will come within 28 miles of the moon. Only then will its cameras go into action to shoot medium-and high-resolution landing site pictures...
Missing the Eclipse. After two successive 24-hour postponements caused by malfunctions in their Titan rocket's guidance system, Astronauts Lovell and Aldrin finally soared into orbit in Gemini 12. Using an optical tracking device in place of the faulty radar, they successfully rendezvoused and docked during their third orbit with an Agena target vehicle that had been fired aloft 99 minutes before Gemini...
...flight plan next called for a boost to a 460-mile-high orbit, but that had to be canceled when telemetry disclosed problems with Agena's propellant pump. Instead, the astronauts made another and equally remarkable rendezvous-with the moon's circular shadow, which was racing across the Pacific at 1,060 m.p.h. during Saturday's eclipse of the sun. In the brief seven seconds that they flew through the corridor of total eclipse, the astronauts shot movies and still pictures of the blacked-out solar disk. Then, standing in the open hatch of his orbiting platform...
...course took it through the middle of the main cluster of Leonids that follow closely behind the parent comet; it encountered a vastly larger number of meteoroids than usual. Just 33 years later, in November 1866, there was another fiery but less spectacular shower; the main cluster orbiting the sun once every 33¼ years was still three months away. In 1899 and 1932, at the time of the November encounter, the main cluster was even farther away. Both times there were only disappointingly modest increases in the Leonid showers-partly because of the meteoroids' 33¼-year orbital...