Word: orbiters
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...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...
Groping for Gravity. Last Wednesday the orbiter's Atlas-Agena boosters lofted the 850-lb. craft into a parking orbit, where it coasted for 28 minutes while ground computers honed its next course. Then, high above the Indian Ocean, the second-stage Agena engine reignited and kicked the orbiter into its precise moon-bound path. Two antennas and four solar-power panels snapped out, giving the space craft a windmill look. Guidance sensors aligned it with the sun; some six hours later, a star tracker began hunting for Canopus. When the sensor repeatedly failed to lock onto the guidance...
...week's end, the orbiter was scheduled to reach a crucial point 550 miles away from the moon. There, plans called for firing its retrorocket for 9½ minutes and cutting its speed from 6,000 m.p.h. to 2,000 m.p.h. Purpose: to let the moon's gravity capture the spacecraft and pull it into "loose lunar orbit" on an elliptical course ranging from 120 to 1,150 miles above the moon...
...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...