Word: rangers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...enjoyed your well-prepared and well-presented article on the recent trip of Ranger VII to the moon [Aug. 7]. Overlooked by many, but not by me, was the speed with which you prepared this story and rushed it into the hands of your readers...
...cluster of pits showed up with edges that did not look as jagged as those of most lunar craters. As Ranger dropped lower, the clustered craters grew, and one of them showed black dots inside its rim. Nothing of the sort, said Kuiper, had ever before been seen on the moon. His guess was that the pits were made when a giant meteorite hit the moon and dug the conspicuous crater Copernicus, which is surrounded by "rays" that are believed to be splashed-out material. Astronomers used to think that this material was some sort of dust, but Kuiper...
...spacecraft sped toward the surface showed smaller and smaller craters, some of them sharp-edged pits blasted by the explosive effect of high-velocity meteors, some of them soft-edged secondary craters dug by low-speed debris from bigger impacts. The very last shot was taken when Ranger was about 1,000 ft. above the surface, and before impact the scanning beam had time to transmit only a part of it-an area 60 ft. by 100 ft. There, sharp and clear, were tiny craters no more than 3 ft. across. Careful study, said Dr. Kuiper, would almost surely show...
...important Ranger observation was the great number of small secondary craters that litter some parts of the moon. They seem to have fairly steep slopes that might topple any spacecraft that attempts to land on them. Dr. Kuiper thinks that regions splashed with rocks tossed out of big craters should be studiously avoided, but other parts of the lunar plains are probably smooth enough for landing. An encouraging sign is the comparative scarcity of small primary craters blasted by meteor impacts...
...MILES, Ranger's cameras show edge of the Sea of Clouds (left) with about as much detail as best pictures taken by biggest earth-based telescopes. Cross-shaped marks are reference points on the camera. Sunlight is falling from the left, casting shadows that permit measurement of elevations and depths. Areas between crater rims look smooth, but closer pictures (below) show this to be illusion. Fine spacing of TV lines gives pictures the quality of good photographs...