Word: rangers
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...fine afternoon a huge Atlas rocket took off from Cape Canaveral carrying an Agena B as its second stage. On the nose of the Agena perched Ranger III, a 727-lb., $7,000,000 marvel of precision and ingenuity that U.S. spacemen hoped last week would send back closeup TV pictures of the moon, and land a small, tough seismograph on the lunar surface...
...Ranger I and Ranger II had been flops because of bad propulsion; Ranger III's launch was apparently O.K. The Atlas fired its three motors, then plopped back into the ocean as planned. The Agena fired and soared into a "parking orbit," circling 105 miles above the earth. At the proper point on this orbit, Agena fired again to sling itself into a collision course with the moon. Ranger IIIs radio went on the air, and its reports were favorable...
Then from radio monitor stations strung around the girth of the earth came bad news. One of the rockets had given too much push, and Ranger III was moving too fast. Instead of streaking toward the moon at the proper speed of 24,500 m.p.h., it was moving at more than 25,000 m.p.h. It would slice through the moon's orbit in 55 hours instead of 66 as planned. And at that time, the moon would not be there; Ranger III would miss by nearly 25,000 miles (see diagram...
Locked on the Sun. But the shot was not a total flop. Ranger III was as crammed with electronic tricks as a barrel of transistor radios. Even though its launching had been faulty, it was cruising undamaged through space, its intricate apparatus still in working condition. Just 27 minutes after launch, Ranger's C.C. & S. (Central Computer and Sequencer) began issuing commands that had been stored in its electronic brain. Explosive pin-pullers released solar battery panels, which unfolded like the wings of a butterfly. At the same time, Ranger's dish-shaped, long distance radio antenna swung...
There was no chance that Ranger could hit the moon, but it could curve its course closer to its target. Happily, its C.C. & S. could listen as well as command. Half a day after launch, when Ranger III was nearly 100,000 miles away from the earth, scientists from Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Ranger had been built, began sending new orders that C.C. & S. acknowledged and "memorized." After the command to "execute" went out, Ranger III started a complicated series of maneuvers. Its little gas jets turned it to a new attitude. Then its large midcourse rocket...