Word: retrorocket
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
Cushioning the Jolt. They were, Small vernier rockets near each of the craft's three legs fired to stabilize the spacecraft in a base-down attitude. When the radar sensed that Surveyor was precisely 52 miles above the moon, it fired a powerful, solid-fuel retrorocket that slowed the craft from 5,840 m.p.h. to only 267 m.p.h. in 40 seconds...
...lunar altitude of 25,000 ft., the retrorocket was jettisoned and the vernier rockets took over the job of further reducing speed, stabilizing and gently guiding Surveyor along the proper trajectory toward its impact point. When it was 13 ft. above the lunar surface and descending at 3.3 m.p.h., the 620-lb. Surveyor shut down its verniers and fell the remaining distance. It struck the moon no harder than a parachutist hits the earth. And even this relatively small jolt was cushioned by hydraulic shock absorbers and crushable aluminum pads under Surveyor's legs and body...
...loudspeaker to reporters gathered at the observatory and provided an interpretive narrative of the flight. As the signal frequency decreased, he explained that Luna was accelerating under the pull of lunar gravity. A sudden increase in frequency followed by fading of the signal led Lovell to believe that a retrorocket had been fired, slowing Luna down. He interpreted the erratic signals that were received afterward to mean that the spacecraft had successfully achieved a 300-to 400-mile-high lunar orbit, but that it was tumbling and not transmitting any television signals...
When he heard that Luna 7 had successfully fired its braking retrorockets and had transmitted signals for three seconds after hitting the moon, Barringer became convinced that the craft was not demolished upon impact. The tardy retrorocket firing that probably made the difference between success and failure, Barringer decided, could have been caused by an altimeter error of as little as 30 ft. - which some scientists believe is the approximate depth of a layer of porous rock or partially compacted dust that covers the moon. Barringer's conclusion: Russian radar penetrated the moon's top layer, reflected back...