Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Correspondents Lee and Neff questioned NASA's announcement that ground controllers had tracked the lunar module to a point 9.4 miles above the moon's surface in its lowest pass. The definitive figure should have come from the LM's radar, which must accurately gauge the spacecraft's distance from the moon. Digging further, Lee and Neff found that the lunar module had indeed seen things differently, and reported correctly that the spacecraft entered an orbit with a pericynthion of 8.9 miles...
Like Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who set out in search of new worlds, the Apollo 11 astronauts face experiences never before encountered by men. They are cool, pragmatic technicians, superbly trained for their flight and thoroughly familiar with their spacecraft. But they will be attempting the first descent to the moon, the first exploration of its surface, the first lift-off back into space. It is not unlikely, then, that beneath their composed exteriors, they share some of the doubts and even fears felt by their predecessors...
After Aldrin has climbed back aboard the LM, Armstrong will send the sample boxes up the nylon conveyor and re-enter the spacecraft, about 2½ hours after he first emerged. The astronauts will then toss their PLSS units, overshoes and a camera out of the spacecraft to reduce the possibility of bringing back equipment contaminated by any lunar organisms that might exist...
Antiseptic Solution. To minimize contamination of the command module interior, the two astronauts who walk on the lunar surface will leave their boots and gloves behind on the moon. Before they emerge from the spacecraft in the Pacific, the crew will have vacuumed the interior, collecting the swept-up material in canisters containing a chemical absorbent. Instead of climbing through the command module's open hatch and into a raft before donning their biological isolation garments, the astronauts will remain inside the spacecraft until a frogman opens the hatch, tosses the garments inside, and then closes it again. They...
Despite these elaborate decontamination procedures, however, organisms-might well survive in the bodies of the astronauts and in the spacecraft atmosphere. Thus, when the craft is vented upon splashdown and when the hatch is opened twice-no matter how briefly-dangerous organisms could escape into the air and the ocean, perhaps to thrive and pose a threat to life on earth...