Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After lonely, four-month journeys through the void, two ingeniously contrived spacecraft-one Russian, the other American-reached Venus last week. Methodically investigating the cloud-shrouded planet, they successfully radioed their findings back across 50 million miles of space to scientists on earth. The dual performance was perhaps the most impressive demonstration yet of the technical progress made by man during his first decade of space flight...
...then briefly disappearing behind the planet before heading toward a permanent orbit around the sun. As Mariner drew close, its instruments searched for a Venusian magnetic field and an accompanying radiation belt, and peered down into the upper atmosphere to determine its height and temperature profile. As the spacecraft swung behind Venvis, its radio signals passed through the Venusian atmosphere on their way to earth. By measuring the effect the intervening gases had on the strength, frequency and path of these signals, scientists could estimate both the density and pressure of the atmosphere...
After four-month journeys through space, Russia's Venus 4 and the U.S. Mariner 5 spacecraft will both reach Venus this week. No matter what the space probes find, most scientists have already written off the possibility that Venusian life exists; the planet's apparent surface temperature is approximately 800° F., above the melting point of lead...
Surveyor 5's overworked TV camera, which has transmitted more pictures (18,006) to earth than Surveyors 1 and 3 together, also confirmed the presence of some iron compounds on the moon. Focusing on a powerful magnet that scientists had attached to one of the spacecraft's footpads, the camera transmitted pictures of a thin layer of dust-kicked up in the landing-on the magnet. By comparing these shots with control pictures made on earth, where dirt with known percentages of iron filings had been scattered on a magnet, the scientists established the presence of iron compounds...
Surveyor's findings are admittedly based on tiny samples. The spacecraft's alpha-particle analyzer covered only two 4-sq.-in. areas and probed them to a depth of only 1/1,000th of an inch. And it is conceivable that the lunar highland regions have a chemical composition different from that in the Sea of Tranquillity, where Surveyor landed. But scientists believe that Surveyor's findings are typical of the makeup of the other lunar seas, or basins...