Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...greatest scientific achievements of the civilization of man," exulted NASA Planetologist Donald Gault last week. By means of the Surveyor 5 spacecraft, man had reached across a void of some 240,000 miles, studied the surface of the moon, and analyzed its chemical composition. That analysis, scientists reported last week, indicated that part of the lunar surface is strikingly similar to the earth...
...spacecraft's 65-hour trip began well. Blasting off from Cape Kennedy, Surveyor was aimed so precisely that without correction it could have hit the moon within 26 miles of its intended landing site-one of the most accurate launches achieved by the U.S. space program. But controllers at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, aiming for perfection, ordered a delicate midcourse maneuver to place Surveyor directly on target. It was then that the entire mission came close to disaster...
Testing a Duplicate. Immediately after the short corrective burst from Surveyor's three small vernier rockets, telemetry from the spacecraft showed that helium gas, used to pressurize both the vernier fuel and oxidizer, had begun leaking through a valve that had remained partially open. At the rate that helium was being lost, controllers feared there would not be enough pressure left to operate the engines during the final descent to the moon. The result would be a fatal crash landing...
...hour, helium pressure had dropped from 5,000 lbs. to 3,000 lbs. per sq. in. Dejectedly, some JPL scientists suggested that it would be best to fire Surveyor's retrorocket immediately, placing the craft in high earth orbit. It would be preferable to have a live spacecraft in orbit, they argued, than a dead one on the surface of the moon...
...world. At the same time, ITT's 204,000 employees are pushing into fresh territory. Backed by an annual research-and-development budget of $220 million, ITT scientists are at work on such sophisticated projects as automatic landing systems for aircraft and the use of laser beams for spacecraft docking...