Word: spacecrafts
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APOLLO 10 (Noon). All three networks will cover the launching of the Apollo 10 spacecraft and will present special reports during its eight-day flight...
Spotlight on Snoopy. Then why not go all the way with Apollo 10? George Low, manager of the Apollo spacecraft program, explains that all Apollo systems have not been tested together in the vicinity of the moon. There has been no rendezvous in lunar orbit, no testing of the LM's landing radar or of the entire communications system at lunar distances. In addition, NASA scientists are recalculating trajectories and orbital paths to take into account irregularities in the lunar gravitational field that caused Apollo 8 to stray from its course. "We looked at all these things," says...
Even without a landing, the flight of Apollo 10 promises to have spectator appeal. Command Pilot Stafford openly lobbied for the installation of a color TV camera aboard the spacecraft and finally won approval. "A color shot of the spidery LM patched gold and black against a background of the gray, cratered moon would be fantastic," he says. Eleven 15-minute telecasts have already been scheduled for the flight...
There will be other innovations. In line with NASA's new policy of allowing frivolous radio call names for spacecraft, the Apollo 10 crew has decided to call the command module "Charlie Brown" and the lunar module "Snoopy," after the characters in the Charles Schulz comic strip...
...BEYOND THE MOON. In 1971, NASA plans to place two spacecraft in orbit around Mars. In 1973, two "Viking" missions are scheduled to make soft landings on the planet's surface. Also proposed is a Venus-Mercury "minitour" using the Venusian gravitational force to whip a satellite on toward Mercury. Perhaps most visionary of all is NASA's dream of "Grand Tour" flights to the "outer" planets-Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The four outer planets will be aligned in such a way that a single craft launched between 1976 and 1978 could fly by all of them...