Word: spacecrafts
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...well preserved condensations of the primordial matter from which the sun and planets were formed. If that is correct, a complete analysis of a comet might provide valuable information about the beginnings of the solar system. To obtain a sample for such a study, some scientists suggest, an unmanned spacecraft should be shot into the orbit of a regularly reappearing comet. The craft would rendezvous with the comet, land and scoop up some surface material. Then, after a brief, blazing ride through the sky, it would blast off for earth, bringing back a sample of the stuff the comet...
...basis of preliminary data reflecting eccentricities in the spacecraft's orbit, scientists came to an unexpected conclusion: the moon, like the earth, may be slightly pear-shaped. Instead of being a perfect sphere, the moon seems to be depressed about a quarter of a mile out of shape at its south pole and bulges out about the same distance at its north pole. Because the moon has a diameter of about 2,200 miles, the distortion would hardly be noticeable when viewed from the earth. Said a NASA official: "Let's not expect to go out and look...
Equipped with everything that it will carry to the moon except the astronauts and their sleeping couches, the Apollo system, weighing 56,900 lbs., or more than seven times the Gemini spacecraft, blasted off from Cape Kennedy riding the nose of a 22-story-high Saturn 1 rocket. After separating from the Saturn booster, Apollo fired its own rocket engine and soared to a peak altitude of 706 miles over South Africa. Then, as the space ship began to descend, its engine was fired three more times in successful tests of its capabilities...
While contending with the implications of that problem, Mission Project Manager Clifford Nelson was delighted with how easily the spacecraft had first kicked into lunar orbit. "It was like switching it from one railroad track to another," he bragged. As the week passed, the orbiter's original elliptical path slowly became circular because of irregularities in the earth's gravitational pull. Even so, the orbital change will apparently not endanger the spacecraft's mission of taking several hundred pictures of assorted lunar sites...
Because of increasing camera problems, project controllers huddled at week's end, trying to decide whether to scrub the scheduled plan of lowering the spacecraft to within 28 miles of the lunar surface in order to photograph nine target areas where astronauts may some day walk (see diagram). At that height, the orbiter's high-resolution 600-mm. lens could shoot objects as small as a card table. At last they decided to go ahead, hoping that under different conditions of lunar orbit, the camera might well begin operating properly again...