Word: spaceships
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Liquid hydrogen is the most effective rocket fuel ever developed. Some 40% more powerful than the kerosene fuel used in the Saturn booster, it will place the Apollo spacecraft in earth orbit, then be used again in the same flight to hurl the spaceship toward the moon. The trouble is, its virtues are not bought cheaply. Its extreme volatility and the - 423° F. temperature necessary to keep it in liquid form make it difficult to deal with both on the ground and in space. NASA spacemen had theorized that once weightless in orbit, liquid hydrogen would scatter around...
...frigid lunar night finally ended, sunlight once again splashed its warmth on the man-made visitor, Surveyor I. After its two-week hibernation at -250° F., the spaceship showed no sign of reviving. Its receiver, turned on ever since it landed on the moon almost four weeks before, seemed incapable of picking up radioed signals and translating them into the commands that would awaken the space traveler's other instruments. Day after day, the scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena tried to make contact; day after day, their only response was silence...
...well have changed the operating frequency of Surveyor's receiver, the JPL men tried varying the tuning of their own equipment. Still they got no answer. Then, last week, a signal from an 85-ft. parabolic antenna in Australia's Tidbinbilla Valley finally got through-near the spaceship's original frequency. Surveyor's transmitter obeyed the order, turned on, and reported in response to queries that all electrical and mechanical systems were functioning once more. Surveyor was again a fully operational spacecraft...
...went into hibernation last week for the 14-day lunar night, were even more remarkable. As the sun slowly sank toward the moon's horizon, the lengthening shadows cast by Surveyor itself appeared with startling clarity in shots of nearby terrain. In one picture, the 10-ft.-high spaceship's shadow stretched 50 ft. away. At sunset, the camera, aimed directly at the solar fireball, captured the brilliant halo of the sun's corona-usually invisible on earth because of the terrestrial atmosphere. After nightfall, Surveyor successfully took the last of the 10,338 photographs...
...whirled in orbit around the moon, the instrument-crammed Soviet spaceship Luna 10 was busily recording and reporting man's first continuous supply of data about the lunar environment. Though the Russians did not tell all they learned, the information they did release confirmed that their distant capsule was carrying out its fact-finding mission with singular success...