Word: surveyor
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Cushioning the Jolt. They were, Small vernier rockets near each of the craft's three legs fired to stabilize the spacecraft in a base-down attitude. When the radar sensed that Surveyor was precisely 52 miles above the moon, it fired a powerful, solid-fuel retrorocket that slowed the craft from 5,840 m.p.h. to only 267 m.p.h. in 40 seconds...
...lunar altitude of 25,000 ft., the retrorocket was jettisoned and the vernier rockets took over the job of further reducing speed, stabilizing and gently guiding Surveyor along the proper trajectory toward its impact point. When it was 13 ft. above the lunar surface and descending at 3.3 m.p.h., the 620-lb. Surveyor shut down its verniers and fell the remaining distance. It struck the moon no harder than a parachutist hits the earth. And even this relatively small jolt was cushioned by hydraulic shock absorbers and crushable aluminum pads under Surveyor's legs and body...
...proceeding according to plan, scientists and spectators at the JPL control center first stared in apparent disbelief. They were well aware that the Russians had failed at least four times before landing an instrument package intact on the moon and that the first seven of the ten planned Surveyor shots had been designated "engineering flights"-a tacit admission that U.S. scientists expected many failures before a successful soft landing was achieved. But when telemetry continued after impact-evidence that Surveyor had survived the landing-disbelief gave way to wild cheering. Half an hour later, on radioed command, the craft...
Pictures by Earthlight. One after another, the pictures showed that Surveyor was standing on a broad, relatively level plain littered with pebbles as small as one-eighth of an inch in diameter and rocks that were more than a foot across. The terrain was pocked by an occasional small crater, and one picture clearly showed a hump on the horizon that is believed to be either a crater rim or a low hill. A view of one of Surveyor's feet showed that its impact had dented the surface a few inches, indicating to some scientists that the site...
...learn more about the lunar surface, JPL scientists decided to fire the small attitude-control thrusters located near the bottom of each of Surveyor's three legs, less than a foot above the surface. Seven different times, the thrusters fired jets of nitrogen into the lunar soil while Surveyor's camera shot pictures of the area near its feet. The pictures showed no clouds of dust-another indication that the lunar surface is firmly packed. By week's end, as the sun rose toward its apex in the lunar sky, shortening shadows and making it more difficult...