Word: surveyor
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...ungainly gadget carried no human passengers. But as it eased its complex cargo to a soft landing on the moon's Ocean of Storms last week, the U.S. spacecraft, Surveyor I, moved man himself closer than ever to a landing on his nearest planetary neighbor. In an exercise of textbook perfection, Surveyor settled down only a few miles from its planned target; its TV camera panned across the lunar landscape and high-quality pictures streamed back to earth. For a program that had languished for years in exasperating delay, expanding expenses and mounting criticism, the very first payoff...
...scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory control center in Pasadena, the difficult task of nursing Surveyor to a point 60 miles above the moon's surface was far less harrowing than the final phase of the trip. For in the long moments of the last drop, Surveyor's own computers and radar were issuing the necessary orders. And back on earth, 230,930 miles away, the craft's creators could do no more-no more than pray that their design and pre-launch calculations were all correct...
...strange-looking vehicle five years ago, engineers at Aerojet's Space-General Corp. in California were aiming for space. Their Moon Walker had six legs, stereo TV for eyes, and was crammed full of detection and communications equipment. It was designed to land on the moon with a Surveyor spacecraft...
...approach velocity of 6,000 m.p.h. to a speed of about 10 m.p.h., and setting it down upright on the moon's surface, the Russians proved that they had finally mastered a technique essential for a manned mission. The first U.S. softlanding attempt with the problem-plagued Surveyor will not take place before May. And even then, U.S. space scientists will not have the experience that their Soviet counterparts have gained during four successive soft-landing failures...
...developed during the flights of Gemini 6 and 7: rendezvous in space. And the well-managed U.S. Apollo program is making such rapid headway that space officials still hope to land Americans on the moon before 1969. Quite possibly, they will try the trick even before their instrument-carrying Surveyor is able to carry out its mission successfully. Neither contestant is yet an odds-on favorite in the lunar sweepstakes...