Moreover, if loss of the use of one lens occurred … the whole photographic mission would not be ruined.”
“On a single mission,” noted Bruce Byers in Destination Moon, the official NASA history of the Lunar Orbiter program, “the orbiter could photograph a greater area of the lunar surface and also obtain more detailed photographic data than any other proposed system. Eastman Kodak provided a scaled-down Air Force photographic system, featuring a twin-lens camera for simultaneous imagery at high and medium resolution. However, the key role of Lunar Orbiter was to acquire imagery of the Moon’s surface. Lunar Orbiter-1 roars away from Launch Complex (LC)-13 on 10 August 1966. Finally, the uppermost deck carried four attitude control thrusters and a heat shield to guard against the exhaust from the velocity control engine. The spacecraft’s middle “deck” accommodated the velocity control engine, with a thrust of 100 pounds (45.3 kg), together with propellant tanks, a coarse Sun-sensor, and micrometeoroid detectors. Lunar Orbiter’s lowermost segment housed the nickel-cadmium batteries, transponders, flight programmer, photographic system, Inertial Reference Unit (IRU), Canopus star-tracker, command decoder, multiplex encoder, and Traveling-Wave-Tube Amplifier (TWTA). At its base, it boasted a quartet of power-producing solar arrays and high-gain and low-gain antennas. The three-axis-stabilized spacecraft weighed about 848 pounds (385 kg) and assumed the form of a truncated cone, measuring 5 feet (1.5 meters) across its base and standing 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) tall. In December 1963, NASA Administrator Jim Webb announced the selection of Boeing to develop the Lunar Orbiter. Specifically, the orbiter would need to record objects in the region of 147.6 feet (45 meters) in diameter across the entire lunar surface, with enhanced resolution of 14.7 feet (4.5 meters) in the areas of primary interest and still better resolution down to just 4 feet (1.2 meters) at landing spots. Originally, it was hoped that modifications could be made to another pair of spacecraft families-Ranger and Surveyor-to fulfill this requirement, but neither could meet the level of mapping precision necessary to select Apollo landing sites. Not only was it a huge success, but it also marked the first time that the United States had ever placed one of its own spacecraft into lunar orbit.Īlthough plans for an in-situ examination of the Moon had been under serious discussion since the late 1950s, it was not until the months after Kennedy’s decision that the seeds of the Lunar Orbiter program were sown. And the first of those five trailblazers, Lunar Orbiter-1, completed its 80-day mission by impacting the Moon on 29 October 1966, 50 years ago, tomorrow.
#Lunar orbiter 1 series
In doing so, they provided vital data which would enable the space agency to ultimately select a series of five potential landing zones for the first Apollo explorers. Moreover, the very nature of the Moon itself-from the consistency and load-bearing characteristics of its regolith to the appropriateness of its rugged terrain to support a heavy spacecraft and human explorers-was acutely unknown.Īt the midpoint of the decade, between August 1966 and January 1968, five unmanned Lunar Orbiter missions were launched and operated by NASA, successfully mapping 99 percent of the surface at resolutions of better than 200 feet (60 meters). However, in order to do so, the systems necessary to deliver that man to the Moon had to be conceived and perfected. Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the lunar surface, and returning him safely to Earth, before the decade’s end. Photo Credit: NASAįor countless millennia, the Moon has captivated the fascination of humanity, but only in the last few decades has our species had the technological ability and scientific knowledge to visit and explore our closest celestial neighbor. At the time, the spacecraft was on its 16th orbit around the Moon. The grainy significance of this image, acquired by Lunar Orbiter-1 on 23 August 1966, is that it is the very first view of Earth, as seen from lunar distance.
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