Space: Photographing the Moon

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Lunar Orbiter 1 last week became the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the moon—and the first orbiter ever to transmit lunar photographs back to earth, where Americans could see them live on TV amid their afternoon soap operas.

Snapped from 133 miles away, the orbiter's first pictures showed the crater-pocked flatlands and adjacent ridges of the Mare Smythii region on the right-hand rim near the lunar equator. Later, the spacecraft snapped a 930-mi.-high shot of the moon's mysterious back side. Even so, the strong picture signals from the high-resolution lens were extremely fuzzy, primarily because of difficulties in the spacecraft's camera system.

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.