engineers of the Boeing Company and the
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration are making final
preparations to launch one of a series
of lunar orbiters the satellites primary
mission is to photograph landing areas
on the moon for America's astronauts an
atlas aegina booster will launch the
orbiter from Cape Kennedy
when orbital speed and altitude are
achieved the Atlas booster and nose
shroud will separate and the Agena will
fire to place itself and the lunar
orbiter into a 100 mile high orbit
around the earth they must travel to the
exact point in space from which aegina
can put the lunar orbiter on its path to
the moon when this point is reached
aegina fires again soon after burnout
aegina separates and the 850-pound
orbiter will be on its way now speeding
through space at 25,000 miles per hour
the vehicle will extend its two-way
earth communication antennas and solar
panels will open to capture and convert
the sun's energy into electrical power
for orbiters systems tiny attitude
control jets located on the corners of
the heat shield will be fired to
position the vehicle to aim its solar
panels toward the Sun and aim its
tracker for a fix on its navigational
star canovas after 15 hours of flight
toward the moon lunar orbiter will fire
its velocity control rocket to make a
mid-course correction later in the
journey as the orbiter gets closer to
the moon the velocity control rocket
will be fired again to slow the
spacecraft this will serve to trap the
spacecraft in an off-center orbit around
the moon where it will circle from four
to six days by tracking this orbit
scientists on earth will obtain their
first precise information about the
effects of the moon's gravitational
field on the spacecraft with this
knowledge they will be able to lower the
vehicles borbet to a close 28 miles for
photography of the moon's surface
control of the spacecraft is
accomplished through instructions stored
in an on-board computer Mission Control
personnel can radio new instructions for
storage or can bypass the computer to
control the orbiter directly operating
on these instruct
the lunar orbiter will turn itself to
aim its two camera lenses downward
during picture-taking marbles then as it
soars over the desired areas it will
take a series of pictures one lens will
cover an area of 25 square miles and
record objects as small as a card table
the other will make overlapping
photographs of 440 square mile sections
during its mission the lunar orbiter
will take 160 pairs of pictures while
filming 12,000 square miles an area as
large as the combined area of
Massachusetts and Connecticut while
photography is in progress the camera
will begin to automatically develop and
store the exposed film following each
series of exposures the orbiter will
again aim its solar panels at the Sun
when picture transmission takes place
the stored images will be sent in the
form of an electronic signal produced by
a light scanning the stored negatives at
Goldstone near an abandoned gold mine in
California's Mojave Desert this 85 foot
diameter antenna is the communication
link with the lunar orbiter it's similar
to two other antennas in australia and
spain surrounding hills protected from
random radio signals the antenna control
team tracks the orbiter with signals the
orbiter sent back to earth the team also
directs the flow of signals from the
antenna to the orbiter this equipment
generates signals to the spacecraft the
orbiters computer responds to the
signals and controls the orbiter
accordingly these men are the last human
link between Earth and the spacecraft
incoming photographic information from
the orbiter is fed into this equipment
where electronic wizardry converts the
electronic signal to a pinpoint of light
of varying intensity the tiny beam
sweeps back and forth exposing a moving
strip of 35 millimeter film when
processed the resulting negative show
was what the orbiter's camera saw at the
receiving station technicians will
process and study samples of the exposed
negative to ensure that signals are
coming back properly and that the
orbiters camera is correctly set most of
the 18 miles of film will be sent to a
reassembly facility where the strip's
will be developed and arranged into
large negatives prints of these
negatives will form the basis for lunar
maps although direct communication with
the lunar orbiter is via Goldstone or
Australia or Spain the mission is
directed from the spaceflight operations
facility in Pasadena sitting side by
side NASA and Boeing engineers evaluate
and act upon information received from
the antennas the information comes to
the Pasadena computer center and is
translated into a form understandable to
engineers they use it to determine the
lunar orbiters velocity attitude
temperature power situation and some 50
other conditions this automatic drawing
machine charts the data other engineers
keep track of the orbiters location and
direction they plot course changes and
calculate when and how the spacecraft
should be maneuvered this control room
is the nerve center of the entire
mission the operations director and his
assistant are in voice contact with key
personnel at those installations
throughout the world which gather and
record flight information engineers here
at Pasadena interpret the information
and the operations directors use the
results to make final flight decisions
when it's photographic mission has been
completed in about a month the lunar
orbiter will continue to circle the moon
providing information about micro
meteoroids and radiation in the moon's
vicinity this data along with the
photographs is vital to landing men on
the moon
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