UMSF space history photo of the month Options

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Maybe we could make this a monthly item, in which we could look back at the history of Unmanned Space missions.
For January 2008 I've chosen an image showing the coverage of the Sun by early Pioneer 5-8 spacecraft.
Pioneer 5 to 8, or Pioneer V to VIII using the system of Roman numerals in vogue during the early 1960s for spacecraft designations, were directed towards the Sun along the earth's orbit to monitor solar activity. Pioneer V was launched on 11th March 1960 and provided the very first space weather report 4 to 8 hours before a solar storm hit the Earth.
Some of this Pioneer quartet, Pioneer 6-7-8 even provided updates on our Sun's activity during the early Apollo Moon landings in order to check the damaging potential of solar flares to affect the astronauts.

[Phil Stooke]

The Surveyor bacterium story is not generaly accepted today. The people who did the work reported that they probably contaminated it. I think one of them wrote in to the Planetary Report about it years ago.

Surveyor descended on its little 'vernier' thrusters, after braking on a big rocket module mounted under the frame. The rocket and tankage were dropped as the verniers came on, and must lie near each landing site. None were seen in Surveyor images, or by the Apollo 12 crew. But if a Google Lunar X Prize rover were to visit a Surveyor site it might have a chance to search for it.

Phil

[NGC3314]

The Surveyor bacterium story is not generaly accepted today. The people who did the work reported that they probably contaminated it. I think one of them wrote in to the Planetary Report about it years ago.

Surveyor descended on its little 'vernier' thrusters, after braking on a big rocket module mounted under the frame. The rocket and tankage were dropped as the verniers came on, and must lie near each landing site. None were seen in Surveyor images, or by the Apollo 12 crew. But if a Google Lunar X Prize rover were to visit a Surveyor site it might have a chance to search for it.

Phil

Thanks for that tidbit! Never knew that about Surveyor. And I thought designs for crewed landers (on both sides of the moon race) using such "crasher stages" were unnecessarily risky... But then now we find out that Luna 9 used air bags, so I should cease being surprised about anything from UMSF history. Anybody else hear about the tests carried out during the Salyut program to work out the best way for recoating telescope mirrors in orbit?