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.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

The unmanned Surveyor spacecraft explored the Moon’s equatorial region in preparation of the manned Apollo program. During 1966-1968, NASA launched 7 of these 995 kg three-legged Surveyor spacecraft and yielded 5 outstanding successes. Surveyor 1 made the first soft landing on the Moon in June 1966. Surveyor 3 landed in April 1967 and was visited by the Apollo 12 astronauts in November 1969.
Surveyor 7 (January 1968) was a scientific mission and its TV registered 2 lasers aimed at the spacecraft from observatories in California & Arizona. This demonstrated the feasibility of using lasers to measure the Earth-Moon distance with great accuracy (this was done with laser reflectors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo missions and Soviet-Russian Lunokhod rovers)

This post has been edited by PhilCo126: Mar 29 2008, 05:54 PM

[DDAVIS]

Surveyor 7 (January 1968) was a scientific mission and its TV registered 2 lasers aimed at the spacecraft from observatories in California & Arizona.
I have seen a reproduction of that photo, but the 'laser' specks on the night side of Earth appeared to be retouched onto the photo in the version I saw. Is there an original image of this experiment in existance showing their actual brightnesses?

Don

[peter59]

Surveyor 7 (January 1968) was a scientific mission and its TV registered 2 lasers aimed at the spacecraft from observatories in California & Arizona.
I have seen a reproduction of that photo, but the 'laser' specks on the night side of Earth appeared to be retouched onto the photo in the version I saw. Is there an original image of this experiment in existance showing their actual brightnesses?

Jan,19, 1968, 08:41:53 GMT

52,51,45,40,45,40,50,44,43,48,40
51,50,50,45,54,39,37,45,40,45,41
47,50,50,46,46,45,39,48,43,47,47
45,40,48,48,43,30,37,42,43,45,44
46,48,48,47,33, 4,16,52,52,47,44
46,37,46,49,25, 0, 0,33,50,46,52
43,45,38,49,43,38,40,51,52,45,51
52,48,41,44,50,53,43,61,42,42,48
49,48,50,49,52,51,55,46,50,52,52
52,62,52,53,45,50,51,50,48,49,55
58,53,59,57,50,50,48,54,48,43,54

Printout of the region around the laser spot of the digitized picture.
The number at each point represents the optical density, on a scale
of 64 gray levels (0 = white, 63 = black). The laser spot is completely
saturated at two point in the picture.

Original image (not very spectacular)
 laser_beam5.bmp ( 363.05K ) Number of downloads: 718


Inverted and stretched image.
 laser_beam6.bmp ( 363.05K ) Number of downloads: 704