Ranger, Surveyor, Luna, Luna Orbiter, 1960s Missions to Earth's Moon |
Ranger, Surveyor, Luna, Luna Orbiter, 1960s Missions to Earth's Moon |
Apr 21 2005, 08:07 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
Have any of the serious experts on this board ever sorted out any 1960s images? I'm thinking of the Surveyor panoramas (in the 60s they did it with photos pasted onto the inside of half-spheres!) and the way that the exposure dropped off toward one corner, making a horrible patchwork effect. Or them lines and spots on the Lunar Orbiter images...
Most of the NASA mission data should be available as digital source material, and thus could be manipulated, though I suspect that getting anything 'real' from Soviet missions would be a bit of a chase! Any thoughts? -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Apr 23 2005, 03:25 PM
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Guests |
As I understand it, another factor behind not using the Surveyor descent camera was that it probably couldn't have provided any photos much better than the Lunar Orbiters' very sharp high-resolution lens photos -- and, of course, covering a much tinier area. (Especially since the plumes from the various landing rockets were though likely to fog up its lens.) They ended up, instead, removing the descent camera on the last five Surveyors and using its power and signal leads for other instruments: the surface sampler on #3 and 4, the alpha-scatter spectrometer on 5 and 6, and both of them on 7. A pity they didn't think of that earlier.
In that connection, by the way, I heard a remarkable story at a meeting of AIAA engineers in January. While they got a magnificent sequence of descent photos from NEAR during its final descent to the surface of Eros -- the camera stayed in clear focus at much closer range than anticipated -- they lost the photos from the last few hundred feet of descent, because the spacecraft's high-gain antenna moved out of line with Earth at that point. After landing, NEAR's engineers had the bright idea of using its thrusters to lift it off from the surface long enough for it to point its high-gain dish at Earth and return those last recorded photos. Unfortunately, while they were eagerly planning this, nobody thought to turn off the spacecraft's attitude-control system -- and so it quietly exhausted its hydrazine supply by trying to stabilize the entire asteroid. World War III will probably start in much the same way. |
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