Ranger, Surveyor, Luna, Luna Orbiter, 1960s Missions to Earth's Moon Options

[ljk4-1]

Fortieth anniversary time of the launch and landing of the first successful USA probe
on the Moon - Surveyor 1 in 1966.

Also the 35th anniversary of the launch of Mariner 9 in 1971.

Courtesy of Larry Kellogg's mailing list:

May 30, 2006 - 35th Anniversary (1971), Mariner 9 Launch (USA Mars Orbiter)

- 40th Anniversary (1966), Surveyor 1 Launch (USA Moon Lander)

My how time flies.

1966 - gas $0.32 - :-)

http://www.1960sflashback.com/1966/Economy.asp

- LRK -

JPL Space Calendar helps with the memories.

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http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/Master...og?sc=1966-045A

Surveyor 1 was the first spacecraft launched in the Surveyor program and the
first soft landing on the Moon by the United States.

Launch Date/Time: 1966-05-30 at 14:41:00 UTC
On-orbit Dry Mass: 294.3 kg
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http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/Master...og?sc=1971-051A

The Mariner Mars 71 mission was planned to consist of two spacecraft to
orbit Mars on complementary missions, but due to the failure of Mariner 8 to
launch properly, only one spacecraft was available.

Launch Date/Time: 1971-05-30 at 22:23:00 UTC
On-orbit Dry Mass: 558.8 kg
Nominal Power Output: 500 W

[ljk4-1]

Mike Dinn, who in 1966 worked on the Surveyor 1 mission at the
Tidbinbilla Deep Space tracking station in Australia, has posted a scan
of a mosaic of lunar photos taken by the probe and received at
Tidbinbilla.

There are also audio recordings of major events during the mission:

http://honeysucklecreek.net/msfn_missions/...apollo/Surveyor

Check out the fading yellow scotch tape.

[Bob Shaw]

Mike Dinn, who in 1966 worked on the Surveyor 1 mission at the
Tidbinbilla Deep Space tracking station in Australia, has posted a scan
of a mosaic of lunar photos taken by the probe and received at
Tidbinbilla.

There are also audio recordings of major events during the mission:

http://honeysucklecreek.net/msfn_missions/...apollo/Surveyor

Check out the fading yellow scotch tape.

Don't tell Phil Stooke! He'll not know whether to laugh or cry...

Bob Shaw

[gndonald]

There is an enormous amount of info on the project developments in those, particularly Surveyor and block 4+ Rangers (ones after Ranger 9, which never flew)... instrument development stuff, etc.

I'm intrigued, especially about those 'Block IV+' Rangers, what were they planning to do?

[edstrick]

Block 4 was to include more block 2 type retro-rockets and landing balsa capsules. Seismic and/or Luna-9 grade TV, I think.

[gndonald]

Block 4 was to include more block 2 type retro-rockets and landing balsa capsules. Seismic and/or Luna-9 grade TV, I think.

Makes sense that after the got the bugs sorted out that they would try and do what they originally planned. Its also understandable that after the success of the Surveyor landers that such planning would have been shelved.

[Phil Stooke]

According to:

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4210/pages/Cover.htm

Block 4 was to include better imaging and other "non-visual" science (fields and particles), while a briefly considered Block 5 would have included hard-landers.

Phil

[dvandorn]

There were two reasons why the Ranger series was abandoned after they finally got the Block 3 version to work:

1) Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor were in the works and designed to provide orders of magnitude more data than the Block 4 and Block 5 Rangers could ever provide. It seemed a waste of money to continue to pour it into Ranger when much more capable spacecraft were about to come online.

2) Ranger had a very limited view at high resolutions. The way in which field of view decreased as resolution increased limited the ability to understand fine-scale structures in context with their surroundings. The three Rangers which returned imagery served their designed function of imaging the lunar surface at very high resolution and determining some of its basic properties (slope, cratering, etc.). But additional Rangers would have given very little more data and wouldn't have been all that helpful in studying the Moon.

-the other Doug