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Ranger, Surveyor, Luna, Luna Orbiter, 1960s Missions to Earth's Moon
Bob Shaw
post Apr 21 2005, 08:07 PM
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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?


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edstrick
post Apr 23 2005, 08:50 PM
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Surveyor 1 was not expected to land. The preflight estimate of success was 25%. After launch, it was found that one of the two omni-antenna arms had not deployed. This was no biggie, but it did shift the center of gravity of the spacecraft. Operation of the descent camera required that the flat-panel high-gain antenna be aimed at earth once the spacecraft was moved to descent orientation. Given the unknown effect of the changed CG, they decided to not do the antenna orientation and the descent imagery was abandoned.

One of my prize posessions is a complete audio tape recording I made of live coverage of the Surveyor 1 landing taped off NBC TV. This was before talking heads took over and there was an absolute prohibition of geek-talk and dead air time. I need to get it off reel-to-reel tape into digital form.

Surveyor 2 was lost due to fuel contamination problems. One of the 3 vernier engines failed to thrust during the midcourse maneuver subsequent attempts to fire the engines, and the vehicle was doing a 1 revolution/second spin when it hit the moon. <ouch>

On Surveyor 3, the descent camera was removed and the surface mechanical properties arm was installed in it's place, using the same electronics support equipment <I think> as the descent camera.

I have *** SOMEWHERE *** a pair of color images I made with photoshop from paper copy published images Surveyor 3 took of a solar eclipse by the earth <total lunar eclipse> NASA published a really lousy version of the worst of the two images during the mission. You can see a beaded lopsided ring of orange fire from sunlight refracting through clear sky between high cloud areas, and a fainter, more continuous blue ring of sky around almost the entire earth. Image resolution was crappy. Earth was visible only near the edge of the wide angle frames, and not in the narrow angle position of the zoom lens. (1 camera with a 2 position zoom lens) Earth was visible at all only because Surveyor landed in the crater at a considerable tilt. Surveyor 7 got a nice series of black and white earth views at 1 day intervals and a quasi-movie of about 10-12 frames of earth rotating over 1 day. (Surveyor 6 and 7 substituted polarizing filters for red/green/blue filters but the science value turned out to be minimal.)

Phil: It's wonderful beyond belief to see you working on the Surveyor panoramas. I'd lost all hope of seeing them done right.

Surveyor Stereo: Surveyor's 8 throuigh 14, the science missions, were <I think> intended to have dual cameras for stereo. They were never built and flown because of budget cuts and with program delays, Apollo was about to happen. Surveyor 6 got stereo images <with some sun movement between image sets> because the spacecraft was launched from the moon in a 6-foot high and sideways bunnyhop <not as tall as the top of the antenna/solar-panel mast!> Surveyor 7 had a mirror mounted on the mast that provided stereo coverage of part of the soil mechanics arm working area.
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- Bob Shaw   Ranger, Surveyor, Luna, Luna Orbiter   Apr 21 2005, 08:07 PM
- - Phil Stooke   What a coincidence that you should ask this questi...   Apr 21 2005, 08:43 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Phil: Terrific! I don't suppose there ar...   Apr 21 2005, 08:53 PM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Apr 21 2005, 03:53 PM)Phil:...   Apr 22 2005, 09:07 AM
- - Phil Stooke   I will post some Surveyor stuff when I have time. ...   Apr 22 2005, 03:50 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Phil: Very, very interesting - and the 'work ...   Apr 22 2005, 07:28 PM
- - Phil Stooke   No! I have to leave something for other folks...   Apr 22 2005, 08:27 PM
- - ilbasso   Absolutely brilliant work, Phil! I'll be ...   Apr 22 2005, 09:45 PM
|- - 4th rock from the sun   Very good Phil!!! Can you tell us the...   Apr 22 2005, 11:35 PM
- - Phil Stooke   The Surveyor pans are 360 wide, though a hardware ...   Apr 23 2005, 01:38 PM
- - Phil Stooke   The Surveyor pans are 360 wide, though a hardware ...   Apr 23 2005, 01:40 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   As I understand it, another factor behind not usin...   Apr 23 2005, 03:25 PM
- - Phil Stooke   Bruce, the main purpose of the descent camera, of ...   Apr 23 2005, 04:08 PM
- - ilbasso   As for fascinating and beautiful vistas, I also ha...   Apr 23 2005, 07:28 PM
- - edstrick   Surveyor 1 was not expected to land. The prefligh...   Apr 23 2005, 08:50 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   It was the Surveyor I landing which hooked me for ...   Apr 23 2005, 09:10 PM
|- - tedstryk   I imagine some 3-D data could be reconstructed for...   Apr 24 2005, 12:17 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Space History Geek Time: (1) Phil Stooke has got...   Apr 24 2005, 12:44 AM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Apr 23 2005, 07:44 PM)(3...   Apr 24 2005, 06:57 AM
- - Phil Stooke   It would not be possible to locate Surveyor 4 with...   Apr 24 2005, 03:36 AM
- - edstrick   Good additional info there. I'm pretty sure I...   Apr 24 2005, 08:07 AM
|- - gndonald   QUOTE (edstrick @ Apr 24 2005, 04:07 PM) ...   Nov 5 2006, 09:04 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Yep -- I first ran across that series in 1971 at t...   Apr 24 2005, 09:37 AM
- - edstrick   Interesting!.... The Surveyor cameras were an...   Apr 24 2005, 09:45 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (edstrick @ Apr 24 2005, 08:07 AM)Good ...   Apr 24 2005, 09:59 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   By the way, that JPL series on their projects (sev...   Apr 24 2005, 10:01 AM
- - edstrick   Ah!... an article from Aviation "Leak...   Apr 24 2005, 11:07 AM
- - PhilHorzempa   [size=2] To continue this discussion of Sur...   Apr 24 2006, 09:05 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Another Phil: Yes; that's how the samples wer...   Apr 24 2006, 09:42 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   I've got quite a bit more in the way of detail...   Apr 24 2006, 10:52 PM
- - edstrick   One other distinction I remember reading about the...   Apr 25 2006, 05:15 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Bruce: Last year you mentioned, more or less in p...   Apr 25 2006, 03:16 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   I didn't know that. It is a fact, though, tha...   Apr 25 2006, 05:54 AM
- - edstrick   I could be wrong on that.. I'm working from fa...   Apr 25 2006, 10:47 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   It was an Aviation Week issue all the way back fro...   Apr 25 2006, 09:42 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Bruce: Thanks! Sometime soon I hope to have m...   Apr 25 2006, 10:03 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   While I'm at the library (whenever I do finall...   Apr 25 2006, 10:54 PM
- - PhilHorzempa   I want to comment on a memo that I saw in the NASA...   May 1 2006, 03:08 AM
- - dvandorn   Well... all I can tell you is that I've proba...   May 1 2006, 04:09 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Gadfry! That's a completely new one on me...   May 1 2006, 08:52 AM
- - ljk4-1   For those of you who may be in the Washington, D.C...   May 1 2006, 02:35 PM
- - PhilHorzempa   Concerning the plan for the LMSS, I may have a pho...   May 1 2006, 08:52 PM
- - PhilCo126   Spacecraftfilms.com is planning a DVD-set of ...   May 4 2006, 08:20 AM
- - ljk4-1   There was an earlier request for an image of the o...   May 19 2006, 04:27 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   That drawing of Surveyor in a 1962 issue of ...   May 20 2006, 04:16 PM
- - PhilHorzempa   I've been thinking lately that it would be nea...   May 26 2006, 03:43 AM
- - ljk4-1   Fortieth anniversary time of the launch and landin...   Jun 1 2006, 04:22 AM
- - ljk4-1   Mike Dinn, who in 1966 worked on the Surveyor 1 mi...   Jun 1 2006, 01:44 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jun 1 2006, 02:44 PM...   Jun 1 2006, 01:52 PM
- - edstrick   Block 4 was to include more block 2 type retro-roc...   Nov 6 2006, 10:51 AM
|- - gndonald   QUOTE (edstrick @ Nov 6 2006, 06:51 PM) B...   Nov 8 2006, 02:32 PM
- - Phil Stooke   According to: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4210/pag...   Nov 8 2006, 04:22 PM
- - dvandorn   There were two reasons why the Ranger series was a...   Nov 9 2006, 12:03 AM


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