Newspaper Page Text
Griffin Daily News
GIANTSTEP --69
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DRESS REHEARSAL — The lunar module
carrying American Astronauts Tom Stafford
and Eugene Cernan descends to within 50,000
feet of the moon during the Apollo 10 flight.
Launched May 18, 1969, this lunar venture did
all but land on the moon as the final dress
rehearsal for the subsequent July lunar land
ing. The third crew member, Astronaut John
Young, was orbiting the moon in the command
module while Stafford and Cernan made this
close approach to the moon.
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GIANT’S FOOTPRINT — The United States not
only visited the moon in 1969 but also sent two un
manned visitors to Mars, Mariners 6 and 7. Shown here
is this remarkable photograph taken Aug. 5 by the
Mariner 7 spacecraft. Two nearby craters photographed
obliquely give the effect of a large footprint. This high
resolution photo shows an area on the Martian surface
approximately 85 by 200 miles.
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“RED” PLANET — 1969 was also the year for Mars.
Shown here is the “red” planet as photographed on
July 30, 1969 by the NASA spacecraft Mariner 6. This
photo was taken from a third of a million miles away
as the Mariner spacecraft made its far encounter of
Mars. This photo was received by a 210-foot “dish” an
tenna at NASA’s Goldstone, Calif., tracking station.
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MIDNIGHT WEATHER PHOTOGRAPHY — 1969
also saw the launch of a highly sophisticated meteoro
logical satellite, Nimbus 111, placed into polar orbit on
April 14. It took this photo of the eastern seaboard at
midnight. It shows the Atlantic coastline from Canada,
clearly outlining the New England shore, down to
Florida and west to the Great Lakes.
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Sat. and Sun., Dec. 27-28, 1969
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INTERNATIONAL SPACECRAFT — Interna
tional cooperative efforts figured heavily in the
NASA launch schedule during 1969. Shown here is
the U.S./Canadian ISIS-A spacecraft launched Jan.
30. It was the third in a series of five missions on
ionospheric studies conducted with Canada. Ten of
its experiments are still operational.
1969... The Year Os Apollo
EXPLORATION OF PLANETS BEGINS
It was 1969 . . .
. . . the year of the Apollo Moon landings, the year
of close-up studies of Mars and, closer to home, a year
when communications satellites, space weather observa
tion and scientific examination of the Earth’s environ
ment from orbit continued with increasing sophistica
tion.
Following the Apollo 9 and 10 readiness missions, the
first lunar landing mission was launched July 16 and
man set foot on another celestial body for the first
time four days later.
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for
mankind” were the words of Apollo 11 Commander
Neil A. Armstrong as he swung down from the Lunar
Module to the dusty Sea of Tranquility at 10:56 p.m.
EDT July 20.
Exactly four months later Apollo 12 Commander
Charles “Pete” Conrad led a second two-man explora
tion team to the Moon, this time in the Ocean of
Storms.
The era of manned exploration of other planets had
begun—bringing to fruition the ten-year effort of the
government-industry-university complex in which
400,000 Americans had brought a major milestone in
unlocking the secrets of the universe.
Two unmanned spacecraft, Mariners 6 and 7, flew by
Mars in July and August revealing it to be different
than — rather than resembling — either the Moon or
Earth.
Results of the flyby in which 200 photos of Mars
were taken confirmed earlier data received from Mar
iner 4 in 1964 that there are numerous craters and
the atmosphere is roughly equivalent to that of Earth
at about 100,000 feet altitude.
But the unprecedented clarity of the new pictures
showed numerous craters including one about 300 miles
in diameter as well as one vast stretch of over 1,200
miles with almost no craters. The only identifiable cloud
was a very thin streak hanging 20 to 30 miles off the
edge of the planet.
Ice cap temperatures were measured to be very simi
lar to that of dry ice although one experimenter be
lieves there may be water ice at the edge of the cap.
In the meteorological satellite area, Nimbus 3 was
placed in polar orbit. Shortly after launch, it was ap
parent that not only the cloud cover photos being re
turned were of excellent quality, but a new step for
ward in meteorology had been taken. A weather bureau
official called it a breakthrough as significant to
meteorology as the launch of the first satellite.
He referred to the vertical temperature measure
ments, air pressure, vapor content and wind speeds
taken at numerous locations around the world on a
daily basis.
NASA also launched a regular meteorological opera
tional satellite for ESSA, ESSA 9, in February, and
four communications satellites were launched the for
Communications Satellite Corp. One of the four, IN
TELSAT 111 F-5, failed to achieve orbit because of a
launch vehicle malfunction.
Two more Orbiting Solar Observatories, OSO's 5 and
6, were launched by NASA during the year to continue
the study of the Sun and another Interplanetary Moni
toring Platform, IMP-G, and an Orbiting Geophysical
Observatory, OGO-6, were launched to study the medi
um near Earth and out to more than 100,000 miles in
space.
Other launches for outside organizations included an
ionospheric sounding satellite, ISIS 1; ESRO I-B and
German Research Satellite-A, both scientific satellites,
and a communications satellite, Skynet-A, for the Brit
ish Ministry of Defense.
Another important flight during the year was Biosat
ellite 3. This was the first biosatellite mission involving
a primate and though it was aborted far short of its
scheduled flight of one month, results from the flight
were important.
New knowledge about the structure and behavior of
cancer cells was a surprise 1969 research dividend.
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., developed a
microscope technique that permitted time-lapse photo
graphs of cell division mechanisms in healthy and can
cerous tissues.
The goal was to get data on how space radiation
might affect cellular growth. What they discovered and
recorded was that cancer cells split, but remain con
nected by thin, stretchy linkages and that one cancer
cell could cause connected cells to divide in sequence
by sending a sort of chain reaction-stimulus through
the linkages.
In aeronautical research, the promising NASA super
critical wing concept moved from hand-crafted, wind
tunnel refinements into preparation for full-scale flight
tests. The concept, also originating at Langley, has
stirred unusual interest because of its potential for
enhancing both the cruise performance and the opera
tional economics of subsonic jet airliners. Flight tests
will be made with such a wing mounted on a modified
jet fighter acquired by NASA from the U.S. Navy.
Double success twice rewarded NASA’s efforts in
tracking and data acquisition in 1969, with the suc
cessful lunar landing flights of Apollo 11 and 12, and
the two Mariners flying close to Mars.
The Manned Space Network performed virtually
without flaw in maintaining contact on two flights,
with two Apollo spacecraft at once — the Lunar Mod
ule stationed on the Moon, the Command Module con
tinuing in lunar orbit. The 85-foot antennas of the ma
jor stations at Goldstone, Calif.; Canberra, Australia,
and Madrid, Spain, used main and wing, or backup, an
tennas to carry out this long-range double-track task.
In addition, with 210-foot antennas at Goldstone and
Parkes, Australia, they provided live television direct
from the Moon to an audience estimated, for Apollo 11,
in the hundreds of millions of persons over many mod
ern nations.
The Mars feat attracted the interest of astronomers
because the cameras of Mariners 6 and 7 returned 200
high quality photos of the planet in a period of some 12
hours —a gross gain from the technology possible
with Mariner 4, in 1965, when 22 Mars pictures were
transmitted in 175 hours. Last July 31 and Aug. 5 Mar
iner 6 and 7 passed within 2,000 miles of Mars to scan
two different faces of the planet, and transmitted photo
and other data to Earth over a distance of 60 million
miles.
NASA’s international program broke new ground in
1969 with an agreement with India for use of a syn
chronous communications satellite to broadcast TV di
rectly into 5,000 Indian villages for such program ob
jectives as population control and agriculture improve
ment. The year also saw the successful launching of
three scientific satellites in cooperative programs with
Canada, Germany and the European Space Research
Organization (ESRO).
More than 50 foreign countries continued to obtain
daily meteorological data directly from NASA and
ESSA weather satellites by means of inexpensive auto
matic picture transmission (APT) ground receiving
stations. The cloud-cover photographs received contrib
uted widely to improved weather forecasting and storm
advisories.
NASA continued to transfer to industry, small busi
ness and the scientific community the new technology
coming out of space-related research and development
activity. Most of this technology comes from NASA
field centers where specialists review research and de
velopment projects for promising new ideas. NASA
contractors, also, are required to report inventions, dis
coveries, innovations and improved techniques they de
velop in work for NASA.
NASA’s 1969 launch score: 20 successes out of 22
major launches.
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U.S. FLAG ON IHE MOON — Old Glory is planted on the moon
on July 20, 1969 by the Apollo 11 astronauts. Shown by the flag is As
tronaut Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. The photo was taken by Apollo 11 com
mander Neil A. Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon.
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OLD SURVEYOR — Fancy meeting you here. But the
meeting was not altogether unexpected; as a matter of
fact it was planned. Astronaut Charles Conrad studies
the Surveyor 111 spacecraft in the Ocean of Storms on the
lunar surface. Conrad targeted the landing Nov. 20 of »he
Apollo 12 so that it would be near the old Surveyor, now
a veteran lunar resident since it soft landed there April
19, 1967. Purpose was to determine affect of lunar atmos
phere on the Surveyor. Shown on the horizon is the lunar
module, “Intrepid”, which carried Conrad and Alan Bean
to the moon’s surface, while Astronaut Richard Gordon pi
loted the command module, “Yankee Clipper”, in lunar
orbit.
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SOLAR OBSERVATION—NASA not only sent visi
tors to the moon and Mars in 1969 but also sent Orbit
ing Solar Observatory 5 out to scout the Sun. It opened
NASA s launch year Jan. 22, 1969 and continues opera
tional with six of its eight experiments continuing to
return data on the Sun and its influence on earth. OSO
6 followed March 9 with 23 of its 24 experiments still
operational.