LUNAR MOUNTAIN RANGE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31079, 7 June 1966, Page 13

LUNAR MOUNTAIN RANGE

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) PASADENA, June 6.

America’s moon robot, the Surveyor, yesterday added pictures of the brightest star in the sky and an eerie view of a lunar mountain range to its snapshot album, the “New York Times” service reported.

Like a ship at sea, the spacecraft needed a star sighting to help fix its position.

The tilting, rotating mirror through which the Surveyor’s camera sees the barren lunar world around it was moved eight times by earth command before it found the bluish-white star Sirius in the southern hemisphere.

By calculating the angles involved in this sighting, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be able to tell where the Surveyor is on the waterless Ocean of Storms.

They will also be able to calculate exactly how it is facing in relation to the earth and how level or slop-, ing the lunar terrain is where the spacecraft sits. 2053 Photographs

Since the spacecraft touched down on the western part of the moon last Thursday, it has sent 2053 photographs back to earth.

It is commanded by a control centre. The laboratory, operated by the California Institute of Technology for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, developed the Surveyor. The mountains photographed yesterday form the

rim of a nameless "ghost crater” more than 60 miles across, in which the spacecraft landed. A ghost crater is one that has been worn down in time by some unknown lunar erosion process until its features are far less distinct than those of younger craters. Although the lunar horizon lies only about one mile from the spacecraft as far as the camera’s eye is concerned, the portion of the mountain range photographed yesterday peeks about 500 feet above that horizon and extends along it for slightly less than three miles.

Today, the Surveyor will again look for Sirius and also for the star Canopus, the star which a light-sensing device aboard the spacecraft used to help navigate to the moon. “New” Earth The Surveyor’s camera will then go unused for one day while the sun is almost directly overhead. The six electric motors that drive its mirror, lens, iris and shutter would overheat in the 246degree temperature of the lunar noon. If the Surveyor continues to function until the lunar twilight early next week, it may attempt to photograph the crescent of the “new” earth as it appears over the lunar horizon. The mountains are believed to lie about 12 miles northeast of the Surveyor’s position. But that position Is known only to within about nine miles.

Yesterday’s star sightings and more to be made today

will help narrow the doubt. Then scientists can calculate the position of the mountains more precisely and consult lunar maps 'to determine their heights. The Surveyor’s information may even result in new figures for these heights.

Dismissed ■ In Hue.—The police chief of Hue was dismissed yesterday, apparently for failure to resist mobs which burned the United States Consulate and the United States Information Service buildings in the city. —Hue, June 6.