MORE PICTURES FROM MOON

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31108, 11 July 1966, Page 13

MORE PICTURES FROM MOON

(N.Z.P.A Reuter—Copyright)

PASADENA (California), July 10.

Surveyor I, America’s television eye on the moon, continued an amazing recovery today from what was feared yesterday to be a fatal fever.

New pictures may be relayed back to earth tomorrow from the lunar surface. After engineers had declared Surveyor all but dead because of a rising battery temperature, the temperature levelled off around 140 degrees F.—only one degree short of killing it off. Then, to the complete amazement of Surveyor officials at Pasadena, the temperature began to slide back down yesterday, and by early today was at a "comfortable” 120 degrees. “It’s just an unbelievable spacecraft,” an engineer said. Control of the spacecraft was handed over to the Canberra and Johannesburg stations late yesterday, and they were to continue to monitor

it during the day while engineers in Pasadena rested for what may be a 12-hour picture session tomorrow. Surveyor softlanded in the moon’s Ocean of Storms on June 2 on America’s first attempt at such a mission. During the period before the lunar night, equal to two weeks on earth, descended on June 14, the spacecraft sent 10,338 pictures back to earth.

When the sun arose over Surveyor on June 29, signals from earth failed to rouse the slumbering spacecraft, and officials assumed that it had failed to survive the frigid temperatures of night. But it came back to life last Tuesday—during the lunar noon—and 24 new pictures were relayed to earth in a test.