TRANSMITTER ON MOON

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29004, 18 September 1959, Page 9

TRANSMITTER ON MOON

Next Soviet Step In Space

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 16.

Russia plans to plant an automatic information transmitter on the moon—and to do it soon, according to American Associated Press.

The Director of the Moscow Planetarium (Mr Viktor Bazykin) said today that the transmitter would be similar to unmanned weather stations now used to obtain information from remote polar regions.

“Such a station will supply a wealth of scientific information which will make possible the next stage—man’s flight to the moon,” he wrote in an article in the newspaper “Signal.” It was quoted by Moscow Radio. Mr Bazykin said that while temperatures on the moon’s surface were fiercely extreme because of its lack of atmosphere, “a few metres below the surface the temperature is constant.” He suggested that when men were finally sent to the moon “permanent premises for these explorers could be created in caves. fissures. craters or chambers specially blasted out for this purpose. “I believe that all conditions for normal life could be provided in such premises, including air conditioning, artificial climate installations, electric lighting and so on,” Mr Bazykin added. Impact of Rocket

Another astronomer, Mr Nikolai Barabashev, said watchers at the Kharkov Observatory saw “a certain light effect at the moment of the Soviet lunar rocket’s impact on the moon on Sunday night. Writing in the trade union paper “Trud,” Mr Barabashev did not describe the light effect, but he said it appeared “in the area of the Seas of Serenity. Tranquillity and Vapours—that is, exactly where it was expected to occur.” He added: “The nature of this light effect and its connexion with the rocket’s landing will be established only after careful visual and photographic observations.”