U.S. Gives Priority To Moon Shot

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30028, 12 January 1963, Page 13

U.S. Gives Priority To Moon Shot

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LOS ANGELES (California), Jan. 11. The United States has given “highest priority" to the Surveyor project, an unmanned spacecraft which will take television pictures of the moon.

The director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Dr. Abe Silverstein, said yesterday the Government felt it was “very urgent” to get Surveyor on its mission to set the stage for manned landings on the moon. United Press International reported. "Ground testing on Surveyor engines will begin next vear with flight expected in early 1965.” Dr. Silverstein told a press conference in reporting on N.AS-A/S stepped-up space effort for the coming year. Fear TV Cameras Surveyor, which will weigh about a ton, will land four television cameras on the moon, a drill to penetrate the lunar surface and analytical instruments. N.A.S.A. also announced yesterday that Mariner II did such a good job of reporting on Venus last month that a second Venus probe scheduled for 1964 has been cancelled.

Instead, the next flight to Venus probably will be tried in November, 1965, with a 12001 b spacecraft capable of landing an instrument capsule to analyse and detect any micro-organisms in its soiL Space Laboratory The US. will send a space laboratory to Mars in Sovembe -, 1964, to try to find out whether conditions on the planet would support life, NASA also announced. The unmanned Mars craft,

like Mariner 11, will weigh nearly 5001 b and will be launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, by an AtlasAgena rocket. It may carry television equipment to scan Mars’s surface, N-A.S.A. said, but it will not be able to detect any actual life. The Soviet Union launched a craft to Mars on November 1, and said it carried equipment for taking television pictures and transmitting them to earth.