NEW U.S. MOON ROCKET TO GO

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 13

NEW U.S. MOON ROCKET TO GO

(NZPA.- Reuter—Copyright) CAPE KENNEDY, February 16. American space scientists will begin a double venture today with the launching of a giant winged satellite named Pegasus.

Tomorrow they plan to send another Ranger spacecraft to the moon, hoping it will send back detailed photographs of the “Sea of Tran quillity ” Pegasus, which will be launched by the huge Saturn booster rocket, is intended to send back to earth data about tiny meteoroids which By through space at speeds ranging between 20,000 and 136,000 miles an'hour.

Scientists want to know more about meteoroids because they may pose st threat to prolonged space flights by eroding protective layers of metal on spacecraft and by making it impossible to see out of a cabin window. Once in flight Pegasus will have two wing-like panels extending 96ft. Pegasus has been covered I with ultra-thin coatings of 'aluminium and copper of 1 about the thickness of

chocolate bar wrappers Special measuriing devices will record the number of times they are hit by the meteoroids on future space craft

A space agency spokesman said that information from Pegasus and two more similar space flights should indicate bow thick to make the outer layers. Ranger VIII is due to crash-land into the moon after a 65-hour flight of a quarter of a million miles. In the seconds before landing, scientists hope it will take more than 4000 photographs of the lunar surface in the area of the “Sea of Tranquillity” and near the moon's “shadow line” and relay them back to earth. Ranger VII was the first spacecraft to send back pictures of the moon’s surface. It took shots that were further away from the “shadow line.”