Surveyor I Still Alive; More Pictures Ordered

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31188, 12 October 1966, Page 23

Surveyor I Still Alive; More Pictures Ordered

Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) PASADENA (California), October 10. Scientists today ordered America’s Surveyor I mooncraft, which has clung stubbornly to life for more than four months, to take six more pictures of the lunar surface, United Press International reported. However, they will not know for about two weeks whether the picture-taking session was successful. "We won’t know until we fly in the magnetic tapes from the Johannesburg tracking station, and then it will take several more days to translate them,” a spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has said. Surveyor’s power supply is dependent on an auxiliary battery which is not sheltered in a protective compartment and is exposed to the moon's boiling 250 degree fahrenheit "days" and freezing minus 250-degree “nights.” The question over the success of the experiment stemmed from the fact that, in order to conserve surveyor's weak supply, scientists had turned off every piece of equipment on the spacecraft not necessary for the picturetaking exercise, including the

telemetry equipment. This equipment tells scientists what the spacecraft is doing. Before sending commands to the spacecraft for six 20second picture-taking sequences, scientists checked each piece of equipment involved to make certain it was functioning. Shortly after the taking of the pictures—which were believed to be of the moon’s 1 surface although there was some question as to the direction the camera was pointed— | I the moon passed into lunar; ; night. • The night will last the | i equivalent of 14 earth days, j I and during that time any con-; ■ tact with the spacecraft will ; be impossible. I However, scientists said I they planned to try to contact surveyor again during the I next lunar day. ! The 620-lb moon robot came j to life on the lunar surface on I Saturday after it had been I presumed dead for nearly i three months. ■ Surveyor I made an histi oric soft-landing on the moon I on June 1 and returned more I that 11,000 closeup pictures of I the lunar landscape. It showed j that at least part of the i lunar crust is able to absorb I the impact of a manned spaceI craft.