Posted on 06/04/2016 5:49:02 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Fifty years ago, Surveyor 1 reached the Moon. Launched on May 30, 1966 and landed on June 2, 1966 with the Moon at full phase it became the first US spacecraft to make a soft landing on another world. The first of seven Surveyor missions intended to test the lunar terrain for the planned Apollo landings it sent back over 10,000 images before lunar nightfall on June 14. The total rose to over 11,000 images returned before its second lunar night began on July 13. Surveyor 1 continued to respond from the lunar surface until January 7, 1967. Captured in this 2009 image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the first Surveyor still stands at its landing site, a speck in the Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms). With the Sun low on the western horizon the lonely, 3.3 meter tall spacecraft casts a shadow almost 15 meters long in the late lunar afternoon.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Image Credit: NASA / GSFC / Arizona State U. / Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter]
Spaceship junkyard, the Moon
In 1965 I was working for Bendix Fieldt the Goldstone tracking station. I told my boss I was going to quit and he said he would put me on the pioneer site so I would be the first person to see tyhe surveyor pictures. I told him I didn’t want to do that as the JPL guys said Hughes had screwed it up so bad it would never get off the ground. I didn’t know how great Hughes Aircraft Compay was.
I need to spend more time proof reading. It should be Bendix Field Engineering at the Goldstone tracking station.
We make the best decisions we can given what we ‘know’...
Yup!
I've made a couple of "beauts" over the years listening to people I thought were "smarter" than me or "knew what they were talking about."
And the MSM makes sure what we know just isn’t so...
That would make a great bedside table stand. How soon can I go get it?
Everything in the photo appears to be illuminated from the right side except Surveyor which is casting a shadow to the right (illuminated from the left)... hmmmm.
I suspect that you are looking at a picture from the mock up testing of Surveyor while on earth. Look at all the tire tracks in the back ground! No tires on Surveyor. Probably from the truck that transported it to some desert location.
No, as a matter of fact, everything appears to be illuminated from the left side.
:’) So, you got to see ‘em first?
No. I went on and quit.
Dang.
“Everything in the photo appears to be illuminated from the right side except Surveyor which is casting a shadow to the right (illuminated from the left)... hmmmm.”
At first glance this 2D image of 3d surface can fool the eye. The Tell is knowing that those things that show the shadows on the left side of themselves are CRATERS, not hills. Same as if you were in a stadium. Their description is correct.
I went to work for Hughes nine months later.
Regardless, must have been interesting work.
http://www.hughesscgheritage.com/
http://www.hughesscgheritage.com/hughes-aircraft-history-1932-1986-transcribed-by-faith-macpherson/
Surveyor I:
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-5-4.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Aircraft_Company#Hughes_Space_and_Communications_Group
Hughes Space and Communications Group[edit]
See also: Boeing Satellite Development Center
Hughes Space and Communications Group and the Hughes Space Systems Division built the world’s first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom, in 1963 and followed it closely with the first geosynchronous weather satellite, ATS-1, in 1966. Later that year their Surveyor 1 made the first soft landing on the Moon as part of the lead-up to the moon landings in Project Apollo. Hughes also built Pioneer Venus in 1978, which performed the first extensive radar mapping of Venus, and the Galileo probe that flew to Jupiter in the 1990s.[7] The company built nearly 40 percent of commercial satellites in service worldwide in 2000.[14]
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