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DESTINATION MOON: A History of the
Lunar Orbiter Program
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- CHAPTER I: UNMANNED LUNAR
EXPLORATION AND THE NEED FOR A LUNAR ORBITER
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- The Call for a Program of
Exploration
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- [1] During the decade
of the sixties, three major ventures of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration thrust America's unmanned exploration of
the Moon outside the Earth's atmosphere: the Ranger Program, the
Surveyor Program., and the Lunar Orbiter Program. Initiated before
President John F. Kennedy's May 25, 1961, request for a national
decision to make a manned lunar landing in the sixties, Ranger and
Surveyor gave the United States its first close look at the Moon.
The original objectives of the programs had not envisioned
imminent exploration of the Moon by men. Instead, NASA had
developed highly proficient instrumented means for preliminary
exploration without direct applications in an undertaking such as
the Apollo manned lunar landing program.
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- One of the chief spokesmen for lunar
exploration in the early days of America's space program was Nobel
Laureate Harold C. Urey. In his address to the Lunar and Planetary
Colloquium meeting on October 29, 1958.,.at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Urey called for a stepped-up United [2] States effort to
explore the Earth's natural sattelite1. He summarized what scientists then knew about the
origin and composition of the Moon: that much speculation but
little conclusive knowledge existed concerning the Moon's
environment.
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- Man had noticed many unique and unusual
phenomena on the lunar surface through optical telescopes since
Galileo's first observations in 1609, but Earth's atmosphere
limited explorative abilities of scientists. Urey concluded that
automated probes would enable human observation to pierce the
atmosphere for more detailed, precise looks at the Moon. Such
probes would allow man to take the next logical step before actual
manned lunar missions brought him to the Moon's surface. That
surface, unlike Earth's, had not experienced millions of years of
atmospheric erosion and weathering processes, as far as
observations up to that time revealed. What had it experienced?
The answer to this question could possibly explain the birth and
development of the Earth and , indeed, of the solar
system.2
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- [3] Following Urey's
call for intensified efforts to extend America's lunar exploration
capabilities, but not necessarily in response to it, the newly
created National Aeronautics and Space Administration requested
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a study of the
requirements for a multi-phase program to explore the Moon, Albert
R. Hibbs, Chief of the Research Analysis Section at JPL, organized
a study group to analyze the problem. On April 30, 1959, he
submitted the group's findings
to NASA Headquarters. Among other
steps the Hibbs Report proposed placing a satellite
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- in a well-controlled orbit around the moon
using terminal guidance.... High resolution photographs of the
surface of the moon will be taken at various wave lengths and
polarizations. These photographs should provide information
on the surface characteristics of the moon that will be
valuable for choosing a site for a lunar soft
landing.3
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- The Hibbs Report suggested a more
sophisticated approach toward lunar exploration than that which
NASA actually undertook, and it did not become the basis for the
Lunar Orbiter Program. Nevertheless, it indicated the kind of
probe which would perform necessary, extensive photography of the
Moon's surface. The lunar orbiter [4] concept later was
adapted from the Surveyor Program which NASA Headquarters
initiated with JPL in May 1960.
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- In December 1959 NASA and JPL had started
the Ranger Program, the first step in NASA's unmanned lunar
exploration venture. Surveyor, the second major program in this
venture, originally envisioned two kinds of probes: a softlanding
spacecraft for on-site investigation of the Moon's surface and an
orbiter for investigation of the near-lunar environment. They
would share common hardware., thereby probably reducing
costs.
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- Both Surveyor Lander and Surveyor Orbiter,
as Congressionally authorized programs, called for very
sophisticated spacecraft whose hardware would require major
development. The burden of this development fell upon JPL and
together with the Ranger and Mariner programs made it the
pioneering agency in the difficult process of designing and
building automated, long-life spacecraft for deep space
exploration.
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- The Surveyor Orbiter did not materialize.
The Ranger and the Surveyor Lander programs, as first-generation
spacecraft programs, came to overtax the manpower and facilities
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Centaur Rocket Program
at the Marshall Space Flight Center experienced development
problems and was eventually transferred to the Lewis Research
Center. Centaur was to be the launch vehicle for Surveyor, and, as
originally envisioned, [5] it was to have a
capability to put an 1,100-kilogram spacecraft into a translunar
trajectory. At Lewis this capability was reduced to 950 kilograms,
causing redesign of the Surveyor Lander.
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- In the wake of early Soviet space
achievements the American space program became enveloped in
far-reaching political competition with the Soviet Union. In this
atmosphere, the United States counted heavily on the Ranger and
Surveyor programs, pioneering endeavors in the application of new
technology, to achieve an urgently needed "first" in space.
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- The first six Ranger missions, between
August 1961 and February 1964, experienced no complete mission
success, but they acquired valuable data on the performance of
systems. The publicity of their shortcomings heightened the
tension, frustration, and anxiety among Americans about the state
of U.S. technological prowess, while it drowned out the
significance of the lessons learned by NASA and JPL. By June of
1964 the congressional Subcommittee on NASA Oversight had reviewed
the Ranger Program and had concluded that
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- ...progress in improving testing and
fabrication techniques at JPL Is a step-by-step process with
little direction from NASA Headquarters and that major improvement
actions take place primarily as a result of failures. The
subcommittee recognizes that the Ranger Program is both unique and
complex in the strictest sense of a scientific accomplishment and
supervisory practices as currently [6] in use throughout
the missile-space industry would go far to develop improved
testing and fabrication procedures needed a sophisticated
spacecraft such as Ranger. 4
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