Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/JPLNEWS1/0383.PR

Text File | 1993-04-21 | 11KB | 225 lines

               CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

                   JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

4800 Oak Grove Drive                             MUrray 1-4261
Pasadena, California                             SYlvan 0-6811

__________________________________________
         PASADENA, California, February 7, 1961----Four cameras
aboard the Surveyor spacecraft will send television pictures of
the moon's surface back to earth, each camera transmitting pic-
tures at the rate of one very few seconds, it was revealed here
today.
         Engineers of the California Institute of Technology
Jet Propulsion Laboartory and the Hughes Aircraft Company,
Culver City, California, revealed these and other details about
the lunar soft landing spacecraft as a full-scale model of
Surveyor was unveiled for the first time at JPL.
         Dr. T. Keith Glennan, former Administrator of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, last January 19
announced in Washington the selection of the Hughes Company for
contract negotiations to build Surveyor.
         Plans call for seven Surveyors to be launched to the
moon in the period 1963-1965.  JPL, NASA's center for lunar and
planetary exploration, will provide technical direction for the
project which is expected to cost upwards of $50 million.
         Clifford I. Cummings, Director of the Lunar Program
for JPL, explained that Surveyor is the second step in the plan
to explore the moon. V

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         First step, Cummings said, is the Ranger series which
will include five Ranger spacecraft, the last three of which
are scheduled to rough land on the moon starting next year.
The first two Ranger spacecraft will be sent on long elliptical
trajectories away from the earth.
         Rangers 3, 4, and 5, Cummings said, will be sent on
trajectories to impact the moon.  A survival capsule, surround-
ed by crushable material to help absorb the shock of impact,
will be detached from Ranger near the moon and retro rocket
will fire to slow the capsule down to something under 300 miles
an hour at landing.
         Contained in the capsule will be some 8 pounds of
instrumentation, Cummings said, including a simple, one-axis
seismometer to record moon quakes or meteoritic impact.  There
will also be chemical batteries and a transmitter to report
these events back to earth.
         Ranger will be fired from Cape Canaveral by the Atlas-
Agena B rocket system, Cummings said.
         With the greater weight lifting capability of the
Atlas-Centaur system available for the Surveyor project,
Cummings said, the weight of the working instrumentation that
can be landed on the moon will rise correspondingly.
         Surveyor will weigh some 2500 pounds when it is
injected into the lunar impact trajectory.  After the retro
rocket fires and it lands on the moon, Surveyor will weigh 750
pounds, of which more than 200 pounds will be working scientific
and engineering instrumentation. X

3-3-3
         Prospector, the third step in the NASA lunar explor-
ation program, will use Saturn as a launching vehicle, Cummings
said.  Since Saturn will be capable of accelerating payloads of
the order of several tons to lunar transfer speeds, among the
missions now visualized are mobile experiments on the moon and
the return of lunar material samples, Cummings said.
         Walker E. Giberson, JPL Surveyor Project Manager, said
the feasibility of the Surveyor mission was determined by JPL
as the result of a study which started about 16 months ago.  In
May, 1960, a large segment of industry was supplied details of
the requirements and were asked to submit proposals for a
design study of the Surveyor spacecraft, Giberson said.
         In July, 1960, partially funded study contracts were
awarded to four of the competing companies.
         The four firms returned the results of their studies
to JPL in mid-December, and about a month later, NASA named
Hughes as the company with whom a contract would be negotiated
for the Surveyor project, Giberson said.
         All seven Surveyors, Giberson said, will be launched
from the Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral, Florida,
using the Centaur launch vehicle.  The Centaur, a two-stage
rocket, will have a Convair Atlas as a first stage and will use
a second stage incorporating the liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen
engine now being developed by Pratt & Whitney at its West Palm
Beach, Florida, facility, Giberson said. X

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         Dr. Allen E. Puckett, vice president of engineering at
Hughes Aircraft, described the events following the injection
of the Surveyor spacecraft into a lunar trajectory.
         After separation from the Centaur, Dr. Puckett said,
the Surveyor will maneuver to align itself to the sun and
earth.  These maneuvers will be accomplished by optical sensors
and tiny gas reaction jets located on the spacecraft.  The
Surveyor will maintain this coast attitude with its solar
panels directed toward the sun.
         After about 20 hours of its 66-hour flight to the
moon, engineers at NASA's Deep Space Instrumentation Facility,
who will be continually tracking the spacecraft, will radio
instructions to the Surveyor to adjust its flight path so that
it will intercept the moon, Dr. Puckett said.
         As Surveyor approaches the moon, television cameras
will be turned on automatically and pictures of the lunar
surface will be transmitted back to earth.  Then a large
retrorocket and three vernier rockets will fire to slow the
descent.  After the retro burns out, it will be separated from
the spacecraft, and with the verniers still burning, the
Sureyor will slow down to about six miles an hour and land
gently on the moon.  Surveyor's landing speed will be slightly
slower than a manned parachute landing on earth, Dr. Puckett
pointed out.
         Dr. Leo Stoolman, Hughes Surveyor Project Manager,
said the Surveyor television sytem consists of four cameras,
three pointing up and one down, all fixed in position. R

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         Above each of the upward-viewing cameras is a gimbal-
mounted mirror capable of directing the television cone of
vision through 360 degrees of azimuth and from 15 degrees above
to 45 degrees below the horizontal line of the spacecraft.
         A drill, Dr. Stoolman said, designed to penetrate the
surface of the moon to a depth of from 18 inches to 60 inches,
will be lowered from the spacecraft.  As it drills, small
fragments of the moon's crust will be collected from the hole
and distributed to different instruments for analysis.
         One of the TV cameras will be used to monitor the
drill so that scientists can watch on their TV screens and
observe the drilling operation.
         Some of the other Surveyor scientific instruments,
Dr.\Stoolman said, will be a sensitive seismometer to record
moon quakes or meteoritic impacts, a sensitive magnetometer to
determine if the moon has a magnetic field, instruments to
measure the gravity of the moon, and instrumentation to measure
radiation and lunar atmosphere.
         The Surveyor will operate on the lunar surface for at
least one month, Dr. Stoolman said. <

OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY, CALIFRONIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA.  TELEPHONE [phone]

The following is an official break down of the Surveyor funds
to be used in response to the press.
         For the fiscal year 1966, exclusive of launch vehicle
         costs, is $350,000,000.


         The total cost for the first 7 spacecraft will be
         $426,000,000.  This is also exclusive of launch vehicle
         costs.


         For block II, 3 spacecraft the cost will be $97,000,000.
         These 3 are only partially funded.


         The total spacecraft cost will be $523,000,000.


         The total launch vehicle will be $196,000,000.  This is
         for all 10 Surveyors.


         The overall total cost then, for Surveyor, is $719,000,000.


         2-66 J

OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY, CALIFRONIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA.  TELEPHONE [phone]

FOR RELEASE AFTER COMPLETION OF TEST.

         A test model of the Surveyor lunar soft landing space-
craft successfully performed a radar controlled landing today,
at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, demonstrating the tech-
nique developed by engineers for landing gently on the moon.
         Two radar dishes on the craft provided continuous in-
formation on altitude and rate of descent.  An electronic Flight
Control Subsystem translated the information into signals to
throttle three small liquid fuel rocket engines to slow the
test spacecraft to a landing speed of about 3 1/2 mph.
         A series of seven Surveyor spacecraft are currently
scheduled by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
         Surveyor will approach the moon at a speed of about
6000 mph and will be slowed to about 240 mph by the firing of a
large, solid fuel retro motor.  It will then be slowed to about
3 1/2 mph by the three liquid engines tested today.
         For today's test, the vehicle was raised to an alti-
tude of 1000 feet by a balloon and its engines radar and
electronics warmed up and tested before the test vehicle was
released.  With the engines at low thrust, the test vehicle
fell toward the desert floor until it reached a speed of about
45 mph at an altitude of 625 feet, approximating the speed of a
\

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Surveyor at the same lunar altitude.  The engines were then
throttled by the Flight Control Subsystem, acting on radar
information, to slow the test craft.
         Today's test was the first time a test vehicle has
been flown to an actual soft landing on the desert floor.
Earlier tests ended 600 feet above the ground and the vehicle
was lowered to the ground by parachute.
         The test was conducted by teams from Hughes Aircraft
Company, Culver City, California, prime contractor for the
Surveyor spacecraft, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
         JPL is responsible for the Surveyor project under NASA.











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