In May 1966, the United States followed with the landing of the complex robotic spacecraft, Surveyor 1. It found the surface to be powdery dirt strewn with a few rocks, but strong enough to support the weight of a landed spacecraft. led the way by safely soft-landing the robotic Luna 9 spacecraft on the mare plain, Oceanus Procellarum. We got a much closer look at the moon’s surface in early 1966. Two more Ranger spacecraft flew to the moon, culminating with the 1965 Live From the Moon television images from Ranger 9, careening into the spectacular lunar crater Alphonsus. Micrometeorite bombardment has ground up the surface rocks, creating a fine powder (called regolith). From the Ranger probes, we discovered that craters, those strange holes that pepper the lunar surface, range down in size to the very limits of resolution. After several heartbreaking failures, Ranger 7 succeeded in sending back detailed television pictures of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds) in July 1964. These probes were designed to photograph the lunar surface at increasing levels of detail before crashing into the surface.
#What year was first man on the moon series#
At the same time, the robotic precursors would collect valuable information, constituting the first scientific exploration of another planetary body.Īmerica’s first step was the Ranger series of hard landers. To ensure that human crews could safely land and depart from the lunar surface, it was important to understand its environment, surface and processes. The Apollo program greatly accelerated interest in exploring the moon. Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In response to the 1961 flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, President John F. From these early, poor quality images, we discovered that the far side has surprisingly little of the dark, smooth mare plains that cover about a third of the near side. They followed this success with a number of other robotic probes, culminating later the same year with Luna 3, which photographed the far side of the moon, never visible from Earth. The Soviets struck first, flying Luna 1 by the moon in January 1959. With the shocking launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the moon changed from a distant silver disk in the sky to a real place, a probable destination for probes and people. The Space Age arrives: Robots to the Moon But it took space-age exploration to show us how the moon is connected to human existence on a very fundamental level. We’ve known for centuries about the effects on tides and biological cycles from a waxing and waning moon.
Exploration of the moon has taught us much about the evolution of the solar system and ourselves. The moon has held our imaginations for millennia, yet it is only in modern times that we have visited this body, first with robotic machines and then with astronauts.
0 kommentar(er)
