Word: spacecraft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When the Apollo 12 astronauts landed and walked to the edge of the crater, Whitaker pre dicted last week, they would see the spacecraft...
...precision that enables the U.S. to pick a destination on the moon's rugged surface and reach it as reliably as a taxicab finds a street address in Manhattan. Directly ahead of Intrepid lay the five craters that form the familiar pattern of "Snowman." Guided unerringly by the spacecraft computer. Astronauts Conrad and Alan Bean headed straight toward the target picked months earlier in Houston: Surveyor Crater, which forms Snowman's torso and is the spot where 21 years ago the unmanned Surveyor 3 landed on the moon. Conrad could scarcely believe his eyes...
Eventually, the astronauts reached the southern rim of the 656-ft.-wide Surveyor Crater. Descending slowly, they walked to the Surveyor spacecraft. Except for a thin coating of lunar dust and white paint that may have turned tan in the intense sunlight, it had apparently been unharmed by its long exposure on the lunar surface. While Dean photographed the spacecraft, Conrad picked up some valuable souvenirs. First, he clipped off some of Surveyor's insulated TV cable, which had contained a known quantity of microorganisms when it left the earth; by examining the cable after it is returned...
...receive the skipper's gig," Conrad told Navy Man Gordon, who was now completing his 19th solo orbit of the moon. While the Yankee Clipper's camera recorded the event with breathtaking clarity, Gordon slowly eased his ship against Intrepid. There was a slight jolt, and the spacecraft were again locked together...
University of Arizona Astronomer Ewen A. Whitaker set about to find out. Examining panoramic photographs taken by the spacecraft's TV camera from just 5 ft. off the ground, he saw a pair of large rocks inside Surveyor's crater. Looking further, he noticed that the rocks and two small craters on the floor of the crater were aligned along an imaginary path pointing directly north. "That's all we had to go on, really," says Whitaker. "We had no way of telling the size of these landmarks or the distance between them...