Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2019

18 MAY-JUNE 2019 ASTRONAUTICS timescale for the Apollo program, NASA canceled the JPL mapper and ordered the Langley Research Cen- ter to develop a lightweight orbiter capable of traveling onboard an Atlas-Agena rocket. This new space- craft was not supposed to produce a global map, but only to map pre- determined sites as potential land- While it is true that JPL’s camera was ideal for recording a 20-minute dive that would have involved the destruction of the spacecraft, it is also true that it was able to provide the necessary high surface resolu- tion only over the last seconds, when its field of view was ex- tremely limited. To inspect large ing sites for Apollo. This project, called Lunar Orbiter, was launched in August 1963. Ranger had not yet proved its validity, but it was obvi- ous that the development of an or- biter was not simply a matter of putting an engine together like one that might have been used to insert a Ranger into lunar orbit. A POLLO 11 − Background, a small crater with rocky bot- tom. Left, an astronaut boot. [NASA, Project Apollo Archive]