AIMING FOR THE MOON

 

I've had a fascination with our nearest neighbour from an early age, but as I grew older and began to appreciate the significance of the Moon and its features, I started to invest in maps and quite recently a large moon globe. The globe was an ebay purchase, sold loose, with little in the way of information, although the seller did remark - as I collected it in person at Preston railway station!- that her Dad had owned it and it originally had a stand, which was now lost. Taking possession of it, in a large plastic shopping bag, I found it was blow moulded plastic, quite heavy, with surface relief details, hand painted decoration and decals applied. Luckily, its previous owner had also varnished it, so everything was still intact, including the little stickers showing the moon landing sites.

As it was loose, I had no idea of what it was, or who had made it, but during a recent ebay trawl for a more conventional globe, I found another identical one, listed as a 'Wightman Moon Globe' from 1970. The seller suggested that it was supplied as an unpainted kit form, which the owner could paint and apply the decals to.

This example had suffered over the years and lost some of the paint and stickers and also the original stand. It does look very similar to my own version, so I assume there would have been painting guides and instructions and possibly specific paints provided. So, armed with this new information, I did a quick internet search and found that the Royal Museum at Greenwich have a copy of the globe in their archival collections, which also includes the original box, stand and instruction sheet.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-388811

Reproduced courtesy of RMG

Its safe to assume that the Wightman Lunaglobe would have been a premium item, intended for specialists rather than children and would probably have been quite expensive. The record also shows the original stand, so now I can set about making a suitable stand for my own model.

Above is a print of the moon rock, brought back from Apollo 11, which was on display in Liverpool Museum at around the same time the Wightman globes would have been available and one of the things which started me down the path of all things lunar.

IN DEEP, FAR OUT

Starting in 1958, the series of Pioneer probes was divided into two main sections, with the early attempts to study the moon and later probes aimed towards Venus and the outer planets. The early missions were beset with failure, as launch vehicles caused problems at take off and when Pioneer 3 finally achieved escape velocity, it missed the Moon entirely. It wasn't until the launch of Pioneer 6 in 1965, that the US began to see positive results, as probes were dispatched to orbit the sun and study space weather. However, the Jupiter bound missions 10 and 11 which launched in 1972/3 respectively, were the most successful, as besides reaching their remote destination, the probes achieved sufficient velocity to allow them to later leave the Solar System  entirely.

This rare booklet by TRW Industries commemorates the launch of Pioneer 10 and looks forward towards its encounter with the gas giant Jupiter.

The probe was designed to study the gas giant and was not expected to remain functional following its exposure to Jupiter's high radiation output. Some of the cameras and equipment did succumb to the extreme environments, but overall, the probe was way more successful than its designers could have imagined.

Carl Sagan was an astronomer and planetary scientist, who advocated the inclusion of a 'golden record' and a plaque containing informational graphics which might be accessible by intelligent life in outer space. The idea of the plaque was met with criticism by the general public and TRW held a competition for ideas for information to be included on the mision.

As the probe approached and successfully encountered Jupiter, the idea of a Grand Tour of the Solar System was suggested, to take advantage of the future planetary positions of the major outer planets. This would eventually become the Voyager mission.

The following year,  the companion probe 11 was launched, with the intention of repeating Pioneer 10's successful encounter, before moving on to explore Saturn.

After the success of the two probes initial missions, both craft subsequently went on to pass the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, to moving into interstellar space, becoming the first man made objects to leave the solar system.

Final contact with Pioneer 10 was made as the onboard power ultimately failed, in 2003, with a faint signal being recorded by the Deep Space network as the probe disappeared into the unknown.

Early in the 1960's, the idea of the Grand Tour was , for a planetary exploration of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and their moons and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, to take advantage of a once in 175 years conjunction and employing gravity assists for the probes.

With the success of the Pioneer Jupiter missions, a Mariner probe design was to be refitted for the next mission to visit the outer system and it was only late in the programme that it was suggested that the probe be renamed Voyager.

Using a similar shaped vehicle to Pioneer, two Mariner probes were prepared for launch in 1972, before being renamed some years later, prior to launch in 1977, with an initial remit to visit Jupiter and Saturn only.

Voyager 2 launched first, although it would reach its destination after Voyager 1, encountering Jupiter in 1979. The probes also took advantage of close fly-bys of the moons of Ganymede and Io. Both carried the same plaque as Pioneer, but also a 'golden record' disk with sounds of Earth and people speaking different languages, in the remote possibility that the probe might be intercepted by intelligent life.

The Voyager programme exceeded their expectations and life expectancy, outliving their own inventors and designers. Some of the images returned by the probes are still being examined and processed today and gave us the closest views of the gas giants and their moons. The probes passed the previous Pioneer probes in the mid 1990's, becoming the farthest man made objects in space as they embarked on the extended Interstellar Mission. Voyager 1 is now over 15 billion miles away and will log 47 years in space this year and is still returning useable data. Voyager 2 is 13 billion miles away and currently experiencing a pause in communications, as the antenna has become misaligned.

Some of the imagery returned by the probes gave resident NASA artists inspiration for artwork in support of the mission, which is contained in a large volume 'Nasa and the Exploration of Space' which holds a wealth of wonderful paintings and drawings from the beginnings of the administration to the present, illustrating launches, landings, planetary scenes and mission activities from all points in history.

The Pioneer and Voyager images would remain the premier source of information on the outer planets for many years, until the probes Cassini and Galileo reached the gas giants and paved the way for further missions such as New Horizons and very shortly the Europa Clipper.

The TRW company also worked on other satellites and probes and have most recently been involved with the James Webb Telescope, producing some of the best deep space images ever recorded.

SPACE: 1965

 Modern space themed books are invariably large glossy and full of high definition colour photographs and garish illustrations, so its sometimes easy to forget what early technical journals and textbooks were like. Usually, the reason I buy vintage books and magazines from the 1960's is for the occasional illustration or diagram which shows futuristic or conceptual designs for spacecraft, but as my more recent acquisitions have shown, the real details behind the space race are often as interesting and exciting as the theoretical. 

Most of my books are from ebay or second hand book sites, where its only possible to get a small preview of the content, so a certain amount of guesswork and luck is always needed when buying blind. Sometimes I can end up with a bland, text heavy tome, with no illustrations and other times, the edition can be full of great photographs and engaging material. One lucky outing brought home a small binder of ten issues of a magazine entitled simply 'Space'. Published from 1965 onwards by Cockatrice Press in London, the small squarebound magazines are clearly aimed at the enthusiast, rather than a scientific audience and show the annual developments in the race to explore space and reach the Moon. Predominantly printed in two colours, with monochrome photographs, the occasional section has full colour illustrations.

The first volume (I have been unable to find further issues, but editions 11-14 are visible on a dutch space museum website) covers the advances made from the Gemini era of manned space flight and the first missions to the moon and inner planets.

There are a number of excellent articles about the Mariner missions to Venus and Mars which were ongoing at the time of publication and the first photographs of the surface of Mars are included.

The low resolution photographs show a grainy, blurry succession of shots, taken by the onboard cameras, which were then electronically stored, before being radioed to Earth. The text discusses the process used to capture the photographs and the editor even asks the JPL scientist, whether there is any evidence of vegetation on the surface!

When you consider the imagery revealed by the recent Curiosity and Perseverance rovers and the ability for anyone to view the raw photographic material as it arrives and freely post-process the images, its amazing to consider the massive technological developments which have occurred in the intervening decades.

Even as I scanned the pages of the magazine to publish them on the blog, I was able to drastically enhance the quality and detail of the photographs, compared to the printed versions. It puts the achievement into stark focus, when considering that the technology was pre-digital and by todays standards, extremely primitive, but at the time, was considered cutting edge. 

As it was published at a critical time in the space race, so many of the achievements we might take for granted were yet to happen. There are articles detailing the US ambition to map the moon and soft land a prbe on the surface, in advance of the manned landings, some five years in the future. the US Surveyor probe is discussed in some detail, even though the Soviets had already made considerable headway and landed a probe in the form of Luna 9 on the moons surface.

Space magazines coverage of the developments in the industry are thorough and very visually appealing with lots of good quality images of spacecraft from the western powers, even showing the British endeavours in the form of Black Arrow and Black Knight rockets and the proposed MUSTARD shuttle programme.

Naturally, there is little coverage of the russian space programme, aside from information which was publicised by the Kremlin news agencies behind the iron curtain, as the shroud of secrecy which had developed through the Cold War, obscured the many soviet failures and disasters as it silently competed with NASA, careful to only release information and photographs of the resounding successes such as the Sputnik, Vostok and Voskhod programmes.

A section on the soviet Luna 9 probe, shows the amazing panoramic photographs taken by the probe of the lunar surface, whilst the preceding chapter details the US preparation to launch a probe to land on the Moon.

In contrast to the clear and abundant photographs of American and European spacecraft, only artist impressions of the Soviet vehicles, simply rendered and lacking any important detail, are available.