Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1959-03-03

PIONEER
Only q Large Meteor Could Prevent
Y. 5. Conquest Of Outer Space

SM ~o ~
Continued From First Page
flaming death. as had happened
70 two earlier Pioneers.
A speed Of 24,585 miles an
hour was needed for escape
yelocity--the speed required to
nv loose forever from the earth.
Pioneer w attained "a, 800 miles
an hour about three, minutes
after blastoff.
M Clouds OF Smoke
After two postponements Sat-
urday and Sunday nights, NASA
and the Army put the bird UP
today without hitch. 1t rose
from the launching pad within
Q second Of the scheduled in
slant.
witnesses at Cape Canaveral
thought for an instant that the
tn0onshoot was doomed to dis
aster. Large clouds Of smoke
seemed to portend q fiery end
to the launch. But instants
later the bright beacon of the
Jupiter rockets exhaust rose
high into the sky.
As the 78-foot, Cotton missile
reared skyward, observers
tensed themselves for word that
some one or another Of literally
thousands Of possible things had
gone wrong. But for once,
everything went almost exactly
right.
AT T-plus-l82 seconds, the
100, 000-pound Jupiter missile
burned the last Of its fuel and
went into a coasting path. The
missile was travelling 1880
miles an hour at an altitude of
So miles.
Five seconds later the empty
booster shell dropped OF, leav-
ing the solid-fueled upper
stages in a coasting path.
At T-plus-200 seconds a pro-
tectiye shroud over the nose
OF the upper stages was sepa-
rated. and seven seconds later
a complex guidance system
made final adjustments in the
birds direction.
End Of Second Stage
Time: T-plus-237. The rock
cts second stage-ll small but
powerful scaled-down Sergeant
rocket motors-burst into flame
and burned for nearly seven
seconds. At T-plus-244 the mis-
sile was lit miles up and speed
ing moonward at $1,000 miles
an hour. I,
Two seconds of coasting fol-
lowed before third-stage igni-
ton at T-plus-246. After seven I
seconds Of propulsion by three q
miniature Sergeant motors, the q
remainder of Pioneer " was
100 miles up. travelling 1890
miles an hour.
Time: T-plus-255. BY this s
time. all that was left of the
60-ton monster was a 72-pound {
package-one reduced Sergeant
weighing So pounds and the in
strument package atop it. The
Sergeant fired. burned for a /
little less than seven seconds,
and at T-plus-262 the payload /
was on its escape-velocity /
course, $50 miles above the
earth at 24.890 miles an hour.
At this inStant-about l2:i51a Z
a.m.-Pioneer w ceased to be \
q part Of the earth and became I
an independent member of the {
solar system. Only the Rus q
slams 12-ton Mechta, launched b
early in January. had preceded
the NASA-Army probe into
such an orbit.
Path Not Determined
Scientists were unable to de-
termine Pioneers path around '
the sun. This will depend on !
just how closely the tiny, gold
plated cone approaches the
moon. If. as is expected, it
passes the moons orbit some :
$4,000 miles ahead of the moon
Pioneer probably will go into >
a circumsolar path similar to
that of Mechta. The Russian
solar satellite has an orbital {
period Of about Is months.
Though American scientific
officials hailed the mission as
an unqualified success, two of
Pioneers principal tasks ap-
parently would remain unful- =
filled. 7
The conical space probe con- .
tanned an optical sensory device l
designed to trigger a radio sig I
nal when it came Within about t
$4,000 miles of the moon. II /
also had a magnetometer {
aboard which would measure |
the moons magnetic field from
a range of several thousand
miles. Its calculated approach '
Of $4,000 miles seemed too
remote for either mechanism {
But Pioneers deviations from
its planned trajectory only
served to emphasize how care
fully the mission had been &
plotted. Its 24,890-mile escape S
speed was only los miles an ,
hour below what had been pro- I
grammed. It's 35.000-mlle Up I
proach to the moon was not I
far-astronomically speaking - {
from the planned approach of
10000 miles. And its earth. |
moon transit time of 20 hours
stood up nicely against the v
planned time of "a hours. I