Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1963-08-14
BY WILLIAM HINES
Star Staff Writer

GAOAOGINA, Oh1l1'1 AuBs IL
The space agency is expected
to resume its moon-shooting
program by Thanksgiving and
to be ready for a television
camera shot at Mars late next
year.
These probabilities came out
today in the course of a brief
ing Of space agency scientists
from Washington at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory here.
JPL, a chanch of California
Institute of Technology, runs
unnamed lunar and planetary
flight programs for the National
AeronauticS and Space Admin
istration.
NASA's moon program ground
to a halt last fall after the
failure Of a 750-pound space
craft called Rangers. Twin
inquiries, spanked by JPL and
by NASA headquarters, resulted
in a shakeup of project man
agement and delayed the
Ranger program by about a
year.
Bugs Worked Out
Now, JPL engineers have
assured NASA, the principal
bugs have been worked out of
Ranger and the sixth flight
vehicle will be ready to go late
in 1868. The spacecraft will
carry six television cameras for
closeup pictures of the moons
surface, plus instruments to
cample conditions en- route
from the earth to the moon.
Unlike the three moon
bound Rangers fired without
satisfactory results in 1862,
Ranger-6 will have no moon
quake detector.
Flight hardware for Rangers
6 and 2 is being assembled
here, and components for
Rangers 8 and 8 are being
obtained. These four space
craft-essentially identical in
design-are funded under the
Ranger program, which has
cost $225 million thus far. Five
or six more Rangers are in
cluded in NASA's future plans,
but have not been completely
approved by Congress.
$40 Million Per Pound
The forthcoming Rangers
are expected to be considerably
more expensive than the first
group, which cost roughly $40
million per pound Of payload,
or about $7.5 million per space
craft, exclusive of rockets. In
creased reliability requirements
are credited with boosting the
cost.
Part Of the restudy program
which followed the failure of
Rangers in October of 1862,
was addressed to the question
of reliability. Engineers be-
lieved certain parts were not
being built to adequate toler-
ance, and standards were up
graded.
"Tbis makes things damned
EXPENSIVE" a top JPL execu-
tive said today. He cited a
component which, under the
old reliability standards, cost
roughly $4,000. After RELIABLE
ity requirements were tight
ened, he said, the cost reached
$4,000.
Sterilizing Eased
While reliability standards
have been raised, the Hospital
clean" order of the day for the
Ranger program has been eased.
Rangers 8, 4 and 5-the first
of the series to be actually shot
toward the moon-were steri-
lized to a high degree in re-
Spouse to biologists demands
that the moons surface remain
uncontaminated until men get
there. There were indications
that this sterilization particu-
larry the heat-treating
have harmed some electronic
components. And end to the
germ-free rule was ordered
early this year.
NASA has been assured that
the four Rangers now in the
flight program will be ready for
launching at about two-month
intervals, starting late this year.
This will clear the launching
pads at Cape Canaveral for a
Mars Mariner" in the fourth
quarter of 1864.
This 500-pound spacecraft, If
successful, will give earthmen
their first closeup look at Mars,
the planet which scientists now
regard as the most likely extra
terrestrial home Of life in the
solar system. Passing the red
planet at about 10000 miles late
in the summer of 1865, Mari
ner-3 is expected to yield sew
eral photographs, which will be
televised to earth by an ex-
tremely slow-scan method.
1--WE don't expect to get as
good pictures Of Mars as we get
of the moon through our best
telescope cameras" one JPL
scientist said. But the pictures
should be far better than any
that are now available"