Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2019

19 MAY-JUNE 2019 ASTRONAUTICS areas with sufficient resolution from an ideal altitude of about 65 km, the Lunar Orbiter should have exposed, developed and digitized by itself the films for transmission back to Earth. In addition, since the orbiter had to be lightweight, the camera would not have been pro- tected from space radiation. There- In December 1963, at the same time as the cancellation of the re- maining Ranger missions, NASA signed the Lunar Orbiter contract with Boeing. Like Rangers, Lunar Orbiters would use three-axis sta- bilization, but the configuration of a spacecraft is closely related to its payload and, although it had been fore, a very slow film was neces- sary, which meant that the camera had to be able to compensate for its own movements. Obviously, film stock would have been a limiting factor, but fortunately, NASA was able to use a special camera built by Kodak for a military reconnais- sance satellite.