Dark Side of the Moon, Looking for Luna 3
Letter to Mom
My father was the manager for the technology project which was outlined in The Soul of a New Machine. Before that, he worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge MA and did various nerdy things there. This was a typewritten letter of his I found, likely (based on the satellite name) from 1959 or 1960. My father would have been 20 or 21.
Dear Mom,
Minutes in which to write are pretty few and far between these days. To begin with, a week ago Monday, no, two weeks ago Monday this guy called Don Tingle a Harvard graduate of last year in English who works with me, asked me if I would be interested in a sort of special project. Well now you know me and special projects, or even projects which aren’t so special. Anyway, it turns out that the Russian moon rocket 59091 more commonly called Lunik 3, was due to return for its first trip around the earth, before going out around the moon again (this is extremely oversimplified the rocket never exactly goes around the moon). The Russians had lost track of the object, when its radio transmitters pooped out. The only information as to its orbit was in the hands of the Russians, and no one knew if we could get it, or how complete it was.
Computing earth satellite orbits is relatively easy, if a few observational data are obtainable, the perturbing effect being easily measurable, and constant. A satellite of the earth moon system, however, has an orbit which looks more like a free form pretzel than anything else…it is an orbit which never repeats itself. As it turns out, no one in the US knows how to determine orbits of bodies undergoing such complex perturbations, and so any observational data which could give an empirical orbit, would be of extreme importance, it is like it is easier to get a problem done if you have the answer. The problem then is to find the object, and to find it this time through, while the Russian radio data is still hot so to speak.
If it goes on its second revolution, chances are it will be lost forever. More problems. The Baker Nunn camera, the standard satellite camera, was designed to photograph a satellite of seventh magnitude or brighter, only being able to photograph fainter satellites if the orbit is known well enough so that the camera can be set to track at the satellite rate, producing a point image. It turns out the magnitude of the Soviet object is (or should be) eleventh at its closest approach to the earth (2500 0miles), and we don’t have any real good idea of its orbit. Amateur telescopes are capable of picking up eleventh magnitude stars, and so are moonwatch groups, theoretically at least, practically, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The motion of the satellite through the sky is small. travelling 180 degrees in about four days.
So, what we needed was a group of good telescopes with hot-shot observers (the two usually go together). Everyone was willing to cooperate, even Palomar, which gave one a feeling of real importance. The next day the teletype pounded out a Moscow dateline and the orbital elements and a bunch of sub-satellite points were in our hands. All of these went to IBM where the 704 spent seven hours developing thirty ephemerises for the thirty largest observatories in the country. These gave the declinations and right ascentions of the object every two hours for each station. Nothing said they would be right, but it was better than nothing. We spent about two days getting this far, and just as many nights. The two nights it was to be brightest, Don and I manned the fifteen inch refractor at the Harvard Observatory which at one time was the largest instrument in the world, and has all sorts of historic interest, being 130 years old and still turning out some of the more important astronomical work. We had all sorts of timing equipment and tape recorders and charts and clocks and etc.
Well, to make a long story short, we looked from six till six those two nights with all sorts of interesting experiences, and didn’t see a thing. The Indiana observatory, however, found few days later that they had a number of very good prints of the area of the object and mailed the plates to us, and two more days were spen analyzing the prints in a blink-comparator. The plate which is believed to contain the object is set in one rack in the instrument, and another plate of the same area of the sky minus object is put in the other. A prism shifts the viewer from one plate to the other, and by blinking this thing at a moderate rate of speed, the object should appear to flash on and off. Each plate has about three thousand stars on it, and the satellite is the faintest. What a job that was.
We found three images of the object, all of which were mutually consistent, and so anyway we are still in the thick of things, waiting for it to stick its little head above the horizon again and BAAAAAAAAAAAAM.
Don’t know why I addressed this Mom… [NB: I think it was sent to his dad] Don came over Monday night before last, and we had cake and things, and I officially had my birthday… then we had coffee, because I had to try it out. Works really fine. Can’t stand instant coffee, and that little thing makes it better than the place i used to frequent in the morning. The glass for the picture is getting cut and will be done tomorrow. It sure is nice, the kind of a thing you can live with. Today is saturday, I’m not too sure when I started this letter, but it must of been two or three days ago. It sure feels good to have some of my clothes back again, and I can begin looking like a man of business. Guess I’d better just stop. Thanks a lot for the bilthsday (?)
love tom
