Morning for Surveyor

As the frigid lunar night finally ended, sunlight once again splashed its warmth on the man-made visitor, Surveyor I. After its two-week hibernation at --250DEG F., the spaceship showed no sign of reviving. Its receiver, turned on ever since it landed on the moon almost four weeks before, seemed incapable of picking up radioed signals and translating them into the commands that would awaken the space traveler's other instruments. Day after day, the scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena tried to make contact; day after day, their only response was silence.

Aware that the intense lunar cold might well have changed the operating frequency of Surveyor's receiver, the JPL men tried varying the tuning of their own equipment. Still they got no answer. Then, last week, a signal from an 85-ft. parabolic antenna in Australia's Tidbinbilla Valley finally got through--near the spaceship's original frequency. Surveyor's transmitter obeyed the order, turned on, and reported in response to queries that all electrical and mechanical systems were functioning once more. Surveyor was again a fully operational spacecraft.

Whether the rising sun had warmed the receiver until it drifted back toward its design frequency, Surveyor's ground controllers could not be sure. It was also possible that the craft's batteries had been completely discharged, that they had to wait patiently until solar panels generated enough electrical current to replenish them with a slow, "trickle" charge. Either way, there was no doubt that Surveyor was back in action, leaving JPL with the ironic task of trying to figure out what assignments to give it--the moonship had already done so much that there was little left to tackle.

Working on a leisurely schedule. Surveyor reported a new set of midday temperature readings and shot a short test series of television pictures. Additional picture taking was put off until later in the lunar day, when lengthening shadows would bring out more detail and perhaps even help determine if any meteors had struck near by since the last pictures. Then suddenly, a short circuit caused the battery temperature to soar to what appeared to be fatally high levels. Surveyor hurriedly made another TV sweep of the moonscape, and scientists resigned themselves to its end at last. But just as they did, in some miraculous fashion the temperature started going down again, and the battery once more accepted a charge. How long Surveyor would last and whether it would work again, no one could say. In any event, the little spaceship had long since accomplished its mission.

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