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Aviation History
1994
1994 - 1728.PDF
APOLLO ANNIVERSARY ^l • ••••.-..••.'•-.•:'-.•-.• Limitations in technology won- a hey (actor in du- Apollo 11 miss ing iis landing site by five miles (8km), says Peter Norris, o| logica. who at the time was on the navigation team at NASA Houston. "We now u-iul io take (or granted that we can navigate spacecraft to distant planets very precisely,'' says Norris. Even with the enormous technical advances made since 1969. how ever, the Moon slill tests our ability to land at pic-deicrmincd points. Giam asteroids which smashed into the surface aeons ago have left gravitationalJliiciuaiions — ihascons — for which com puter models have nol yet been developed. The (act that the. Moon always turns the same face towards the Earth (because ii rotates a the same rate al which ils makes one orbit oj the Earth) litis prevented scientists gelling a complete gravitational picture: Tie result, says Norris, is "...inaccurate navigation when a spacecrdfl iv dose lo the Moon's surface!!.
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