+ 1970 News Releases (7.6 Mb PDF file) - NASA

I'A' [4 mi -
N rIONAL AERONAUTICSAND SPACEADMINISTRATION
MANNEDSPACECRA
Houston
CENTER
t, Texas
483-5111 April 97 1970
MSC 7O-4O
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded a
$4.5 million contract to the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation,
Syosset, New York for a camera system to be used on future Apollo
missions for precision mapping of the moon.
Fairchild will design, develop, fabricate and test a 3-inchfocal-length
mapping camera, a stellar reference camera and a timing
device. NASA has a separate contract with the Radio Corporation of
America for a laser altimeter, which Fairchild will integrate, along
with other elements of the system, into a single package which can
be operated remotely from the Apollo command module.
The heart of the system is the 3-inch mapping camera which will
provide 4.5 inch M 4.5 inch photographs with the precise geometric
controls necessary for accurate mapping. The 4.5 inch square photographs
can be adapted for use in most mapping laboratories, which use
9 inch square format.
The stellar reference camera used in the system together with the
laser altimeter and the timing device will give map makers the spacecraft
attitude_ the time and the altitude at which each photograph
was taken.
The Fairchild mapping system and a 24-inch-focal-length, highresolution
camera produced by the T%ek Corporation of Lexington_
Massachusetts_ will be part of a scientific instrument package bo be
carried in the spacecraft service module as early as Apollo 16.
The Itek camera will provide high resolution panoramic photographs
which can be correlated with the lower-resolution mapping photographs
for detailed and systematic mapping of the moon's surface.
Film magazines from the cameras will be retrieved by one of the
astronauts and returned to the command module before the two spacecraft
modules separate for earth entry.
-more-