Why does nasa eat peanuts

The 10 foot 3. Otherwise, it had a similar shape and size to the Block I, but its payload was different. Ranger 3 carried a gamma-ray spectrometer, a radar altimeter, and a seismometer in the capsule that would be soft-ish landed on the surface.

Batteries would keep it alive for 30 days. But the most exciting payload was the vidicon television camera that could send back one complete frame every ten seconds. We were finally going to see the Moon up close. Ranger 3 was on track to pass ahead of and below the Moon. Making matters worse, the spacecraft turn away from the Earth, cutting off communications and making a midcourse correction impossible.

Ranger 3 sent back a spurious signal but no useful TV images when it passed the Moon two days later. With three consecutive failures, the press was starting to publicly doubt that JPL could get to the Moon.

NASA was questioning management behind the Ranger program, but there were still more planned launches, which were more chances for the program to succeed. Identical to Ranger 3, Ranger 4 launched at on the afternoon of April Like Ranger 3, this mission was designed to gather gamma-ray data then take pictures of the Moon before impacting the surface where it would take seismic measurements. The Atlas and Agena both performed well, everything looked great, but then a timer in the spacecraft's central computer and sequencer failed.

The signal fluctuated and then went silent as Ranger 4 tumbled along then impacted the far side of the Moon three days later. The mission launched through overcast skies on October 18, , just before 1 pm.

But some unknown malfunction after the translunar injection burn left the spacecraft without power. It activated its batteries, but they wore down after 8 hours and 44 minutes. Ranger 5 was DOA when it passed by the Moon before entering its heliocentric orbit.

The Ranger Block II configuration. Will NASA admit the peanuts are mere superstition? The guy who first brought the peanuts to NASA in didn't want to go that far. If peanuts are so lucky er, traditional , then maybe they should accompany astronauts when and if they embark on the first human mission to Mars. That might be OK, as long as they're unsalted — NASA has banned salt and other spices in their usual, granular form because they can make a big mess in zero gravity via The Franklin Institute.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. Pearlman is also a contributing writer for Space. He previously developed online content for the National Space Society and Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, helped establish the space tourism company Space Adventures and currently serves on the History Committee of the American Astronautical Society, the advisory committee for The Mars Generation and leadership board of For All Moonkind.

In , he was inducted into the U. Not to land on it — those missions were still a few years away. In the early s, the U. JPL built this series of automated spacecraft. After all those failures came Ranger 7. This mission was a complete success and marked a major turning point in the race to the Moon.