Space Tracking: Bringing Credit to Jodrell Bank

The first word about the latest Russian space feat came, as usual, not from a Moscow spokesman but from a greying British scientist. Astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell, 52, who used the University of Manchester's 250-ft. radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, England, to track the Soviet spaceship Luna 10 on its successful moon mission, jumped at the chance of providing a maneuver-by-maneuver account that enabled the free world to learn of the first lunar or bit before most Russians did.

Noting that Luna's signals sounded like "a skirl of bagpipes," Lovell relayed them by loudspeaker to reporters gathered at the...

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