Outward bound on a space voyage that might have changed man's whole future, an 88-ft. Air Force rocket roared into the air one morning last week from Pad 17-6 at Florida's Cape Canaveral missile test center. Destination: the vicinity of the moon, 220,000-odd miles away.
If all the intricate calculations proved correct (TIME, Aug. 18), and if all the finely tooled devices functioned perfectly, the three stages of the rocket, a modified Thor-Vanguard hybrid, would carry an 85-lb., instrumented "lunar probe" near enough to the moon to be drawn into a lunar orbit. Revolving around the moon, the probe could...