On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time, the world rang out: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

But before Armstrong, scientists across the United States had begun working on unmanned ranger and surveyor projects with the goal of learning more about our space companions.

A ranger, surveyor, and eventually one of the scientists involved in the Pioneer mission, Donald Willingham now lives in Spokane and was a computer science teacher at Spokane Falls Community College for 20 years.

Thomas Lindfleisch, who worked with Willingham on Rangers 6 through 9, helped create the first digital imaging processes critical to the success of the Rangers and Surveyor missions.

At the first launch of the Artemis mission, scheduled for Monday, the two men talked about working on a space mission aimed at finally sending humans to the moon in the 1960s.

“The Ranger mission was a complex system for launching, navigating to the moon, conducting scientific operations to obtain the best photographs, scientific and engineering data,” Lindfleisch said in an email. I am writing to

Data collected from Ranger missions will help scientists better understand the Moon and help identify where future Apollo missions will land.

The Ranger mission, unlike the Surveyor, was only intended to photograph the Moon in a short span before it violently impacted the lunar surface. The photos must be sent back to Earth just in time.

Willingham, 85, has a sweet smile and a good laugh as he looks back on his life, which included studying at Purdue University, working at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and finally traveling to Spokane. church.

The excitement began when Willingham was assigned two years of active duty in the Army after graduating from Purdue University in 1962 with a degree in engineering physics.

The JPL of Pasadena, California, took note of Willingham’s degree and intelligence and asked whether the Army would allow him to spend two years of active duty in the lab.

Once there, Willingham was assigned to the Space Science Division, working on the development and deployment of a Telephoto Ranger mission to the Moon. Willingham, he said, was chosen to work in the photography department because he knew nothing about photography. Willingham’s boss, Ed Dobbies, wanted someone who was “open-minded”. Willingham described it as turning a television camera into a scientific instrument.

Willingham’s position effectively became a cognitive scientist for the Ranger TV mission. Willingham says with humor, “Cognizant probably meant it was happening during the meeting.”

It was during his time as a cognitive scientist that Willingham collaborated with scientific visionaries such as Gerald Kuiper, dean of astronomy at the University of Arizona. Harold Urey won the Nobel Peace Prize for his discovery of heavy water. Gene Shoemaker, Director, Flagstaff U.S. Geological Survey and Planetary Geology); Willingham describes these people as “distinguished scientists”.

Ranger missions have been divided into three blocks. Block 1 contained Rangers 1 and 2. Block 2 contained Rangers 3, 4 and 5. Block 3 contained Rangers 6, 7, 8 and 9.

Each block had slightly different mission objectives, each with progressively more advanced system designs. By the time Willingham reached JPL, Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 had already failed because they were unable to leave low earth orbit.

Willingham said he discovered Russian astronomical measurements of lunar brightness that helped him develop a lunar reflectance model not long after he started working for JPL. This model is important because it gives scientists the ability to “predict lunar surface brightness as a function of incidence, emission and phase angle.”

Every aspect of the lunar surface was important when trying to find places for future manned missions to land.

Unfortunately for Willingham and other scientists working on Ranger missions, the next three missions fell through. These three of his Rangers carried a payload consisting of a crude TV camera and some scientific experiments.

“The Air Force, at the last minute, boarded Rangers 3 through 5 and said, ‘Oh, we have to cut the payload a lot,'” Willingham said. “So the instruments had to be removed, the redundancies and the electronics removed. is.”

During this time, Lindfleisch was hired to help Willingham. To this day, both men hold each other in high esteem.

Lindfleisch described Willingham as “very smart, patient, innovative and rigorous”.

Rangers 6 through 9 were equipped with camera systems only. Camera A was for large areas, camera B was for areas one-third the size of the first camera, and his four cameras, called P cameras, were for smaller areas. The Ranger mission took about 23 minutes to photograph the moon before impacting it. Willingham said Ranger 6 is ready after a one-year hiatus and will be different than previous Rangers in his block.

“It wasn’t exactly the same payload, but it was originally loaded with scientific instruments, but they were all destroyed and the electronics and all the redundancies were taken back. Everything was perfect and the Ranger 6 We got where it was supposed to be, but the camera never turned on,” Willingham said, recalling the uncertainty and disappointment he felt from another setback.

Willingham became concerned about job security. The next ranger even though JPL “brought aside some executives” JPL was known to start firing people at the top and then work their way down if his mission failed .

Lindfleisch describes the work he and Willingham did on the Ranger project:

“He (Willingham) was working with the Ranger’s television camera engineer and got me interested in where the best place to crash the spacecraft against the Terminator[the moon’s day/night boundary]. “We measure system resolution by considering camera resolution and light sensitivity, the contrast of surface features due to the angle of incidence of the sun, the electronic signal-to-noise ratio, image motion, etc. He also did some initial research to find an important publication by Russian astronomers documenting the lunar surface reflectivity properties. He was the first professional engineer to serve as a role model for how to approach practical research problems.I published my first scientific reports and papers with Don.”

Finally, after a lot of hard work by everyone at JPL and NASA, Ranger 7 was a success. After much trial and error, it seemed that the efforts of the scientists had finally blossomed. When asked why the Ranger 7 worked, Lindfleisch replied, “It’s probably more luck than anything else.”

In the final 17 minutes of flight, Ranger 7 sent 4,300 photos back to Earth from six cameras.

Ranger 8 took more than 7,000 images to pinpoint the area where Apollo 11 would land.

Ranger 9 took 5,800 photographs, reinforcing the conclusions scientists reached after previous Ranger missions. The success of these three missions enabled JPL and NASA to probe the lunar surface and ignite the fire that led to the first human exploration of the moon.

Copies of the 199 photographs and 300 images collected by Ranger missions have been sent to embassies around the world as a peace offer, Willingham said, despite the ongoing space race with the former Soviet Union. Sent. When asked if that competition influenced his project, Willingham replied: That was the driving force behind it all. “

Pictures of the moon were great, but there was still not enough evidence to justify a manned mission to the moon.

This led to the Surveyor project. The Surveyor was conceived around the same time as the Ranger, but development began in 1961 with him.

The Surveyor had a different mission, a launch vehicle, and, according to Willingham, a different method of development. Willingham’s title was transferred to Space Science Mission His Analyst for the Surveyor Project.

Willingham explained the difference between Ranger and Surveyor missions like day and night.

For Willingham, the Surveyor was much more sophisticated, as it had the unique ability to soft-land on the moon.

“The surveyor had a camera on the soft landing and that’s how they took all the pictures. But they had the ability to dig trenches (collect samples). It was loaded.”

Willingham says the engineers who worked on the Surveyor project were very talented and quickly created a spacecraft capable of soft landings. The surveyor’s ability to take photographs, collect samples and data while enhancing soft-landing capabilities was revolutionary. Mr. Willingham said that apart from his improved technical ability, the surveyor’s management structure was superior to that of the Ranger project.

After Surveyor 1, Surveyors 3, 5, 6 and 7 were all successful. Surveyor 2 hit the moon and Surveyor 4 lost signal two and a half minutes after landing.

With a total of 90,000 images from five sites and many more lunar elements analyzed, the Surveyor project was a huge success.

This success convinced astronauts and scientists that the moon could be safely landed. Shortly after the last Surveyor mission, a manned Apollo mission arrived on the Moon.

In November 1969, the Apollo 12 astronauts landed near Surveyor 3.

After the Surveyor and Ranger missions, Willingham worked on a small device aboard Pioneer 10 and 11. This device was called an ultraviolet photometer.

“When the sun emits all these particles and the particles cool, the electron trajectories drop,” Willingham said. “And as the orbit drops, individual atoms emit photons. OK, individual pulses of light, and they’re different colors. What this[ultraviolet photometer]detected is the colors of hydrogen and helium. What it did was measure the ratio of hydrogen to helium, and for some reason that was important.”

Pioneer 10 has been sending signals back to Earth for 35 years. Pioneer 11 worked for her 22 years. The Pioneer mission took pictures and collected data from neighboring planets Saturn and Jupiter. The Pioneer Project also paved the way for future spacecraft missions such as the Voyager, Cassini and Galileo missions.

Today, Willingham said he’s lucky to always be able to work wherever he wants, whether it’s for a spaceship job or teaching at the SFCC.

“I was able to have the complete experience,” said Willingham. “I think that’s the big thing. You’ve had that full experience, haven’t you? One of the things I’ve really learned is that you can always find someone smarter than you.”

“Genius worked for me, and I worked under genius.”

Despite all his work in space travel, Willingham said his best experience was coming to Spokane in 1972 and meeting Elva Misch, whom he later married in 1977. She passed away in 2012.

“Well, this woman I was married to for 35 years was out of this world,” said Willingham.