Word: antennae
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...have borrowed a technique that radio astronomers use to study the sun and the planets. They are tuning in on the faint thermal radio waves that are emitted by every natural body, whether celestial or earthly. At altitudes of less than 1,000 ft., a pair of highly directional antennas pick up that radiation from objects below the plane. And since one antenna points behind the other, it picks up the same radiation at a slightly later time. That time lag, along with the plane's altitude, supplies enough information for an on-board computer to calculate the plane...
...flying windmill. The spacecraft, freed from a cocoon-like covering, unfolded the four solar panels that powered its instruments by converting the sun's energy into electricity. With those panels deployed, it measured 22 ft. 7½ in. across and 9½ ft. to the top of its antenna. Curving into a wide-swinging, elliptical orbit that was precisely plotted in advance, the ship set out to intersect the orbit of Mars at a predetermined time...
Early Bird's curved sides are covered with 6,000 solar cells to supply electric power, and the satellite spins like a gyroscope to keep stabilized. One short antenna receives radio signals from the earth. They are fed to a transponder which amplifies them and then transmits them back to earth. Much of the transmitted energy is lost in space, but enough reaches the earth to be picked up by powerful receiving stations in the U.S. and Europe and amplified once more before being transmitted to home receivers...
Even before Early Bird reached its final station, it went to work. American Telephone & Telegraph's great horn antenna at Andover, Me., which is now leased by Comsat, sent a television test pattern up to the satellite. Back the pattern came to Andover, its quality so good that Siegfried H. Reiger, Comsat's technical vice president, proudly told a press conference: "The television capability of the Early Bird satellite is established...
...ship was said to have made a soft touchdown on deep snow, with the aid of parachutes. Newspapers described its flaming descent through the atmosphere and discussed the loss of radio contact when an antenna burned off. But all this is normal. It was the long silence after landing that was ominous. Then word came that the cosmonauts were safe; Yuri Gagarin, Russia's space pioneer, talked to them by telephone and reported that "they are completely healthy." Whatever had gone wrong on the last, dangerous trajectory that led back to earth had apparently not detracted from the overall...