Word: apollo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...early morning in Houston when the first hint of trouble came. Watching his instrument console, an engineer on duty in Mission Control noticed an unusual temperature drop in the fuel system of one of the clusters of little steering rockets on the Apollo command and service modules (CSM) that had carried the second Skylab crew to their orbital home on July 28 and is needed to ferry them back to earth. About fifteen minutes later, the astronauts themselves became aware of the problem when an alarm went off aboard the space station, jolting them out of their sleep. Later...
...four-nozzle clusters when a valve jammed during rendezvous with Skylab-left the ferry craft with part of its attitude control system not working. For several nerve-racking hours last week, NASA officials contemplated bringing the second crew of Skylab astronauts home immediately, lest any further deterioration in the Apollo rocket control system jeopardize their chances of a safe splashdown. By week's end the space agency had settled on a different course. For the time being at least, the Skylab team would be allowed to continue its record-breaking 59-day mission. As a safeguard, however, round...
...loss of the thrusters on Apollo's service module was not in itself critical. Experience in NASA'S ground simulators has shown that an Apollo spacecraft can be steered with only one service-module rocket cluster-or even with only the thrusters on the command module. What worried space-agency engineers was the possibility of further deterioration in the propulsion system. The small thruster systems, as well as Apollo's big main engine at the rear of the service module, use the same type of oxidizer. What is more, the chemical had come from the same batch...
...launch itself will require unusual precision. If the astronauts are to rendezvous in their Apollo command ship with the 230-nautical-mile-high laboratory within the prescribed five revolutions of the earth, their lift-off cannot be delayed more than ten minutes. Otherwise, the blast-off will have to be postponed until the next day. But by then the launch "window" will, have shrunk to a mere two minutes, and it will take the astronauts two more revolutions to reach the laboratory...
...camaraderie in Houston last week was more than simple friendliness between rival spacemen. The Soviet cosmonauts, marking an important milestone in international cooperation in space, were beginning their initial briefings by U.S. space officials on the Apollo spacecraft, including its life-support and communications systems. In fall, Stafford and his fellow crewmen, Deke Slayton and Vance Brand, will visit Zvezdnoy Gorodok (Star City), outside Moscow, for a reciprocal study of the Soviet spacecraft. Unless each side understands the other's ship, serious problems could occur when the spacecraft are maneuvering in earth orbit. But the cosmonauts-including Leonov...