Word: asteroidal
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...Asteroids, most of them only a few miles in diameter, were once thought to be the debris of a planet that mysteriously broke up. Now scientists are more inclined to believe that they are pre-planetary building blocks that could not develop into a planet because of the powerful gravitational influence of nearby Jupiter. They are also too small to have experienced the geological activity that has obliterated traces of early events on the earth and other planets. Thus, the two scientists suggest, an expedition to an asteroid might yield important clues to the primordial history of the solar system...
...would avoid many of the difficulties of planetary exploration. Traveling in highly eccentric orbits, some of the miniature planets occasionally pass millions of miles closer to the earth than either Mars or Venus. A spacecraft would have to use only a small amount of fuel to land on an asteroid and blast off again; a twelve-mile-wide asteroid, for example, would exert about one ten-thousandth of the earth's gravitational pull. Even if a ten-ton spacecraft turned over as it touched down, it could be easily righted...
...Asteroid walks would be high adventure. Weighing less than an ounce in full space gear, an astronaut might jump half a mile off the surface before drifting gently back down. But Alfvèn and Arrhenius suggest limiting such activity to asteroids at least a mile across...
...Asteroid Closeup. The Martian moon-naping mission, which is Singer's most startling concept, stems from his longtime fascination with Phobos and Deimos, the two tiny, natural satellites of Mars. If the moonlets turn out to have been passing asteroids captured by Martian gravity, Singer argues, they would present a unique opportunity for man to have a first closeup look at asteroids. Even more important, he says, they may have been created at the same time as Mars-but because of their small size they probably did not experience the violent chemical and physical changes that occur during...
...appropriately uptight put-on. As a few hundred hippies gathered in the Boulder, Colo., area-a flower-power resort at this time of the year -the story went out that they had recognized Boulder and Tibet as the only havens from destruction when, as they expected, the asteroid Icarus smashed into the earth. The ultimate happening was supposed to have taken place at 4:48 p.m., E.D.T., June 14. Instead, at the perigee of its 19-year cycle, Icarus missed by roughly 4,000,000 miles, and the hippies stayed around to enjoy the Sugarloaf Mountain...