Word: astronautical
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Scientists will be kept busy for years studying the accumulated findings - to say nothing of the dramatic observations already reported from space. Astronaut Gibson, a solar physicist by training, managed to photograph for the first time the very beginnings of a solar flare - a sudden, violent release of enormous energy from the sun's interior. Looking earthward, the astronauts observed strange, swirling eddies in warm ocean currents that are apparently involved in the exchange of heat between water and atmosphere, an important factor in global weather and climate...
Hungry Guppy. The bold tactic worked. Following the blunt dialogue between astronauts and Mission Control, relations improved enormously. So did the spacemen's performance. Helped by a steady program of exercising (bicycle and treadmill), the astronauts made a physical as well as emotional adjustment to their life in orbit. They also got more tune to relax; for amusement, Carr would open a jar of peanuts and "swim" after them as they drifted off, swallowing them up like a hungry guppy. "From what we've seen on Skylab," Astronaut-Physician Story F. Musgrave said last week...
Before the encounter, Astronaut Carr spotted a puzzling red color in the comet's tail. That may mean that Kohoutek has more moisture than most comets, for this tint suggests concentrations of hydrogen and oxygen, the two components of water. In other respects, Kohoutek's twin tails-one composed of dust particles, the other of glowing gases -seem to be developing normally. As the comet began its hairpin turn round the sun, the dust tail blown by the slight pressure of sunlight continued to trail behind. But the plasma tail, interacting with the solar wind, moved...
...Skylab's presence in orbit during the comet's passage is an incredible bit of luck. If the comet had arrived a month or so later, or Skylab had been launched only slightly earlier, the space station would not have been available for the important observations. Says Astronaut-Scientist Karl Henize: "All through the space program, we've been looking for a Rosetta stone-what is the primordial material out of which the solar system is made? We looked for it on the moon and we didn't find it; we found other things instead...
Earlier, soon after the astronauts had docked their command module with Skylab, Pogue (who had shown the least susceptibility to motion sickness during tests on earth) became queasy and coughed up a mouthful of vomit. As a safety measure Mission rules require that all such incidents be reported immediately to the ground. But the crew decided to keep quiet: "It's just between you, me and the couch," said Pogue. There was only one hitch: the astronauts forgot that all conversations in the command module were being taped and later piped to the ground. After discovering the coverup, Chief...