Word: cargos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...concrete shuttle landing strip at Kennedy until early next year. Reason: Challenger's next flight involves both a nighttime lift-off and landing, while on the mission after that, a refurbished Columbia, NASA'S other operational shuttle, will return to orbit carrying the heaviest single cargo to date, the 34,500-lb. European-built space lab. NASA does not want to risk a landing on the relatively narrow, marsh-lined Kennedy runway during either mission...
Halfway through a routine nine-day crossing of the Atlantic, below a scalding sun on a lazy late afternoon, a deck hand aboard the Venezuelan cargo ship Maracaibo suddenly spotted a ship drifting aimlessly in the hazy distance. Captain Humberto León Dorante steamed toward the mysterious vessel and tried to establish radio contact with it. When he received no response, he slowly circled the ship three times to look for signs of life or danger. Then he dispatched an armed three-man expedition to board it. Shortly thereafter, León radioed Venezuelan navigation headquarters with his findings...
...clearly the moneymaking part of the flight. The electronic parcel was the second in the series that Canada has labeled Anik C (from the Inuit word for brother). Among other things, it will provide direct satellite-to-home television transmissions. Sent spinning out of the shuttle's big cargo bay, the satellite automatically fired its booster 45 minutes later and began the long 140-hour climb to a permanent "geostationary" parking place 22,300 miles above the equator. Next day, the Challenger crew was scheduled to repeat the performance with a satellite called Palapa B (or Fruit of Effort...
...mission will come Wednesday, on the fifth day up. She and John Fabian, 44, an Air Force colonel, will use Challenger's 50-ft.-long "cherry picker," a remote-controlled mechanical arm, to pluck a German-built experimental package called the Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS) out of the cargo bay and let it orbit freely in space. The SPAS is a self-contained laboratory housing eight separate experiments. These involve such potentially important commercial processes as growing crystals for electronic components and forming superfine alloys in the favorable zero-g environment...
...mission's fifth day, the cherry-picker-like device will be used to play an intriguing game of extraterrestrial catch that could be crucial to the shuttle's future. The arm will hoist a specially designed payload out of the big cargo bay and toss it overboard; then, after the shuttle swoops around the temporary satellite for some nine hours, Ride and her unique arm will try to grapple it back on board. The experiment is a test of the shuttle's ability to retrieve and repair ailing satellites; at least one of those now in orbit...