Word: crafted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...step closer to reality. From its launching pad at the Baikonur space complex, near Tyuratam in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, a Proton rocket carrying an unmanned spacecraft rose on an orange and blue column of fire that illuminated the night sky. Turning lazily eastward, the rocket sent the craft off on an ambitious mission: to scout Mars and probe Phobos, one of its two tiny moons. Far below at the sprawling complex, technicians swarmed over a sister ship that is scheduled to be launched this week on a similar mission. Exulted Roald Sagdeyev, director of the Soviet Space Research...
Even as the celebration went on, the thoughts of space experts turned to future Mars odysseys. Scientists and engineers in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are involved in the design of complex unmanned craft that will travel to the planet. Some American scientists are even conducting tests on a model of the robotic vehicle that may one day rove the Martian surface. Others are considering the ships that will carry human crews to Mars, the orbiting space station needed to launch them, the size and safety of the crews and the most practical routes through space. Though some...
Finally, in 1965, the triumphant mission of the U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 brought some reality to musings about Mars. The craft flew past the planet at a distance of only 6,100 miles, transmitting 22 television pictures of a bleak, moonlike landscape, pockmarked by craters and showing no signs of life. Even so, hope persisted. To demonstrate that a Mariner flyby at a distance of thousands of miles might completely overlook a thriving civilization, a young and still unknown Carl Sagan that same year sifted through a thousand pictures of earth shot by a weather satellite orbiting only 300 miles...
...Pasadena, Calif., scientists are designing an unmanned rover with six wheels, each more than 3 ft. in diameter, to accommodate the rocky Martian terrain. In a still unapproved mission, the rover, imbued with artificial intelligence and television eyes, would seek out appropriate rock samples and stow them in a craft designed to return them to earth for analysis. At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., experts are designing living quarters for the space station that the U.S. hopes to begin assembling in earth orbit in the mid-1990s. Plans call for private sleeping cubicles, each equipped with...
...Mars for more than a year -- increasing the mission length to what now seems an unbearably long 1,100 days. But with the expenditure of more fuel, the explorers could blast off earlier, head toward Venus and loop around it, using the planet's gravity to whip their craft toward earth at a higher speed. That would cut the mission time to 600 to 700 days...