Word: earth
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...expected. "A splendid orbit," says Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa, who designed the instrument package for the satellite. "We are delighted with it." He points out that the principal scientific purpose of the Explorer is to study cosmic rays at various distances from the earth, and it could not do this so well if its orbit were more nearly circular...
...faint, speeding star will notice that it does not wax and wane like the conspicuous rocket that accompanied Sputnik I. This is because its spin stabilization keeps it from tumbling. Its direction, like that of a free gyroscope, is fixed in space. As it rounds the earth, its axis points at the same distant star...
...Explorer stays up as long as expected, the slow shift of its orbit will give information about irregularities in the earth's gravitational field. Its radio signals, coming down through the atmosphere, by their fading and bending will describe ionized layers of air they have passed through. As the satellite spirals toward earth, very slowly at first, it will measure by its loss of energy the density of the air at the top of the atmosphere. It may even tell, merely by crossing the oceans at a known speed, how far the continents really are from each other...
Projects of this sort are apparently in the works. A spokesman for the Army announced plans for a 500-lb. space vehicle that can be used for military reconnaissance, presumably taking pictures of the terrain that it passes over and sending them back to earth by radio or TV. Another announced Army project is a rocket motor with 1,000,000 lbs. of thrust, twelve times the power of the souped-up Redstone. Meanwhile, said Dr. von Braun, a second Jupiter-C is being made into a satellite launcher. Some time between now and April it will toss another small...
...long enjoyed a reputation as front runners in their field. Last week, while shining in one form of TV journalism (see below), they took a back seat in reporting the news. When the news was flashed shortly after 10:48 p.m., E.S.T., that the U.S. had launched its first earth satellite, CBS had Murrow himself on camera, chatting with Actor Cyril Ritchard on Person to Person about such weighty questions as "What is the most important thing in the world to you?" Rival NBC, which was luckily televising a discussion of "Missiles and Men" by its own correspondents, broke...