Word: earthing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Other eyes look into subjects of more immediate importance to men on earth. A small mirror housed in a tube peers down from one side of Explorer VI and gathers impressions of the cloud layers over the earth. An electronic counter digests the mirror's impressions and turns them into radio signals, which eventually become crude photographs of the earth's weather patterns. Two magnetometers watch the earth's magnetic field, may help map the field and explain its curious storms and their effect on earth communications...
...keep the interior of the paddle-wheel satellite at an even temperature range as it passes from the cool shadow of the earth into the blazing heat of the naked sun, Explorer VI has on its outer skin a patch of black-carbon paint. A thermostat actuates a small shield that alternately covers and uncovers the patch as heat requirements dictate. Since the satellite uses electricity much faster than the paddle wheels can make it signals from the earth periodically shut of the largest of Explorer VI's three radio transmitters. A memory device called Telebit takes over, stores...
...hold its hip-swinging orbit for at least a year. During that time it may illuminate problems of the universe from Einstein's theory on the curvature of space to the question whether man can really get past the Van Allen radiation belts by entering space above the earth's poles. At week's end a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported: "The paddle wheel is doing well. It is converting solar energy into electrical energy. The signals are coming in loud and clear." If its perigee edges in too close to the earth...
...Thaler's primary field is nuclear weapons effects. But two years ago, he had a sudden notion that certain characteristics of the behavior of radio waves might be the key to a simple and reliable long-range detection system. Since both the ionosphere and the surface of the earth will deflect radio signals, a transmitter can angle its beam upward and the broad waves will carom back and forth between ground and sky as they proceed to circle the earth. Each deflection sends back an echo to the home transmitter, and this "back-scattering" was the phenomenon that attracted...
...nuclear explosion? Then, if there were even a slight difference in the returning echo patterns-and if receivers could be made sensitive enough to detect the difference -monitoring oscilloscopes could display telltale evidence of what the waves had encountered on their travels. Since these radio waves bounce around the earth, the new method would overcome the limitation of radar, whose line-of-sight waves travel in straight lines, thus cannot see beneath the horizon...