Word: earthing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...before muscular, 39-year-old Bill Rankin, combat pilot and a bar-bellhefting, physical-culture fan, would touch earth again, he was in for 40 minutes that even other old salts of the air would be talking about for years...
...energy from the sun to send messages across millions of miles (TIME, April 27). Such a durable source of energy is crucial to proposed space probes to Venus or farther planets, for there is little point in sending out space probes unless their transmitters can send information back to earth...
...launch, the two aluminum arms were folded against the satellite's side. As the solid-fueled third stage was about to fire some 150 miles above the earth, they snapped out into position. Each arm branched in two directions and each branch carried a flat paddle about the size of a checkerboard, covered with 2,000 silicon-based solar cells mounted on a thin plastic honeycomb (an elaboration of the light-collecting window in Vanguard I, which still draws in enough energy to keep the tiny satellite busily broadcasting 17 months after it was launched). At 22,000 m.p.h...
Other Tasks. But Explorer VI had more to do than absorb energy from the sun. Purposely programed for the most eccentric orbit ever achieved by an earth satellite, it settled almost exactly into its planned path, first reached its record apogee some 26,400 miles straight out into space from the Cape of Good Hope, its perigee a narrow 157 miles over Singapore. With so great a range of altitude, it will pierce both of the newly discovered Van Allen radiation belts (TIME. May 12, 1958 et seq.), collect comprehensive data on phenomena ranging from the earth's ionosphere...
...scientific instruments yet sent into space -all in a 29-in. by 26-in. ball that moves through its complete orbit once every twelve hours. One hoped-for result is the first relatively detailed map of the Van Allen belts, which present a formidable barrier to interplanetary flight. Previous earth satellites have not gone high enough to examine the enormous breadth of the Van Allen radiation. Pioneer IV obtained valuable information, but made only one trip through the belts before falling into orbit around the sun. Several devices in Explorer VI are studying the belts' range and fluctuating intensities...