Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...coming in from the cosmos, from the third cosmic rocket launched today." Then came the signals, sounding like hoarse violin notes at A above middle C. By that time, 1 p.m. Moscow time Oct. 4 (6 a.m. New York time), Lunik III was already 67,000 miles from the earth. Britain's big radio station at Jodrell Bank, instructed where to look by a telegram from Moscow, picked up the signal too and held it for 20 minutes. Then the violin notes stopped suddenly as if shut...
...orbit," they said, "will ensure the passage of the station near the moon and its flight around the moon. The station will pass at 10,000 kilometers (6,200-odd miles) from the moon, and after flying around it, will continue its movement to the vicinity of the earth...
Whipping around the moon and returning to the earth is considerably harder than hitting the moon, as Lunik II did. A little too much speed could toss the probe beyond the moon and into an orbit around the sun. Slightly bad aim or timing could make the probe crash into the moon. Even harder is putting an object into a permanent orbit around the moon, but the Russians apparently did not hope to do that-not this time...
...detached from the station-most likely to keep it from interfering with the "station's" radio transmission-but it followed along on a very similar course. Unless the station has guiding apparatus of its own, the rocket will presumably follow it around the moon and back toward the earth...
What would happen to the station if and when it rounded the moon and headed back to the earth was anybody's guess. It might burn up in the earth's atmosphere or miss it widely, shooting far beyond and returning again. It might make many different swings, perturbed by the influence of the moon. One thing was certain: it would not go into a permanent orbit around both earth and moon. The moon is relatively fast on its own orbit around the earth; by the time Lunik III swung back, the moon would have moved...