Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...minute mark, when the spacecraft successfully jettisoned its two spent solid rocket boosters. But experienced space observers did not relax until Discovery shut down its three main engines 6 1/2 minutes later, shucked off its external fuel tank, then slipped safely into orbit about 180 miles above the earth a half hour later. Declared elated space engineer John Kaltenbach: "This was the one that had to fly. It looks damn good. Oh, it just feels so good...
...raised and tilted the TDRS package in the cargo bay, and activated springs that pushed it out of the open doors into space. After Hauck and pilot Dick Covey had maneuvered the shuttle to a safe 45 miles away, the TDRS rocket ignited, sending the satellite farther away from earth. Later that night, the TDRS rocket's second stage precisely nudged the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit, where it hovered 22,250 miles above the Pacific Ocean...
...aware of the folly of total dependence on manned launch vehicles to deploy spacecraft, the U.S. has been forced to play a catch-up game. Since January 1986, the Soviets have launched scores of satellites, sent two / scientific probes to Mars, and ferried a stream of cosmonauts between the earth and the space station Mir -- all with the aid of antiquated but tried- and-true expendable rockets. In the process, they have pushed far ahead of the U.S. in knowledge of the effects of extended space flight on humans...
Others are just as vague. Should the station be a research and manufacturing facility for performing microgravity experiments and making substances not possible on earth? An assembly platform for the large craft needed to carry humans to Mars? A combination of both? In fact, a station is not needed for former astronaut Sally Ride's "Mission to Planet Earth," a proposal to study the earth's environment and atmosphere from satellites. And some argue that it may not even be needed for another major space project: a permanent manned base on the moon...
...week's end NASA's immediate job was clearly delineated: to complete Discovery's mission and bring it safely back to earth. Aboard the spacecraft, the astronauts attended to a few glitches, including a nagging problem in the craft's cooling system and a balky antenna on a communications instrument, which they managed to retract. They worked on science experiments, played tapes of classical and pop music and shot pictures of Pacific thunderstorms, of a lava flow in Ethiopia and of coastal erosion wreaked by Hurricane Gilbert in Yucatan...