Word: echo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...space is a tough neighborhood for frail balloons. Microscopic meteorites punctured Echo's skin, allowing the gas inside to seep out. Sunlight exerted a slight but persistent pressure. Gradually Echo lost its regular shape; flat places and wrinkles appeared on its shiny surface. "She's prune-faced already," says Richard Slater of G. T. Schjeldahl, Northfield, Minn., the company that made the balloon. When Echo turns deliberately about once in eight to ten minutes, flat places sometimes act as mirrors, making the sun's reflection momentarily brighter. Wrinkled places dim the reflection. The radio waves that...
...weeks after launching, Echo stayed entirely outside the shadow of the Earth, but on Aug. 24 it dipped into darkness for two minutes while passing over the U.S. West Coast. Each day its stay in the shadow will increase, until in late December the balloon satellite will be in darkness for 35 minutes of its 118-minute orbit. When it goes into the shadow, it shrinks a bit, but Dr. Jaffe does not know how much...
...Echo's orbit has changed very little, but no one can say for sure how long it will last. All its gas pressure is probably gone by now. The only reason it keeps its shape is that the forces that tend to shrink or distort it are extremely small. Slater estimates that meteorites nibble away about 1¼ sq. in. of its skin per day. Eventually the sphere may collapse, pushed to a pancake by air drag and pressure of sunlight, or drawn together by the Mylar's "memory" of the way it was folded in the launching...
...Echo is visible over much of Russia, and is the most conspicuous space vehicle launched so far. But the Soviet press and radio have made no mention of it. Unless a Soviet citizen follows foreign broadcasts, he does not know what to make of the bright star that creeps repeatedly across the night...
...gadgety as the self-shaking mop; some are as complicated as the sealed-window, almost dust-free house. Some are as frivolous as a musical toothbrush that sounds a sour note when the teeth are not brushed correctly; some are as awe-inspiring as the purposeful arc of Echo threading its way through the stars. For the housewife, the worker on the production line, and the executive in his office, the outpouring of new inventions has provided more time to pursue dozens of new interests at leisure-and a choice of hundreds more new products to make leisure time more...