Word: finality
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...options are limited. On June 20, NASA's team members used up precious bursts of the spacecraft's dwindling propellant to turn its nose horizontally by 90° and into a sideways position, which exerts increased drag against its forward movement. That change gave NASA its best chance of some final control. Explained Cindy Major, 27, one of the Houston monitors: "There is more pressure now because the attitude of the spacecraft is more sensitive. There is no room for error...
...choices were to be made on the basis of a complicated "hazard index," a computer calculation used to determine the final orbital paths that would take the spacecraft over the least densely populated areas. Frosch has already made one firm rule about reaching those last critical decisions: Skylab will not be sent into an orbit posing a high hazard in hopes of later reaching an orbit of lesser risk. That is because NASA is simply not certain that its efforts to select the precise final orbit will work. To do nothing in such a situation is preferable to taking...
Even with all the planning, the margin of possible error is uncomfortably large. At about six hours before reentry, NASA'S projected impact points for Skylab's disintegrating parts occur somewhere along a path of 40,000 miles?nearly twice the circumference of the globe. At two hours, the final anticipated flight track still extends over a 13,000mile path. Testing its prediction on a falling Soviet Cosmos booster stage on April 29, NORAD made an estimate two hours before re-entry? and missed the actual impact points in the Pacific by 4,000 miles...
...stuck wing. During a second manned mission, on July 28,1973, the lab's thrusters sprang leaks?and a crash program to prepare a vehicle to rescue the three astronauts was undertaken. The astronauts shut off the leaking system, and the rescue mission proved unnecessary. On the third and final mission, on Nov. 16, 1973, Astronauts William Pogue and Edward Gibson struggled for three hours outside Skylab in getting a vital radar antenna adjusted and repaired...
...took six hours of preparations before Eagle's hatch was finally opened and Armstrong squeezed through the small opening. Toting the bulky life-support pack that kept him alive on the airless surface of the moon, he cautiously, hesitantly climbed down the ship's ladder. By now a TV camera was monitoring his descent, flashing his image a quarter of a million miles back to earth. There was a moment's pause. Then Armstrong took the final step, planting his left boot on the finely powdered lunar surface. "That's one small step...