Word: gemini
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...three days to scan a single pair. It was exhausting, eye-cracking work-in his own words, "brutal tediousness." And it went on for months. Star by star, he examined 20 million images. Then on Feb. 18, 1930, as he was blinking a pair of photographs in the constellation Gemini, "I suddenly came upon the image of Pluto!" It was the most dramatic astronomic discovery in nearly 100 years, and it was made possible by the patience of an American...
...plight of Gemini 8 seemed desperate enough while it tumbled out of control on its high orbit. Last week, when the perils of that wild ride were reviewed at a Houston press conference, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott seemed to have come even closer to disaster. Their firsthand account, and further interpretation of telemetered data, supplied frightening new details about Gemini's troubles; to make the danger even more dramatic, there were the remarkable color snapshots and motion pictures brought back to earth by the astronauts...
Shot by a camera through the spacecraft's window, the movie films first showed the Agena target vehicle sailing serenely through space (see opposite page) as the Gemini maneuvered carefully around it in a masterly exhibition of spacecraft control. Pictures of the docking process (see succeeding pages) reflected Gemini's cautious approach and clearly showed the green lights on the Agena's instrument panel signaling that all was well. Despite their silence, the pictures seemed to give the sound of a solid, satisfactory thump as the two vehicles mated firmly in space...
Then came the first dizzying and unexpected vision of the earth below, seeming to spin, and the sudden, explosive separation of the two spaceships. Finally, as the freed Gemini began to roll faster and faster, the camera recorded the alternating brightness of reflected sunlight and the darkness of outer space sweeping in accelerating flashes across the craft's nose until the film...
...Then Gemini returned to docile perfection. Advised by Houston that they were to bring the spacecraft back to earth in an area 500 miles southeast of Okina wa, Armstrong and Scott fired their four 2,500-lb. retrorockets over Central Africa at 9:45 p.m. E.S.T. and skillfully guided Gemini 8 toward its splashdown...