Word: greb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Navy's navigation satellites, which looked like a bass drum spangled with bright solar cells and patches of white paint. Perched on top of it like the gobs of a three-scoop ice cream cone were a polished aluminum sphere, the Naval Research Laboratory's Greb III solar radiation satellite, and a smaller drum named Injun, built at Dr. James Van Allen's laboratory at the State University of Iowa. Boosted aloft by a Thor-Able-Star rocket, all three satellites soared into space together. Though the launch was successful, the strong springs, meant to shove...
...famous. It weighs only 40 lbs., but packed inside are instruments to measure particles circulating around the earth in the two Van Allen radiation belts, to count fresh particles arriving from the sun or distant space, and to observe several kinds of light from airglow and auroras. Greb III (155 lbs.) is simpler; it is part of the Navy's long-term effort to study solar radiation that ionizes the atmosphere and effects radio transmission. Its job is to keep tabs on X rays coming mostly from solar flares...