Word: kodiak
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Discoverer XIII serenely circled the earth, a control station some 300 miles below, in Kodiak, Alaska, took charge. On the satellite's 17th orbit, up to it came an electronic command: Release the instrument capsule. The order triggered a complex, irrevocable sequence of 22 events which permitted no margin for error. Jets first swept the 1,800-lb. satellite's nose downward until it pointed to earth at a 60° angle. Pins kicked loose, freeing the 349-lb. instrument capsule for its descent to earth, and the newly installed gas jets immediately set it spinning...
...weapons, and many experts believed that the Soviet Union would not break the monopoly for many years. Less confident, Peter King set up an unofficial sort of watch for Soviet A-bomb tests. He arranged to have Navy planes bring him once-a-month jugs of rain water from Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska, relatively close to the U.S.S.R. He called his low-key project Operation Rainbarrel...
...months, the air over Alaska remained free of man-made radioactivity. But in September, 1949 King heard from the Air Force of indications that the Russians might have successfully tested an atomic bomb. He sent a rush message-"To hell with the monthly schedule"-for fresh rain water from Kodiak. Within a few hours, he was able to identify radioactive cerium, which could only have come from a nuclear explosion. The U.S. had had no recent A-bomb tests. There was only one possible conclusion-and a few days later, President Harry Truman announced to the world the news, picked...
...with infra-red eyes and shoots high-pressure gas through a series of jets to keep the rocket horizontal in respect to the ground below. When a Discoverer - and there have been eleven fired so far - has circled the earth 17 times on a polar orbit, it passes over Kodiak, Alaska, where a radio control station sends an order that sets the guidance system on a new track, tilting it 60° from the horizontal. An electric impulse fires explosive bolts to kick off a re-entry capsule, a retrorocket slows the capsule's speed, a drag parachute pops...