Word: lander
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...detained as house pets by bemused native kings. Malaria felled the adventurers in wholesale lots. The curative properties of quinine had been known for two centuries, but the drug had been brought from Peru by Jesuits and thus was thought unfit for Protestants. At least one explorer, Richard Lander, was forced to drink poison. This ritual proved his good faith when he survived it, and he was permitted to watch human sacrifices. "The head is severed from the trunk with an ax," he wrote blandly, "and the smoking blood gurgles into a calabash...
...Lander...
Jill Wilson Lander Santa Barbara, Calif...
Hoping to answer that planetary puzzle, the Soviets last June launched two more unmanned spacecraft, Venera (Venus) 9 and 10. Last week, after arcing across 186 million miles of space, the first of the probes approached its target and released a small lander, emblazoned with hammer and sickle. After deploying a balloon-like French-designed parachute system, the vehicle descended slowly through the atmosphere and made a soft landing. Prechilled in the coldness of space, the probe's instruments survived 53 minutes on the torrid surface-three minutes longer than the last Russian lander. They radioed a flood...
While the lander transmitted its historic picture, the first from another planet's surface, the mother ship swung into orbit around Venus to become its first satellite (Venus has no known natural moons) and continued to transmit information on its environment. At week's end, Moscow announced that Venera 10 had repeated its twin's triumph...