Word: leonide
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Time to take a shower. It's the most intense day of the Leonid meteor storm -- and while stargazers across the globe settle down for a romantic cascade of shooting stars, scientists and corporations scramble to save their satellites from the biggest Earth-bound bombardment the space age has ever seen. As you read this, tiny fragments from the Comet Tempel-Tuttle's tail are whizzing toward our unsuspecting planet at a dizzying 155,000 mph. You, of course, are protected by many miles of flammable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The satellite your pager uses -- not to mention your phone company...
During those 32 years, however, something has changed. None of the handful of satellites orbiting the globe in 1966 was hit by a Leonid. But today the planet is circled by a bewildering variety of spacecraft--about 600 in all--that have become indispensable to modern society: relaying phone calls, e-mail and faxes; monitoring hurricanes, terrorist activities and crop yields. A collision with a meteor could damage or disable any one of them. That is why NASA, the Air Force and the Russian space agency are directing a wholesale reorientation of their fleets of orbiting spacecraft...
...Leonid showers are alike, however. As Donald Yeomans, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, notes, "Most of the particles are following closely behind the parent comet. That's where the gathering is thickest, and it's only when the comet is in Earth's neighborhood that we get intense showers or storms...
NASA is taking no chances. It will power down any threatened spacecraft to avoid short circuits and will temporarily orient each one, says Riegler, "so that its strongest side faces the incoming Leonids." Even the Hubble Space Telescope will turn its back to the meteoroids, to shield the aperture through which it scans the heavens. And the flat solar panels that energize most of the satellites will be turned edge on to the Leonid stream to minimize the possibility of impact...
...crew of the shuttle Discovery was apparently smart enough to come in out of a storm, returning safely to Earth last Saturday before the Leonid meteor shower could begin. The mission's glamour boy, however--veteran astronaut John Glenn--was a bit unsteady, both in orbit and on his return to terra firma...