Word: liftoff
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...Should the liftoff take place as planned, it will be another 15 months before the spacecraft settles into its low, circular orbit around Mars. After that, it will have a full two years to conduct its surveillance work - a long life for a robot ship, and one that should return a rich trove of science...
...mission control inside the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the sense of calm was noticeably higher than that during liftoff nearly a month ago when two minutes into the flight it was learned that foam debris which doomed Columbia had also fallen from Discovery's detachable fuel tank...
TIME.com: Despite two years of intense work on safety precautions, the space shuttle again lost pieces of foam on liftoff. Why has this happened again? Jeff Kluger: It will never be possible to entirely prevent foam from flaking off the shuttle during liftoff - NASA administrator Michael Griffin has been quite candid about that. There's simply too much surface area on a fuel tank 15 stories tall, carrying more than 535,000 gallons fuel. There's too much wind and vibration during liftoff to prevent at least some foam from breaking off. What NASA engineers have done over the past...
...current shuttle, by comparison to some of the previous missions, is remarkably clean despite the foam that fell off. In that respect, it shows that the work of the past two years has produced a lot of results. It's about as clean as a shuttle can be after liftoff, but having lost seven people to a foam-related, NASA has moved toward zero tolerance...
...Ready for Liftoff With its new manned space program, China is hoping to join the space race as an equal partner [Sept. 29]. In pursuing its goal of becoming a modern power, the nation that invented rockets should not forget that a space program carries a considerable cost. The money could be more wisely used on other projects. A degree of openness is required to attract the expertise and funding necessary to keep such an ambitious project on track. It is time, however, for the U.S. and its allies to see that China assumes its rightful place. The West should...