Word: missioners
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...that, the mission controllers, who in recent years have whipsawed between the devastation of the shuttle disaster and the celebration of the Mars landings, once again had reason to cheer, whoop and slap one another on the back...
...some longtime allies, the scientific triumph was a moment to remind the world what the U.S. still does better than anyone else ever has, marshalling its imagination and technological prowess to send robotic emissaries into outer space. It didn't hurt the effort to mend international fences that the mission is being conducted in collaboration with the European and Italian space agencies. And it didn't hurt the domestic sense of pride that the arrival at Saturn occurred in the run-up to the Fourth of July...
...Cassini-Huygens traveled all the way to Saturn and returned nothing but data on the planet and its rings, the mission would probably still be judged a success. Yet the true scientific goods will come when the spacecraft trains its instruments on the swirl of Saturnian moons. It would be nearly impossible for one ship to visit all 31 known satellites in Saturn's litter, so NASA has selected nine of them, both for their scientific promise and their comparatively convenient locations. The exotic names of the chosen moons--Phoebe, Titan, Iapetus, Enceladus, Mimas, Tethys, Hyperion, Dione and Rhea--hint...
...frugality came at a price. Cheap ships can't carry as many instruments as luxury models, so it may take more than one mission to bring back the same science. What's more, the lower price means more frequent breakdowns, as the string of bad luck NASA had with its Mars probes in the 1990s painfully demonstrated. The upside of flying economy is that if one spacecraft is lost, it's a relatively small matter to cobble together another. That thrift-shop technology has succeeded in getting three rovers onto the surface of Mars and will be at work again...
...NATO troops were off to visit the Kabul Disneyland. Afghanistan is the good war, remember. The war of undeniable necessity. The war everyone supported. It is hard to imagine a more important mission for NATO, or for the civilized world for that matter, than assuring free elections in Afghanistan, crucible for the worst terrorist attack in history. Yet with a flick of a hand, Chirac dismisses Karzai--and, of course...