Word: moonlet
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...appears to be a previously undiscovered moon* with a diameter as large as 600 km (370 miles). "The object was very close," says Physicist John Simpson of the University of Chicago. "It could be rocky or composed largely of ice. Either material will effectively block high energy particles." The moonlet, in orbit about 90,000 km (56,000 miles) above Saturn's cloud tops, was nicknamed "Pioneer rock" by the scientists, and it is being officially designated as 1979 S-l (for the first new moon of Saturn discovered this year...
Turning its cameras away from the Martian surface. Mariner provided a bonus for scientists at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: the first closeup pictures of the two tiny moonlets of Mars. Deimos and Phobos. Sharpened and clarified by computers, the photographs finally laid to rest an enticing theory put forth a few years ago by Soviet Astrophysicist I.S. Shklovskii. who said that the apparent behavior of Phobos in orbit meant that it could be hollow. That in turn suggested to Shklovskii that the moonlet might be an artificial satellite, lofted into orbit by a long-extinct Martian civilization. Instead, Mariner...
Taking its TV eyes off the planet for a while, Mariner demonstrated its versatility-and the skill of its terrestrial controllers-by spotting and photographing the outer Martian moonlet, Deimos, from a distance of more than 5,000 miles. Deimos, a tiny chunk of debris only 5½ miles by 7 miles, seemed to be flattened in its northwest quadant, appearing to one JPL observer "like half an apple with a bite taken out of it." It also had unexplained light splotches and other surface features that may show up more clearly when JPL technicians use computers to enhance...
...Deimos (named after the sons of Mars, the Roman god of war) could finally put to rest the imaginative theory of Soviet Astrophysicist I.S. Shklovskii. In an attempt to explain certain peculiarities-now attributed to misinterpretation of data-in the orbit of Phobos. Shklovskii suggested in 1959 that the moonlet might be hollow, possibly a satellite lofted by some long-vanished civilization...