Word: moons
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...solar system suddenly appears to be a surprisingly wet place, according to new findings by the Cassini space probe orbiting Saturn. Last week NASA released images of water-crystal geysers spouting from Saturn's bright-white moon Enceladus. The water probably comes from shallowly buried deposits, warmed by gravitational pulses from Saturn itself and various passing moons. Cassini also discovered carbon-based molecules in the vicinity of Enceladus. Water, warmth and carbon are key ingredients in the recipe for life. Whether Enceladus does--or even could--harbor biology is one more thing for the hearty Cassini to investigate...
...easy to forget the moon. The images of NASA's celebrated lunar landings are lasered onto the national retina, and perhaps no two things are better remembered than the sister ships that made the trips: the cone-shaped Apollo command module and the leggy lunar lander. If NASA has its way, those kinds of spacecraft will be flying again soon. They will not, however, be your daddy's moonships...
...January 2004 President Bush announced his plan to send Americans back to the moon and onto Mars. Those bold goals-which NASA estimates it could achieve by 2018 and 2030, respectively-would at last free the nation of the 25-year drudgery of the shuttle program. The idea raised eyebrows--not least because of its price tag, distant target dates and suspicious initial timing, at the start of the 2004 election cycle. In the two years since, however, funding has been forthcoming and design work has begun, with aerodynamic testing on scale models under way at the Marshall Space Flight...
...made the shuttles such lethal disappointments is that they have tried to do too many things--fly like a spacecraft, land like an airplane, haul cargo like a truck. Part of the reason the Apollo ships succeeded was that they had an exceedingly clear goal: to fly to the moon and strictly obey the laws of simplicity and safety on the way. Both ships were also wisely mounted at the top of the booster that lifted them off the ground--keeping them away from the fire and foam that killed Challenger and Columbia...
...shuttle engines--will get all this hardware into space. The larger of the two will loft the lunar lander and other equipment into Earth orbit. A second, smaller rocket will follow, carrying the CEV. The crew vehicle and the lander will then link up and fly off to the moon...