Word: moonwatch
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...coordinating center for all the amateur teams of satellite observers scattered across the country in "Operation Moonwatch," and it carries on all United States work in orbital computations of satellites. And Whipple says that "we sometimes seem to be working slowly;" this isn't the way it has appeared to his overworked staff, who have had little chance to stop and reflect on what they "seem" to be doing during the month-long Sputnik crisis...
Since Russia's successful satellite launching was completely unheralded, and since the U.S. had not slated its attempt until next spring, the Smithsonian found itself partially unprepared on the night of October 4. Moonwatch teams had been organized, but with no advance warning their personnel was scattered and had to be hastily assembled for spotting duty. Programming schemes had not yet been fully worked out with which to prepare MIT's IBM machines to calculate the satellite's orbit from observational data. And a special telescopic camera, especially designed for the photographic tracking of a satellite, had just been dismantled...
Whipple, moreover, was in Washington for an IGY conference when the Russian satellite was launched. Hynek was at home when he first heard a news report of the event, but he quickly assembled a skeleton crew of Smithsonian staff-members and began to alert the hundred or more Moonwatch stations from the Garden St. office...
Sputnik, it was found, would not be visible in the United States for about a week or ten days. Its orbit was such that it did not cross this country during the hours of morning or evening twilight, the only times at which it might be seen. The Moonwatch teams would have to wait until the orbit moved, or "precessed, enough for observation to be possible...
Once Sputnik began to be visible above the United States, the Moonwatch teams again became active, and now that radio contact with the first satellite has been lost, their daily reports provide the only information on the wanderings of Sputnik I and its fellow-travelling rocket...