Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...lunar expeditions become more ambitious, so will their hardware. NASA is now improving the life-support systems in the lunar module to allow visits to the moon of up to three days by 1970. The agency is also developing more flexible space suits and designing a small rocket-propelled "lunar flyer...
...NASA also hopes to keep its manned space effort alive by using surplus Saturn 4B rockets-which now serve as the third stage of the Apollo launch vehicle-for earth-orbiting flights. This effort, dubbed the Apollo Applications Program, will begin in 1971 with a 28-day flight by three men-one a doctor. These vehicles are only forerunners of a giant space station that NASA plans to orbit by the late 1970s. The first station will probably accommodate twelve people, including the first American spacewoman. It will remain aloft for at least ten years, with crew members rotated every...
...same time, NASA will attempt increasingly complex unmanned probes. Two unmanned Mariner spacecraft will soon pass within 2,000 miles of Mars and radio back enough close-up photographs to map about 20% of the Martian surface. In 1973, other Martian orbiters will eject two instrument-packed capsules for soft landings on Mars...
Mars, however, is only one of NASA's planetary targets-and a relatively close one at that. In 1972, the space agency will send two Pioneer spacecraft on a flyby of Jupiter, largest planet in the solar system. A year later, another Mariner will try the first multiple-planet probe. After a sweep of Venus, it will use the Venusian gravity to boost itself on toward Mercury, the sun's closest and smallest satellite. In the late 1970s, the so-called "outer planets" will be so favorably aligned that a spacecraft passing Jupiter could use its gravity...
...system will surely be enhanced by the success of such unmanned missions. Not only will they prove the feasibility of interplanetary travel, but they will help arouse the public support necessary for such journeys. To be sure, Americans will continue to agonize over the cost of the program -which NASA says will come to no more than .5% to 1% of the gross national product (currently running at $900 billion) a year. And the question of priorities will remain relevant as long as such earthly imperfections as poverty and pollution persist. Still, as Science-Fiction Writer Isaac Asimov says...