Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...options are limited. On June 20, NASA's team members used up precious bursts of the spacecraft's dwindling propellant to turn its nose horizontally by 90° and into a sideways position, which exerts increased drag against its forward movement. That change gave NASA its best chance of some final control. Explained Cindy Major, 27, one of the Houston monitors: "There is more pressure now because the attitude of the spacecraft is more sensitive. There is no room for error...
...that would take the spacecraft over the least densely populated areas. Frosch has already made one firm rule about reaching those last critical decisions: Skylab will not be sent into an orbit posing a high hazard in hopes of later reaching an orbit of lesser risk. That is because NASA is simply not certain that its efforts to select the precise final orbit will work. To do nothing in such a situation is preferable to taking a high-risk gamble and failing. Amid all those uncertainties, the engineers think the best final orbit would take the craft over the southern...
Even with all the planning, the margin of possible error is uncomfortably large. At about six hours before reentry, NASA'S projected impact points for Skylab's disintegrating parts occur somewhere along a path of 40,000 miles?nearly twice the circumference of the globe. At two hours, the final anticipated flight track still extends over a 13,000mile path. Testing its prediction on a falling Soviet Cosmos booster stage on April 29, NORAD made an estimate two hours before re-entry? and missed the actual impact points in the Pacific by 4,000 miles...
...brief foreign governments on the facts of the spacecraft's fall and what the U.S. was prepared to do in case of serious damage. In India, the U.S. specialist, Thomas Vrebalovich, went to unusual lengths to pacify critics of the American space venture. He told journalists that if NASA faced the choice of steering Skylab toward either India or America, it would most certainly select the spacecraft's homeland. India's 83-year-old Prime Minister Morarji Desai joined in trying to calm his people's fears. Said he: "Don't get nervous and worried before it happens...
...assembled "go teams" consisting of NASA experts, Defense Department engineers, Red Cross aides, State Department diplomats and Justice Department lawyers?all on alert to be flown by the Air Force to any nation seeking help. China has already agreed to receive such a team if Skylab wreaks havoc there. The Russians, on the other hand, have rejected the offer. "We are responsible at law; there is no question about that," concedes one NASA lawyer...