Word: nasa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dusty runway at Rogers Dry Lake, Los Angeles Bureau Chief Benjamin Cate and Correspondent Joseph Kane were on hand to record the breathtaking moment. With accommodations in short supply, the self-described "odd couple" rented a 29-ft. recreational vehicle that they parked just 100 yards from NASA's press center. Cate, who has covered ten Gemini and two Apollo space missions, was not surprised by the postponement of the shuttle liftoff. Says he: "NASA has hardly ever had an on-time launch of a new spacecraft. A glitch was sure to creep into the countdown...
...earlier stages of the mission were covered by correspondents stationed at NASA command centers in Texas and Florida. Houston Bureau Chief Robert Wurmstedt interviewed NASA Staff Physician Sharon Tilton to learn about the astronauts' physical and emotional condition in space. He soon discovered that the only way to communicate with technicians was by taking a crash course in scientific shorthand. Says Wurmstedt: "The major impression made on any reporter covering a space shot for the first time is the apparent inability of scientists to explain anything in laymen's terms. Even the letter F can be a mystery...
...water into the cabin's temperature control system. Young and Crippen had less luck fixing a faulty flight data recorder that had stopped mysteriously. They tried to get to it with a screwdriver but found the panel over it had been too tightly screwed down (or "torqued," as NASA...
...real "show stopper," of course, might have been the landing. But it was breathtakingly "nominal," NASA lingo for "perfect." Crossing the coast below Big Sur at Mach 7, seven times the speed of sound, or about 5,100 m.p.h., Crippen crowed: "What a way to come to California!" Young lost his cool only after he had artfully landed Columbia right on the runway's center line. Eager to make an exit, he urged Houston to get the reception crews to speed up their "sniffing" chores-ridding the ship of noxious gases with exhausts and fans. When he was finally...
...struggle to get the shuttle launched, NASA has already been forced to drain funds from other areas, especially those concerned with the unmanned exploration of the solar system. To NASA's great embarrassment, it has had to drop out of a joint effort to position two satellites-one American, the other European-in great, looping orbits around the poles of the sun. These solar regions have never before been inspected by technically equipped robots from earth, and such satellites could help answer important questions about the behavior of our parent star: How does it affect terrestrial climate and weather...