Word: norad
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There was, nevertheless, plenty of suspense as Skylab slipped ever closer to its doom. The craft was monitored by the worldwide network of NASA and NORAD's space-tracking stations. From NORAD'S underground headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., calculations about the craft's flight were transmitted to the Skylab Control Center at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center near Houston. There Charles Harlan, the Skylab flight director, estimated the vehicle's probable reentry point, and the possible dangers. He, in turn, was responsible for advising the Skylab Coordination Center at NASA headquarters in Washington whether...
...worldwide array of NORAD'S space-tracking stations, using infra-red detection devices as well as radar, is so discerning that it can track an object even smaller than a basketball at a range of 20,000 miles. Even an astronaut's glove is being tracked. Beyond Skylab, the heaviest object aloft is now Salyut 6, the Soviets' manned spacecraft. Every month about 40 man-made objects re-enter the atmosphere, but only a fourth survive to strike the earth. There has never been a reported injury, although the fall of Cosmos 954 over northern Canada in January...
...NORAD calculations are being transmitted by phone to a windowless room at the Johnson Space Center, where four five-member teams take turns watching monitor screens round the clock. On one wall hangs a lO-ft.-high chart detailing the altitude of the falling lab, day by day. The room, No. 314, is far plainer than the control center from which the Apollo moon missions were directed. The watch teams receive fresh telemetric data from Skylab whenever it gets within radio range of one of five NASA tracking stations (in Santiago, Chile; Bermuda; Ascension Island; Madrid; and Goldstone, Calif...
...entry into the atmosphere. At that point, a higher-level interagency team of experts, including NASA Administrator Robert A. Frosch, will take up positions in the Skylab Coordination Center on the sixth floor of NASA headquarters in Washington. Getting his information and recommendations from the Houston center, NORAD and the Marshall Space Flight "enter at Huntsville, Ala., Frosch will make the final decisions on what, if anything, should be done to try to influence Skylab's final fall...
...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...