Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...rocket, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.; twelve times it had failed to accomplish its total mission. To prepare the way for that day when a man can be shot into space and brought back alive. Discoverer's task was to control a satellite at will in its orbit and guide it back for recovery, undamaged, at a specific point on the earth's surface...
...small. Not once had the Thor booster failed to carry its instrument-packed burden off the launching pad. Only on one occasion, when Discoverer IX was purposely destroyed 56 sec. after launching, did the second stage fail to separate and ignite. Six times the satellite was successfully guided into orbit and its instrument capsule, at an electronic command, dropped back toward earth. But none of the capsules was recovered. The other achievements seemed secondary. Public fancy fastened on perhaps the Discoverer program's least important aspect: the attempt to snare the re-entry capsule in mid-air near Hawaii...
Sweating It Out. As Discoverer XIII roared off Vandenberg's launching pad last week, it looked exactly like its predecessors. But one important modification had been made. Speculating that previous re-entry failures had been caused by malfunction of tiny rockets designed to stabilize the satellite in orbit-by causing it to spin like a bullet-Lockheed Aircraft Corp. engineers had replaced the rockets with gas jets, anxiously prayed they had guessed right. In the console-banked control room at Sunnyvale, Calif., Air Force Colonel Charles G. ("Moose") Mathison paced the floor while monitoring the countdown and alerting...
...Discoverer XIII serenely circled the earth, a control station some 300 miles below, in Kodiak, Alaska, took charge. On the satellite's 17th orbit, up to it came an electronic command: Release the instrument capsule. The order triggered a complex, irrevocable sequence of 22 events which permitted no margin for error. Jets first swept the 1,800-lb. satellite's nose downward until it pointed to earth at a 60° angle. Pins kicked loose, freeing the 349-lb. instrument capsule for its descent to earth, and the newly installed gas jets immediately set it spinning...
...Carroll leaped into the ocean, strapped a cable to the bobbing satellite and gave the signal to lift away. Discoverer XIII-"Lucky Thirteen"-had returned safely to earth. Said Lockheed's Missile Chief Herschel Brown: "The U.S. has accomplished an unprecedented first. The Russians have attempted a recovery orbit and failed. We have succeeded-and we feel pretty darned good...