Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Recovered an instrument-laden capsule, ejected on cue by an orbiting Discoverer satellite, as it dropped from space into the sea near Hawaii. This success brought the U.S. closer to its space ambition for 1961: to fire a man into orbit and bring him back alive...
...tracking." Fidgeting, Pierce waited in the silence that followed, twisting the coffee cup in his hands. Suddenly, the speaker crackled again, and an excited voice relayed a message from Australia: "Woomera has it!" Pierce leaped out of his chair, his glasses bouncing on his nose. "It's in orbit," he cried. "Echo is in orbit." An hour later, a familiar voice filled the room : "This is President Eisenhower speaking." The President's words, spoken into a White House tape recorder months before, had just been broadcast from Goldstone, Calif., and had carried clearly across 2,500 miles...
...cellophane on a pack of cigarettes. Packed accordion-fashion into the nose of a Thor-Delta rocket fired from Cape Canaveral, the 136-lb. satellite was filled with sublimating powders that expanded into gas in the direct rays of the sun and caused the balloon to inflate itself in orbit...
...orbit was a triumph of precision. Echo I was circling the earth once every 121.6 min. at altitudes ranging from 1,018 to 1,160 miles. It deviated from its planned course by only one-tenth of a degree and four miles of altitude. Visible as the brightest stars in the night sky it was quickly sighted by observers in England. Australia and Japan. After it has been bombarded by meteorites and misshapen by the cold of sunless space, it is anybody's guess how long Echo I will remain on course. But this did not diminish the jubilation...
Studying the Companion's orbit around Sirius, they proved that its mass is 96% of the sun's, yet it gives 400 times less light. At first they thought that it was an average, sun-sized star that gives less light because of low temperature. But by 1915 astronomers were able to prove that its surface is really hotter than the sun's and gives three times as much light per square inch. If a star's surface is bright but the star as a whole gives off little light, then the only possible conclusion...