Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...sluggish start in the race for space. It was the Soviet Union, using a giant rocket developed for military purposes, that opened the space age on Oct. 4, 1957 with Sputnik I. With the doomed dog Laika, the U.S.S.R. put the first animal into orbit. The Soviets scored the first hit on the moon, took the first photograph of the moon's far side. The U.S. still can not match the weight-lifting capacity of Russia's satellite booster...
...satellites have long since made up in quantity and quality what they lacked, until Midas II, in size. As of last week, Russia had successfully launched four earth satellites and three space probes. Against that, the U.S. has put 19 satellites into earth orbit, fired two successful deep space probes. So commonplace has U.S. space achievement become that it almost escaped public notice last week when an Aerobee-Hi rocket shot 137 miles into the air with eight ultraviolet telescopes to analyze starlight. Of ten satellites still circling the earth, nine came from the U.S.-and the information they have...
...give the U.S. an all-weather navigational accuracy unmatched in human history. Developed by a pair of young Johns Hopkins scientists who studied the radio Doppler effects of Russia's Sputnik I and applied them to practical purposes, the Transit system is scheduled to have four satellites in orbit by 1962. They should be able to give every spot on earth a navigational fix, accurate to the quarter mile, every 90 minutes. Any ship with a whip antenna, a low-cost computer and a receiver will profit from Transit - and that includes missile-bearing submarines, to which navigational accuracy...
...that watches the horizon with infra-red eyes and shoots high-pressure gas through a series of jets to keep the rocket horizontal in respect to the ground below. When a Discoverer - and there have been eleven fired so far - has circled the earth 17 times on a polar orbit, it passes over Kodiak, Alaska, where a radio control station sends an order that sets the guidance system on a new track, tilting it 60° from the horizontal. An electric impulse fires explosive bolts to kick off a re-entry capsule, a retrorocket slows the capsule's speed...
...Moon Orbiters. Preparations for one of those systems are under full steam at the Space Technology Laboratory, which will have two tries next fall at putting a satellite in orbit around the moon. Boosted away from earth by an Atlas missile and two smaller upper-stage rockets, the moon satellite will weigh 350-400 Ibs. It will be spin-stabilized by ten small rockets and will get electric power for its instruments and controls from four paddle-wheels covered with 8,800 solar cells. All this has become standard U.S. practice. What is novel about the moon orbiter...