Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...antennas spinning, lights blinking. Spotlights glared as it landed, picked out a sequin-spangled man and woman dangling from it. The couple waved, the crowd applauded, and a troupe of animal trainers, tumblers, clowns and acrobats raced into the arena to applaud back. As the Sputnik beeped back into orbit among the rafters, the famed Moscow circus cut loose with its spectacular show for the first time in the Western Hemisphere...
Pioneer's report, after covering the first million miles of its 500 million-mile orbit around the sun: "Everything is fine." Its internal temperature is 68° F., slightly lower than the standard temperature of a U.S. living room. The four paddles that collect solar energy for its radio are colder: 27° F. Eighty-seven slight impacts from , micrometeorites and five heavier ones were registered, but nothing really damaging. Other data will take months to interpret. Eventually they will tell about cosmic rays, magnetic fields and other space conditions between the earth and the orbit of Venus...
When Vanguard I, the U.S.'s second satellite, popped into orbit early in 1958, Nikita Khrushchev derided it as a "grapefruit." It was indeed small (6.4 in. in diameter, 3.25 Ibs.). But last week, as it completed its second year in orbit, Vanguard had proved to have two virtues that the massive Soviet satellites lack. First, it soared into so high an orbit (apogee 2,500 miles above the earth, perigee 400 miles) that the outermost fringes of the atmosphere exert almost no slowing effect on its motion. It has kept going while heavier competitors sagged into the atmosphere...
Vanguard's second virtue is the solar battery that has kept its small radio beeping steadily, long after bigger satellites lost their voices. Tracked by its radio signals, the "grapefruit's" motions in its orbit have given invaluable information about the earth's slightly bumpy gravitational field, and about the shape of the earth itself. Last week another bit of information came down from the little satellite. There was a slight, unexplained wandering in its long-studied orbit. After much calculation, Dr. Peter Munsen and other orbit experts of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reached their...
...impossible to predict to what extent the orbit of Pioneer V will be disturbed by the gravitational pull of the earth and Venus...