Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...shock of Judy Agnew's suddenly expanded life has been little short of traumatic. Previously, her orbit had been limited, by her preference, to luncheons with the Kiwanis' Ki-Wives, the Women's Civic League and the Federation of Republican Women. Entertainment at the Governor's mansion in Annapolis often meant pocket billiards, pingpong, or an evening's placid TV watching in the basement club room...
...using complex and expensive Mariner or Voyager spacecraft for these flights, the scientists recommended the older and more economical Pioneer-type craft first launched in 1958. They are smaller than the Mariners and spin at 60 r.p.m., but can be crammed full of sophisticated new instruments. Placed into orbit around the planets, the little craft could return detailed scientific data and even take pictures with a transistorized, 10-Ib. TV camera. Pioneers could also be flown past Jupiter...
...Soviet space scientists were far more concerned with what they sent up than with what came down. Now success has forced them to equalize their interest. The North American Air Defense Command, which is responsible for tracking earth-circling traffic, counts more than 1,300 objects in orbit. These have included not only satellites but last-stage boosters, drifting bolts, and an astronaut's glove and camera. By the immutable laws of gravity, all must one day come plunging down toward earth...
Some time this week, the newest NASA satellite is scheduled to perform a complex series of operations in orbit. If all goes well, Radio Astronomy Explorer-A will unreel a collection of booms and antenna until it turns into a veritable space spider, with two pairs of appendages reaching 1,500 ft. from tip to tip-a distance greater than the height of the Empire State Building (which is 1,472 ft.). With those great legs foraging for information, RAE-A will act as a flying radio telescope capable of monitoring signals that even the largest earth-bound installations cannot...
...from the Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Md. NASA scientists there had to perform a series of intricate maneuvers before they could call for the unreeling of the satellite's four main antennas. First they had to nudge the 417-Ib. satellite into a circular, near-polar orbit about 3,640 miles above the earth with precisely timed bursts of a small rocket called an apogee-kick motor. Tho operation evened out the varying gravitational tugs of the original elliptical orbit, which would have bent and distorted the antennas. Next, RAE-A's masters had to stop...