Word: orbit
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...Challenger disaster understandably haunted space officials at the Cape last week as they prepared for their first launch since the accident. They checked and rechecked a 116-foot Delta rocket that was to carry a $57.5 million weather satellite into an equatorial orbit to detect developing hurricanes. When a tiny fuel leak was detected on Thursday, the launch was prudently postponed until Saturday as technicians pored over the problem...
With the space shuttle program on indefinite hold since the Challenger disaster last Jan. 28, the Pentagon has been counting on its powerful unmanned ^ Titan rockets to fill the void by carrying vital spy satellites into space. One Titan tried to lift an advanced photographic satellite into orbit last August, but the flight was aborted shortly after launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. On a second try last week, another Titan exploded right after lift...
...explosion released a cloud of toxic vapor that left nearly 60 base employees suffering from eye and skin irritations. The more lasting damage may be to the U.S. space program. The loss of a second Titan left the U.S. with no reliable way to launch heavy payloads into orbit. The Pentagon is already reduced to operating with only one reconnaissance satellite, rather than the two that military planners deem necessary. If that single eye in the sky should malfunction, U.S. intelligence in space would be blinded...
Then came Mir. On March 13, the Soviets sent veteran Cosmonauts Kizim, 44, and Solovyev, 39, aloft on Soyuz T-15 to activate the space platform, which had been launched into a slightly elliptical 210-mile-high orbit three weeks earlier.* The subsequent rendezvous marked a milestone: the establishment of what the Soviets have heralded as the first permanently manned space station. According to current estimates, the first comparable U.S. station will not be operational before...
...which put the U.S. program out of commission for a year or more. The shuttle's hiatus leaves a big opening in the launching market, a business worth at least $500 million a year. Between now and 1990, an estimated 60 commercial satellites will need a lift into orbit. While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration struggled last month to find out the cause of the shuttle disaster, an Ariane launch successfully put two satellites into orbit. Before the accident, the shuttle held two-thirds of the market and Ariane had the rest...