Word: orbit
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...Roger, roll Challenger," acknowledged Mission Control's Richard Covey in the professional tones of all air controllers. Like a fly clinging to a caterpillar, the shuttle turned gracefully on its back as the tank and the boosters assumed the proper downrange course for entering orbit...
...been specifically assigned to help ready Garn for his flight. Garn explained that all the astronauts were fully aware of the risks. "We never talked about it. We always assumed that if it happened, it would happen to somebody else." Recalled Ohio Democrat John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth: "We used to speculate, the first group of seven, how many of us would be alive after the program." (One of them, Gus Grissom, died in a 1967 fire on a launch pad.) His voice thick, he added, "We always knew there would be a day like this...
...other specialists on Challenger had less publicized but important goals. The mission carried a $100 million NASA satellite, the second in a series designed to fill the communications gaps that now exist between orbiting spacecraft and ground stations. Among the experiments the crew was scheduled to conduct was the deployment of instruments that would measure the ultraviolet spectrum of Halley's comet. Another was to sample radiation within the spacecraft at various orbit points. There was even a student project in which the effect of weightlessness on the development of twelve White Leghorn chicken embryos would be studied...
...astronaut training in 1978 and helped fly the 747 that carried the shuttle spacecraft between ground stations. As pilot of Challenger in 1984, he guided the spacecraft so that fellow crew members could retrieve a broken Solar Max satellite, which was repaired on board and later placed back into orbit. At an in-flight press conference, Scobee and the mission's four other astronauts showed up in T shirts that read ACE SATELLITE REPAIR...
...Sullivan of the New York Times was called to the phone, and the news he heard changed the world. Sullivan hurried back to the party and whispered in the ear of Physicist Lloyd Berkner, who rapped on the table for quiet. "I am informed that a satellite is in orbit at an elevation of 900 kilometers. I wish to congratulate our Soviet colleagues on their achievement...