Word: orbit
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
NASA, of course, does not permit alcohol aboard its spacecraft or on its facilities, but last week, after Columbia's harrowing, computer-plagued final day in orbit, the space agency had good reason to splash everyone with champagne. Sweeping out of the skies in the fading glow of a setting sun, the space shuttle settled gently onto Edwards Air Force Base's Runway 17 in the California desert with the "right on the numbers" precision only a master pilot like John Young, 53, America's premier astronaut, can muster. For seven hours and 50 minutes before that...
...electronic glitches that led to those fears began on Columbia 's ninth day in orbit as it circled 155 miles above the earth. The flight had already been lengthened by 24 hours to give ground scientists more experiment time. This was made possible by the shuttle's unexpectedly low use of its "consumables" (oxygen, fuel, electric power). But when Columbia, in preparation for its descent, fired the small maneuvering rockets, or thrusters, hi its nose, the jolt rocked the ship. The usually laconic Young said that it sounded like a "howitzer blast going off in your backyard...
Energy-beam weapons are still strictly experimental, but effective antisatellite (ASAT) devices could be deployed in droves within a few years. The Soviets have experimented since the 1960s with ways to destroy satellites. They have developed a rather crude space bomb that is launched into orbit, maneuvered to an enemy satellite and detonated. The U.S. ASAT missile, scheduled to be deployed in 1987, is considerably more sophisticated. The 18-ft.-long missile is carried 18 miles aloft by an F-15 fighter and fired directly toward a satellite; its foot-long nose cone, after homing in by means of eight...
Because the early hours in orbit are critical in judging human reaction to weightlessness, the scientist-astronauts got a fast start on their biomedical program. They took blood samples from one another (Payload Specialist Byron Lichtenberg, as the chief bloodletter, became known as "the vampire"), underwent eye tests, lifted steel balls, were flung around in a sledlike contraption called a body-restraint system, and even endured electric shocks. Not surprisingly, the orbital guinea pigs complained that the tests were making them ill, although the torture had a medical purpose: to learn more about the nausea, headaches and general lethargy, known...
...data-relay satellite, which can relay an encyclopedic 300 megabits per second. Although designed as Spacelab's main link with the ground, it still has not fully recovered from a faulty launch last April and is now capable of sending only a fraction of its ground-to-orbit capacity. These difficulties were compounded by the brief blackout of a tracking station in White Sands, N. Mex., and the failure of an electronic relay on the shuttle. The device was supposed to collect data from the pallet experiments and pipe them into Spacelab's computers...