Word: orbit
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Columbia opens a new satellite era by lofting two pay loads into earth orbit...
...alike satellites carried aloft by Columbia on its fifth voyage. The other, called Anik C-3 and owned by Telesat Canada, which runs that country's satellite communications, was launched with equal ease a day later. Both satellites are among the most advanced examples of electronic wizardry in orbit. About 21 ft. long, 7 ft. wide and weighing 1,300 lbs. apiece, excluding their boosters, they will provide thousands of new channels for relaying information through space, from voice communications to television, from business data to "talk" between computers...
...maiden voyage in January, the orbiter Challenger will carry up an equally impressive bird: the first component of the U.S.'s new Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). The TRW-built satellite will digest the equivalent of 140 encyclopedia volumes in a single, second-long electronic gulp. Eventually the system will consist of four satellites ringing the earth at roughly equal distances from one another. TDRSS will relay signals not only between ground and orbit but also between satellites, thereby eliminating the need for a globe-girdling network of ground stations to keep in touch with spacecraft like...
There are also political concerns. At UNISPACE 82, Third World countries were concerned that the space powers might grab off all the choice locations in geostationary orbit. (Led by Colombia, countries along the equator claimed "air rights" to everything above them, although the U.N., after two decades of debate, has yet to establish where the atmosphere ends and space begins.) Currently, communications satellites, ringing the earth above the equator, can be spaced no closer than 2° apart (out of a possible 360°) without interfering with each other. Unless something is done to alleviate this overcrowding...
Although the space walk was scrubbed, Columbia accomplished its primary goals: Eating as a carrier then a launch platform for two communications satellites. The satellites were deployed on flight days one and two. Their own rockets then sent them to their "Stationery" orbit 22,300 miles above the equator...