Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...rocket itself was a familiar bird; duplicates had blasted into space many times before. But the payload that the reliable Delta tossed into orbit last week was an astonishing piece of equipment. Built by private industry, fired aloft by the U.S. Government, the Bell Telephone Laboratories' little Telstar satellite (3-ft. diameter) opened a bright new era of long-distance communication. Very-high-frequency radio and TV stations, which are limited to line-of-sight range, suddenly saw their future reach out beyond the horizon, around the curve of the earth...
After two successful three-orbit flights National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists decided that a six-orbit spin, probably in September, would be "well within the capability of the capsule" and of the man who flies it. Tagged for the job: Navy Commander Walter M. Schirra Jr., 39, whose parents were both pilots. Outgoing, witty and completely self-possessed, Schirra (rhymes with hurrah) is married to an admiral's step daughter, has two children. Because of the flight's length, he will be brought down in the Pacific off Midway, not in the Atlantic...
Rendezvous on a lunar orbit promises to be even more difficult...
...Their Own. Astronauts trying to rendezvous on a lunar orbit will be on their own. There will be no friendly stations on the moon's hostile surface, no computers to analyze the orbits of the waiting spaceship or of the bug that is trying to join it. Unless the two are close together, their crews will not be able to see each other or communicate by radio; the moon's surface curves so sharply that a few hundred miles of distance will put each of them below the other's horizon. Theoretically they can communicate by relaying...
Before attempting lunar orbital rendezvous, U.S. astronauts will have to make many practice steps. First will come rendezvous in earth orbit, the crewmen becoming proficient at bringing their satellite capsules together with help from the earth below. Then a spaceship will voyage to the moon, park itself for a while in orbit there and return to the earth. After that, a bug will leave the spaceship and make a practice rendezvous with it without trying to land. Only after this maneuver has been mastered by several successful trials will the first lonely bug attempt to land on the hostile moon...