Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Carolyn, an asteroid astronomer, scurry around the unheated dome of the 18- in. Schmidt telescope. They photograph the sky in four-minute exposures, hunting for fast-moving objects against the background of the fixed stars. So far their Palomar study has identified 25 asteroids that cross the earth's orbit, bringing the known total to 60. Asteroids like this, they think, have occasionally crashed into the earth with catastrophic consequences, and they strive to calculate how frequently these inopportune meetings occur...
...meet all the other requirements imposed on it by the Louisiana scientists, Planet X would have an orbit that is elongated and highly inclined and a mass one to five times that of the earth. In other words, their Planet X is remarkably similar to the one that could account for the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. The beauty of the theory, in Whitmire's view, is that it relies on a planet originally proposed for reasons that have nothing to do with mass extinctions. Still, he admits, the proof of the pudding "is going to come...
...remember those exciting early days of the U.S. space program? Dieter Kolff and his fellow scientists leading America's effort to catch up with the Soviets and put a man into orbit. Astronaut John Pope making his spectacular walk in space. And, of course, that historic Apollo landing on the dark side of the moon and its terrifying brush with disaster...
Garn will serve mainly as the shuttle's human guinea pig. He will be subjected to tests designed to increase understanding of space motion sickness, an affliction suffered by about half the people who go into orbit. In one of the "gastric motility" experiments, stethoscopic microphones were strapped to the Senator's midsection to record his stomach noises at takeoff (NASA has yet to release a tape of the senatorial rumblings). Said Garn: "I am hopeful that I can fill in a few of the pieces of the puzzle in the medical department...
...conspicuous title can have a number of meanings, all socially redeemed because the line is Shakespeare's ("The bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon," Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 4). But there are no star-crossed lovers, only heavenly bodies tumbling from orbit to bounce in the bed of Eddie Teeters, a producer and sometime actor in pornographic videocassettes piously merchandised as sex-education films...