Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...oddly configured contraption, nestled in the big cargo bay of the space shuttle, represents a giant step into the cosmos. When Columbia roars off its Florida pad on Monday morning, Nov. 28, it will be carrying the billion-dollar Spacelab, the first true scientific research station in orbit...
Spacelab was built in West Germany under the auspices of the eleven-member European Space Agency (ESA). Packed with everything from computers to miniature automated factories, it is a major advance over Skylab, the U.S.'s first scientific work station in orbit, which was occupied by three successive teams of astronauts in the early 1970s. Spacelab is also considerably more sophisticated than the current Salyut 7, which the Soviets hint may be the first building block of a larger orbital station. Spacelab's uniqueness lies in the versatility of its three major components: 1) two cylindrically shaped laboratories...