Word: orbitally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ordinary tourist shuttle, though. It's an Ariane-5G rocket that will launch the Rosetta spacecraft on an ambitious journey halfway across the solar system to intercept and land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is currently streaking across space at more than 100,000 km/h inside the orbit of Jupiter. "What's totally obsessing me is that we're launching into a comet and searching for the origins of life," says David Southwood, director of science at the European Space Agency (ESA), which is orchestrating the Rosetta project. "We're going out there, landing on a comet and doing our analysis...
...viewpoint "Why We Shouldn't Go to Mars" [Jan. 26], author Gregg Easterbrook argued that we should be researching advanced methods of propulsion to launch payloads into orbit affordably. But Easterbrook needs to understand that this is not going to happen all by itself. Exploration drives research, not the other way around. Ben Parris Garden City...
BUDGET: $2 BILLION In October it became the third nation to send an astronaut into orbit. It wants to land an unmanned vehicle on the moon by 2010--five years before NASA next plans to set foot there...
...economy is healthiest, is convinced international endorsement will help his colleagues sell reform at home - but that sounds a bit unrealistic since Chirac and Schröder are hardly in a position to deliver more tough changes. Two powerful forces could keep the Gang of Three from reaching political orbit. First is resentment like that expressed by Portugal's Prime Minister. "If it's about trying to impose their vision on our countries," he says, "that's not a positive thing." A Chirac aide says this danger is well understood. "We want to come up with a proposition for everyone...
Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade--or two decades, or however much time is required--researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and if advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit to Mars, then the dream of stepping onto the Red Planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready...