Word: orbitally
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...unusually sharp vision the imaging instruments will give the MRO, coupled with it's low, 190-mi. orbit - 20% closer than any of the other three spacecraft currently orbiting Mars - mean it will get the best look yet at Martian surface features, including possible shorelines left behind by vanished oceans or seas. The radar will also allow MRO to search the planet as a whole for minerals that form in the presence of water, and to determine where and how deeply subsurface ice may lie. Where there's ice and water, evidence of life - either extinct or ongoing - could also...
...Ridge discovery surprised the astrophysics community because few thought that a massive gas giant planet could orbit a star close enough to create visible fluctuations in star velocity. But, since the discovery, about 110 more candidate stars have been found...
...this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Sch?nborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically...
...years, the cart has been before the horse in U.S. space policy. NASA has been attempting complex missions involving many astronauts without first developing an affordable and dependable means to orbit. The emphasis now must be on designing an all-new system that is lower priced and reliable. And if human space flight stops for a decade while that happens, so be it. Once there is a cheaper and safer way to get people and cargo into orbit, talk of grand goals might become reality. New, less-expensive throwaway rockets would allow NASA to launch more space probes...
...turns the pilots make are intended to bleed off speed in order to ease the shuttle down to Earth, but they are a lot more complicated than simply slaloming down a ski slope. The spacecraft's engines are shut off for good once it leaves orbit, meaning its descent is powerless. Flying a brick with wings, as the engineers have often called the ship, has a very fine margin of error. Lose your purchase on the air and go into a spin, and there's almost no way to pull out of it. "The attitude needs to be very, very...