Word: orbitals
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...revolution almost didn't happen. When Magellan first took up its elliptical orbit around Venus on Aug. 10, its communications system inexplicably stopped working. Then the equipment started up, letting the space probe send back a few tantalizing images -- and stopped once more. Fearful that the spacecraft would lose contact with Earth permanently, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is responsible for Magellan, put the imaging on hold while they tracked down the problem. It was apparently a faulty computer chip. Electronic signals have been rerouted to bypass the flaw, and meanwhile Magellan's control software is being...
...last year, signs with Detroit and threatens to become the first American Leaguer to bop 50 home runs since Mantle and Maris in '61. Dave Justice, toiling in Triple A, gets promoted to the haggard Atlanta Braves in mid-May and hits 28 home runs: out of nowhere, into orbit. The arms of half the Dodgers' pitchers fall off, but the slim, steely mound grace of rookie Ramon Martinez helps sustain Los Angeles in a last-gasp pennant race...
...Brilliant Pebbles -- thousands of small, independently controlled satellites designed to home in on and destroy enemy nuclear warheads. "The technology is at hand" to deploy a Brilliant Pebbles system, General George Monahan, then SDI director, assured Congress. The Pentagon contends that 4,614 Brilliant Pebbles could be put into orbit for $55 billion, vs. $69 billion for previous schemes...
Only one event brightened an otherwise gloomy week for the space agency. The first commercial version of the Atlas rocket was finally launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral. It lofted into orbit a satellite that in September will provide scientists with important data on radioactive damage to satellites in outer space...
...time, the shuttle was highly oversold. While a remarkable feat of engineering, it was highly complex and subject to recurring glitches that have prevented NASA from ever achieving more than nine launches -- never mind 60 -- a year. Worse, since it depended almost solely on the shuttle to orbit satellites until after the Challenger disaster, the U.S. has fallen behind in the development of expendable rocket launchers. More and more U.S. companies are looking to the European Space Agency's Ariane rocket, which last week carried two television satellites aloft, for placing commercial satellites in orbit, and also -- now that Washington...