Word: orbited
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Merely by getting into orbit, the cosmonauts helped set a record of sorts: for the first time in history U.S. and Soviet crews were in space at the same time. About 100 miles higher than the smaller Russian ship, Skylab's three astronauts were beginning their second month of a scheduled 84-day flight. Radioed Skylab's skipper, Gerald Carr...
...miles in diameter, far larger than most comets, probably including Halley's. Other astronomers calculate that Kohoutek weighs about 1 trillion tons. But size is not Kohoutek's only distinction. It will pass within 13 million miles of the sun. That close flyby, well within the orbit of Mercury, should make for a dazzling interaction between sun and comet. Perhaps most important of all, astronomers describe it as a "dirty" comet, one with an outer layer of dust that has probably never been stripped off by solar heating. That layer may prevent the comet from becoming as bright...
Last week four unmanned Soviet spacecraft were about halfway along on a journey to Mars. When they arrive in February and March, two of the ships are expected to make soft landings while the other two remain in orbit around the Red Planet. Meanwhile, the U.S.'s Mariner 10 spacecraft was well on its way to Venus on the initial lap of the first two-planet, photo-reconnaissance flight. After Mariner has swept by Venus in February, using the braking force of that planet's gravity to change course, it will pass next March within 621 miles...
...than those in the earth's own radiation belts but continued to radio back data after the historic encounter. Indeed, if Pioneer's tiny nu clear power packs and instruments keep functioning, the spacecraft's signals may well be received on earth until it reaches the orbit of the planet Uranus about 14 years from now. What is more, Pioneer's success clears the way for a twin, Pioneer 11, already en route to Jupiter and then possibly to Saturn...
...Luck. Skylab's presence in orbit during the comet's passage is an incredible bit of luck. If the comet had arrived a month or so later, or Skylab had been launched only slightly earlier, the space station would not have been available for the important observations. Says Astronaut-Scientist Karl Henize: "All through the space program, we've been looking for a Rosetta stone-what is the primordial material out of which the solar system is made? We looked for it on the moon and we didn't find it; we found other things instead...