Word: orbited
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With the space shuttle program on indefinite hold since the Challenger disaster last Jan. 28, the Pentagon has been counting on its powerful unmanned ^ Titan rockets to fill the void by carrying vital spy satellites into space. One Titan tried to lift an advanced photographic satellite into orbit last August, but the flight was aborted shortly after launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. On a second try last week, another Titan exploded right after lift...
Still, Nicaragua is an important testing ground in the rivalry of East and West. The Soviets have long made it their business to probe the Third World, seeking to add satellites to their orbit. Under the so-called Reagan Doctrine, the Administration has decreed that the U.S. can no longer afford to watch passively as the Soviets consolidate their power. Through the use of surrogates and guerrilla movements, long a Soviet tactic, the Reagan Administration seeks to roll back Communism, or at least make Soviet expansionism more costly...
...once again last week that it is strongly forging ahead in space exploration. From the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia, the Soviets launched the first in a projected series of supply missions to their new manned space station called Mir (Peace). The unmanned cargo vessel Progress 25, boosted into orbit by a workhorse Proton rocket booster, hooked up on Friday with Mir, bringing food, fuel, water and other supplies to Cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyev, whose own Soyuz T-15 spacecraft docked with the orbiting space station on March...
Then came Mir. On March 13, the Soviets sent veteran Cosmonauts Kizim, 44, and Solovyev, 39, aloft on Soyuz T-15 to activate the space platform, which had been launched into a slightly elliptical 210-mile-high orbit three weeks earlier.* The subsequent rendezvous marked a milestone: the establishment of what the Soviets have heralded as the first permanently manned space station. According to current estimates, the first comparable U.S. station will not be operational before...
...which put the U.S. program out of commission for a year or more. The shuttle's hiatus leaves a big opening in the launching market, a business worth at least $500 million a year. Between now and 1990, an estimated 60 commercial satellites will need a lift into orbit. While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration struggled last month to find out the cause of the shuttle disaster, an Ariane launch successfully put two satellites into orbit. Before the accident, the shuttle held two-thirds of the market and Ariane had the rest...