Word: orbited
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NASA's nighttime dazzler, while useful practice for future shuttle service, is required by the mission's major objective: putting into orbit a giant communications and weather satellite for India. The $45 million instrument will be spun away from the Challenger on the second day of the flight. To site it correctly, the shuttle has to be placed in a different orbit from its seven predecessors, one that can be achieved only through a night launch. And because of the rigid rules of orbital mechanics, only a night landing is possible. Otherwise, the spaceship would have to circle...
Scientists have long assumed that stars beyond the sun are the hubs of their own solar systems. Indeed, some of these worlds may include planets where life perhaps has evolved. Yet even the closest stars are too distant for earth-bound telescopes to discern any planets in orbit around them. Indications that Vega, which lies 26 light-years (150 trillion miles) away, has a solar system may be the most important finding so far made by IRAS, a joint effort of the U.S., Britain and The Netherlands that was launched last January. When Astronomers H.H. Aumann of the Jet Propulsion...
...sharp enough to pick out any separate objects at such a great distance. Still, indications are that in the cosmic debris swirling around Vega there is a solar system in the making. Now it will be up to more powerful eyes, either on earth or in orbit, to get a better look at this new world...
...star, but there does seem to be all the potential for forming a planetary system there," said Fazio, who is well-known for his knowledge of infrared astronomy. Fazio will have an infrared satellite of his own--slightly different from the one which made the Vega finding--launched into orbit aboard a space shuttle mission now scheduled for March...
...time, or about 150 trillion miles. Scientists believe the star to be about twice the size and 60 times as bright as the sun, with the particles extending in an envelope or disk about 7.4 billion miles in radius, approximately twice the distance from the sun to the orbit of its outermost planet...