Word: orbited
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...spectacular launch hurls America 's shuttle, Columbia, into orbit...
...than half a million gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Columbia fired explosive charges to spin off its main tank, which disintegrated in a shower of fragments over the Indian Ocean, only ten miles off course, although at a higher altitude than expected. Then Columbia switched to its smaller, orbital maneuvering engines and fired a series of bursts that carried it into orbit...
...spacecraft accelerates to 17,000 m.p.h. Eight and a half minutes after launch, its main engines shut down. Other explosive charges spin off the empty tank and scatter its fragments like meteorites into the Indian Ocean. Finally the astronauts fire four more bursts-this time from the two smaller orbital maneuvering rockets in Columbia's tail-boosting the ship into a nearly circular orbit 170 miles above the earth. So it should go this week, shortly after the sun rises over Cape Canaveral on Friday. If there are no new hitches Astronauts John Young, 50, and Robert Crippen...
...astronauts' first tasks after they reach orbit will be to open the big mechanically controlled doors of the cargo bay. Besides testing the mechanism, the operation is essential for ridding the orbiter of heat from the electronic equipment. The doors will be kept ajar during much of the flight. To shade the exposed bay from the sun, Columbia will fly upside down...
...just spent $10 billion, finished a week-long countdown, flooded a million gallons of fuel into a hundred-thousand-pound bird, and launched the whole contraption into orbit," a beer-drinking cameraman bellowed in front of the press grandstand...