Word: orbiteer
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...back to the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, these moons emerged as distinctive and different, showing scars from the millennial pounding of meteorites and possibly comets, as well as cracks from their own version of earthquakes. One pair of little moons travel in the same orbit within the rings of Saturn. They look like broken teeth and may be remains of some relatively recent cosmic carnage: two halves of a larger satellite that split apart in collision with another celestial body...
...only planetary probe now on the drawing boards at J.P.L. is Project Galileo, a scheme to place in orbit around Jupiter a semipermanent observatory. Scheduled for launch in 1984, Galileo is likely to be delayed. Its launch vehicle is the space shuttle. But that much troubled enterprise, plagued by engine problems and difficulties with its crucial heat-shielding, may not make its first orbital test flight before next summer...
...traveling in different portions of the rings should presumably smooth out such features, but somehow they survive for hours at a time. Finally, the scientists confirmed the existence of three other moons, which had been only tentatively identified from earlier observations. Two of them are traveling in the same orbit and seem to be edging ever closer, but probably will slip by each other in a kind of celestial waltz approximately two years from...
...latest evidence of Soviet ambitions comes with the return to earth of Cosmonauts Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin from a record-breaking 185 days aboard the Salyut 6 space station. Their successful mission not only eclipsed the Soviets' earlier endurance mark of 175 days in orbit but was 101 days longer than the stay by U.S. astronauts aboard the Skylab space station in 1974. Says retired U.S. Air Force Lieut. General Thomas Stafford, a former astronaut who commanded the orbital linkup with the Soviets in 1975, the last manned American mission: "The Soviets are challenging the U.S. in space...
Some of this gear seems to be military. Circling at an altitude of about 320 km (200 miles), Salyut provides an ideally situated outpost for keeping an eye on military-related activities on the earth. Indeed, U.S. intelligence sources note that the Soviets have sent four unmanned satellites into orbit during the past three weeks, including one electronic eavesdropping vehicle. The frenzy is presumably part of their effort to keep tab on the war in the Persian Gulf...