Word: orbiteer
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...choices were to be made on the basis of a complicated "hazard index," a computer calculation used to determine the final orbital paths that would take the spacecraft over the least densely populated areas. Frosch has already made one firm rule about reaching those last critical decisions: Skylab will not be sent into an orbit posing a high hazard in hopes of later reaching an orbit of lesser risk. That is because NASA is simply not certain that its efforts to select the precise final orbit will work. To do nothing in such a situation is preferable to taking...
Originally, NASA had proposed in 1968 the $2.6 billion orbiting laboratory program. At that time extra rockets capable of keeping Skylab in space almost indefinitely were considered. The craft's ability to stay in orbit would be reinforced, if necessary, by astronauts transported up to it in a convenient space shuttle, then also on the NASA drawing boards. But under budgetary pressures both vehicles were simplified?and both developed unanticipated technical problems. So when Skylab's orbit began to slip, there was no shuttle to come to its rescue...
...When Skylab was launched by a Saturn 5 booster rocket on May 14, 1973, a large section of its meteoroid and heat shield ripped away, taking one of its prematurely extended solar-energy wings with it. A second wing jammed in a retracted position. The craft both overheated in orbit and was dangerously underpowered. But in the space age's first salvage mission, on May 25, 1973, Astronauts Charles ("Pete") Conrad Jr. and Joseph Kerwin entered the overheated space lab and rigged a makeshift umbrella to shade the vehicle's bald spot, then spent a harrowing four hours outside...
Ironically, despite NASA'S concentration on solar research with Skylab, the agency's failure to anticipate the extent of sunspot activity during the vehicle's years in orbit contributed substantially to the craft's death. Russian scientists as well as America's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted considerable solar disturbances, including great magnetic storms and solar flares. When they erupted in 1977 and 1978, they warmed the gases in the earth's outer atmosphere, increasing the drag on Skylab. Never fully powered because of its lost solar wing and failing batteries, the craft began to slip ever...
...joint Soviet-American mission, using the Soviet Soyuz system, but it had to be abandoned because the Russian craft's docking hardware was incompatible with Skylab's. Soyuz also lacked sufficient propellant to maneuver with the ailing U.S. vehicle and then give it a powerful boost into higher orbit. Declared NASA'S Frosch: "The obstacles involved were insurmountable, in the time remaining." Russian scientists, in effect, agree, although they note that if plans for a cooperative effort had been started two years ago, a rescue might have been possible. Roald Sagdoyev, director of the Institute of Space Research...