Word: orbiteer
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...comet of 1456 and many of the others that influenced ancient history were one and the same: the celestial visitor that became known as Halley's comet. A 17th century protégé of Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley was convinced that comets travel, like planets, in closed orbits around the sun. Using his mentor's formulas, he calculated the paths of comets dating back to 1337 and found that three-those of 1456, 1531 and 1607 -had roughly the same orbit as the comet of 1682 (which he had seen as a young man). Halley concluded that...
...many mystics but as science fiction by most scientists-Velikov-sky blamed a near miss by a comet for such biblical events as the parting of the Red Sea and the plagues of Egypt. The fate of that comet? According to Velikovsky's scenario, it settled into an orbit near the earth and is now known as the planet Venus...
While aloft in the Skylab station-in orbit since May 14-the astronauts will perform a complex series of tasks, including observation of the comet Kohoutek. The three men, who if all goes well are not due to return until February 1974, will be making the last U.S. manned space journey until the joint Russian-American flight, scheduled for July...
Kohoutek probably originated far beyond the outermost planet, where billions of comets are believed to orbit the sun. They were apparently born out of the same cloud of interstellar dust and gas that created the sun and the planets some 4.6 billion years ago, and have remained largely unchanged since. Occasionally, the tug of a nearby star pulls a comet into a far more elongated orbit, bringing it closer to the sun and making it visible from earth. Thus, as Kohoutek approaches, astronomers will have a rare opportunity to learn more about the primordial stuff out of which the solar...
...launch several rockets carrying instruments to observe the comet from above the earth's obscuring atmosphere. Mariner 10, an unmanned spacecraft scheduled to be launched on Nov. 3 for a flyby of Venus and Mercury, will transmit a TV picture of Kohoutek. Pioneer 8, another satellite already in orbit around the sun, should be in position in early January to transmit radio signals through the comet's tail, thus providing clues to its makeup. Even the space agency's large Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert will be mobilized-to bounce radar signals...