Word: orbiteer
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...past three months, a strange moth-shaped satellite has been orbiting the earth in a nearly perfect polar orbit some 560 miles high. Sweeping down from the Arctic to Antarctica and back again every 103 minutes, the 1,965-lb. spacecraft has been taking as many as 752 pictures of the earth every day; each shot covers a 115-by-115-mile square. Unlike U.S. and Soviet spy satellites, which are on the lookout for military sites, the mission of NASA's first Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS-1) is purely scientific. A direct spin-off of the space...
Along with its eye for color, ERTS has another useful capability. Because of the timing of its polar orbit, the satellite passes over the same spot on earth at almost precisely the same hour every 18 days. Lighting conditions at each site are thus unchanged (except for the slow seasonal drift in the angle of the sun and possibly different cloud cover). As a result, there is little difference in shadows from one picture to the next, and ERTS can quickly spot any changes in terrestrial features since its last visit...
That kind of zest allows Mother Earth to orbit well above its material; the audience is able to forget that the writing was done with an instrument rather more blunt than that skywriter's chisel. ∎Laurence I.Barrett
Next year there will be the Skylab program, in which nine astronauts will be launched into earth orbit for stays of up to 56 days. That will be over by early...
...following year will bring an international launch, with both Russian and American astronauts meeting in earth orbit. Then there will be no more manned flights until 1978, when the space shuttle program begins. The shuttle will operate in earth orbit and will be capable of taking scores of people into space on one flight...