Word: orbiteer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Finally, from Houston came the message that everyone had awaited: "We've acquired a signal but no voice contact yet. We are looking at engine data and it looks good. Tank pressures look good. We got it! We've got it! Apollo 8 is in lunar orbit...
Once safely in orbit, the astronauts had their work cut out for them. During their second revolution of the moon, they briefly fired their SPS engine to change their orbit from a 70-by-194-mile-high ellipse to a near-perfect 70-mile circle. Using an assortment of cameras, they shot color and black-and-white movie and still pictures of the lunar landscape and of the distant earth. Firing their 100-lb.-thrust control jets, they continually changed the attitude of the spacecraft so that its four-dish, high-gain TV and radio antenna remained pointed directly...
Navigational data that the astronauts gathered will help NASA scientists plot Apollo's orbit more precisely than they could by tracking it from earth. Once the rises and dips in Apollo's orbital path have been identified, the scientists will be able to map their cause: variations in the lunar gravitational field believed to be caused by concentrations of massive material beneath some craters and seas. With better knowledge of the gravitational field, NASA will be able to plan more accurately the paths of future landing missions, on which errors of only a few feet could be dangerous...
Apollo 8's unblemished success and its safe return prompted Air Force Lieut. General Samuel Phillips, the Apollo program director, to announce that Apollo 9 had been scheduled for a Feb. 28 launch date. On that flight, a three-man team headed by Astronaut James Mc-Divitt will orbit the earth and practice rendezvous and docking with the problem-plagued Lunar Module (LM), which has not yet been tested in manned flight...
...earned a reputation of being reserved and distant. He is not a humorous man, nor one given to poetic fantasies. Yet last week he was as thrilled as any of his five children by the feat of Apollo 8. "I looked at the moon after Apollo 8 went into orbit," he says. "It looked different...