Word: orbiteer
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Though the Russians reveal no details about their satellites before they are launched - and precious few afterward - they cannot keep their secrets for very long. Soon after a Soviet space craft has gone into orbit, U.S. Air Force scientists not only record its speed and plot its orbit but determine its size and shape and often deduce its mission. Their spatial detective work is made possible by radar signature analysis (RSA), a little-known technique that may some day be used to save the U.S. from a sneak attack...
Neptune's Tides. McCord's calculations seem to support what other scientists have suspected. Long ago, as it sank from a higher orbit, Triton passed close to Nereid. The smaller moon, buffeted by Triton's more powerful gravity, may have been hurled into the elliptical orbit it now follows...
Carrying his analysis further, McCord discovered that the forces that acted on Triton to make it sink to its present orbit will continue to affect the larger moon at an accelerating rate. Tides raised on Neptune's surface by the pull of Triton's gravity exert a drag on the satellite that causes its orbit to decay. The tidal action on Neptune also creates friction that dissipates energy from the rotating Neptune-Triton system, further depressing Triton's orbit...
What if all or part of an orbiting object falls to earth and harms either property or persons? Nobody has yet been hit by a piece of falling space hardware, although four years ago a 20-lb. piece of Sputnik 4 plunked down on a street in Manitowoc, Wis. (It was duly returned to the Russians after being analyzed.) Because of the inherently high velocity of any object in orbit, most pieces of space junk are consumed in their fiery plunge through the earth's atmosphere. But as man launches more and more satellites and probes-the Japanese...
...MILITARY POTENTIAL. While the advantages of orbiting spies are obvious, the potential for the military use of space itself is less clear. The U.S. and Russia pledged to the U.N. in 1963, and reaffirmed in the present treaty draft, that neither would put nuclear bombs in orbit. They were moved partly by the knowledge that such bombs would pass over any target only at widely spaced intervals, would be easier to track than ICBMs and could be delivered at best in hardly less time than the 30 minutes needed for an ICBM. Even so, this detente is subject to constant...