Word: orbiteer
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...harshness of the country itself. An escapee from a Southeast Asian prison camp must burrow through rotting rain forests, fight off swarms of bugs, swim mighty, mud-thick rivers that cut between the region's steep mountains, and find a way to signal the U.S. rescue planes that orbit high over the jungle. Last week the most recent escapee told a harrowing tale of his trudge back to freedom...
...matter from which the sun and planets were formed. If that is correct, a complete analysis of a comet might provide valuable information about the beginnings of the solar system. To obtain a sample for such a study, some scientists suggest, an unmanned spacecraft should be shot into the orbit of a regularly reappearing comet. The craft would rendezvous with the comet, land and scoop up some surface material. Then, after a brief, blazing ride through the sky, it would blast off for earth, bringing back a sample of the stuff the comet is made...
Displaying the precise control of a teen-ager over a spinning Yo-Yo, controllers at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory maneuvered Orbiter ever closer to the moon's surface in an attempt to eliminate the fuzziness of its high-resolution camera shots (TIME, Aug. 26). Acting after a suggestion from Eastman Kodak technicians that the camera might begin returning clear pictures of possible astronaut landing sites if it were operated from an altitude of 25 miles, they fired Orbiter's retrorocket for three seconds, reducing the low point of its orbit from 30.4 to 25.1 miles...
...basis of preliminary data reflecting eccentricities in the spacecraft's orbit, scientists came to an unexpected conclusion: the moon, like the earth, may be slightly pear-shaped. Instead of being a perfect sphere, the moon seems to be depressed about a quarter of a mile out of shape at its south pole and bulges out about the same distance at its north pole. Because the moon has a diameter of about 2,200 miles, the distortion would hardly be noticeable when viewed from the earth. Said a NASA official: "Let's not expect to go out and look...
...problems, project controllers huddled at week's end, trying to decide whether to scrub the scheduled plan of lowering the spacecraft to within 28 miles of the lunar surface in order to photograph nine target areas where astronauts may some day walk (see diagram). At that height, the orbiter's high-resolution 600-mm. lens could shoot objects as small as a card table. At last they decided to go ahead, hoping that under different conditions of lunar orbit, the camera might well begin operating properly again...