Word: orbiteer
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Lobbing a working communications satellite out to the fringes of space was a signal achievement. The task of repairing it in orbit seemed wildly improbable. But when Bell Telephone Laboratories' Telstar sullenly ignored a command after four months of faithful performance, Bell's electronic doctors wasted no time. While unresponsive Telstar circled the earth in silence, they spent six frantic weeks in their labs concocting a cure for its ailment...
...earth's, while the moon, which rotates once in 27 days, has apparently no field at all. So the fact that Venus has little or no magnetic field may mean that it rotates slowly. It may keep the same face toward the sun during its 225-day orbit, as some astronomers believe...
...last week, it might have seen a tiny, spidery object all vanes and antennae, creep slowly past the blazing crescent of Venus. This was the U.S. space-probe Mariner II. For more than four months it had drifted away from the earth, coasting down a long ellipse toward the orbit of Venus. Its radio voice grew faint as the miles multiplied into millions, then into tens of millions. But it was never too faint heard by anxious scientists at Goldstone station in the Mojave Desert...
...sign was the probe's temperature which climbed ominously higher as its elliptical orbit neared the sun. Nervously the scientists watched the faint telemetered reports of Mariner's thermometers. Just before the Venus-pass, Mariner reported a temperature dangerously close to the heat that would burst its batteries...
Another ambitious U.S. space project was in questionable shape at week's end The Relay communication satellite built by Radio Corp. of America for NASA was launched into orbit, with its high point 4,612 miles above the earth and an Sing time of 3 hr. 5 min. Relay was expected to start carrying voice communications between the continents on its fifth orbit, but something happened to its power supply. Telemetering told that the was low, so scientists did not turn on the main transmitter. The voltage continued to drop, and at week's end NASA scientist announced...