Word: orbiteer
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Nikita Khrushchev laughed when the U.S. finally got Vanguard I into space, and likened it to an orange. Last week the 3¼-lb. satellite soared into its second year in regions where huge Russian satellites have long since died. Vanguard's orbit, which climbs up to 2,500 miles and never comes lower than 400 miles, has hardly changed. Vanguard I has traveled something over 132 million miles. Its clear radio voice, powered by solar batteries, is still chirping as cheerily as ever, is expected to hold out for at least 200 years...
...nearly all of the atmosphere behind. It may rise 150 miles traveling at Mach 4. If it returns from this jaunt with its wings unmelted and its pilot alive, the door to true space flight will be open at least a crack. Return to the earth from a satellite orbit or a trip to Mars should not be very much more difficult...
...days before Pioneer IV's successful takeoff, the Air Force launched its first Discoverer satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Discoverer was the U.S.'s first attempt to put a satellite into polar orbit, which would make possible surveillance of the whole of the earth's surface. The booster...
Thor ICBM, and the second stage, a 19-ft. liquid-fuel job built by Lockheed, apparently worked well. Watchers assumed that the bird, which consisted of the 1,300-lb. second stage with a 40-lb. instrument payload, had gone into orbit over the South Pacific...
...Hawaiian station heard a brief, faint signal. After five more hours of silence, Air Force stations in Alaska and the U.S. began to pick up sporadic signals. Last week, nearly five days after launch, the Department of Defense felt able to announce that Discoverer I was in polar orbit. But it had not been spotted visually, perhaps because its orbit carried it over the world's inhabited areas in bright daylight or darkness, when it is hard to see. The nine-station radio fence that spans the U.S. and is supposed to detect any silent satellite had reported...