Word: orbiter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...difference. Rarely were history's explorers and discoverers so clearly marked in advance as men of destiny. Within approximately two years, one of the seven would be chosen -perhaps by lot-to test for the first time whether a human can be shot beyond the atmosphere to orbit the earth from 125 miles up at 18,000 m.p.h. and return to tell about...
...Cape Canaveral, Fla., last night an attempt to put two Vanguard satellites into orbit on a single launching vehicle failed when the second stage failed to ignite...
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--America's second Discoverer satellite roared southward into polar orbit yesterday, setting the stage for a sigantic game of aerial catch in which planes may try to snatch its parachuting nose cone from...
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...
Vanguard has proved so regular, and its orbit can be charted so exactly, that it has been used to plot, with an accuracy never before possible, the exact position of oceanic islands. In the past, islands were mapped by celestial observations whose accuracy depended on the establishment of an exact vertical by gravity. Because of uncertainties about the earth's shape, this can be done precisely only at the poles. So the Army Map Service sets up mobile tracking stations on various islands. When Vanguard I passes overhead, the trackers determine its bearing at an exact time, in microseconds...