Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...orbit of the Russian earth satellite is being affected by some force not explained by the laws of gravity, according to a report yesterday by J. Allen Hynek, associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory...
...satellite watchers by surprise. The Smithsonian Institution's Astrophysical Observatory at Cambridge, Mass., designed to correlate visual observations, was still unfinished. In spite of frantic efforts to make sense of reports flowing in from all over the country, its experts could not determine the sputnik's orbit until figures came from the Moscow radio...
...Russians made their sputnik more conveniently visible in their own territory than in the U.S. during its first trips around the earth, but U.S. observers will get their chance eventually. Dr. Joseph A. Hynek, director of the observatory's satellite-tracking program, calculates that the satellite's orbit shifts around the earth at 4° per day. This will bring it over the U.S. at twilight on about Oct. 20, when it should be visible through small telescopes or binoculars...
...Russians have not told much except the sputnik's weight and speed (about 18,000 m.p.h.). It circles the earth, they say, every 96.2 minutes. The plane of the orbit stands fixed in space while the earth rotates inside it, so successive trips carry the sputnik over different territory. General Anatoly Arkadievich Blagonravov, head of a three-man Russian delegation to last week's satellite convention in Washington, says that it has four radio antennae and that the power of the radio signal is one watt (enough for a U.S. radio ham to talk with Australia). He estimates...
...having the use of big military rockets, U.S. Project Vanguard was forced to depend on the Navy's Viking research rocket, whose thrust is only 27,000 lbs. Even if working perfectly, a Viking is barely strong enough to place a 21½-lb. satellite on its orbit. There is no margin for less-than-perfect performance. The Russians, according to General Blagonravov, used their most powerful rocket to launch the sputnik. Their launching vehicle must have taken off with at least 200,000 lbs. of thrust...