Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Despite three confirmed visual sightings of the third stage of the Russian satellite-launching rocket, Dr. Fred L. Whipple, director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, said last night that he would be unable to determine an orbit for the Communist moon. Whipple attributed the failure to compute the path to "highly unfavorable conditions" surrounding one of the sightings...
Whipple said that the satellite and its rocket would be in the same orbit, but that one Alaska sighting was hampered by cloudy skies and was not sufficiently accurate for the computation program of M.I.T.'s giant IBM 704 computer...
...University astronomer noted that the Russians probably know as little about the eccentricity of the orbit as anyone else. He predicted, however, that IGY scientists would be able to establish this fact within the next...
Whipple said that three definite radio contacts with the satellite must be made before its orbit can be calculated. He drew up a tentative orbit on which the satellite passed over the United States crossing the Canadian border into western Montana and leaving over the southern Texas-Louisiana border into the Gulf of Mexico...
...Soviet announcement of the accomplishment revealed that the satellite was travelling in an orbit approximately 560 miles above the earth. Its weight was said to be 86.3 kilograms, and scientists here estimated that it must be moving at about 18,000 miles per hour. At this speed it would circle the earth once every hour and 35 minutes...