Word: orbiter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When argument broke out, after Gordon Cooper's 22-orbit mission, about whether to continue Project Mercury, Holmes again was ignored. Though Holmes personally opposed another Mercury flight because of the high cost, Webb and other high NASA officials publicly dubbed it "unlikely," without once consulting him. The astronauts paid no attention to Holmes either, and got in their own high-level politicking in favor of the flight over cocktails with President Kennedy at Cooper's Washington reception...
...odds the most extraordinary date a man and woman ever had. The Soviets one day last week orbited Vostok V, piloted by Air Force Lieut. Colonel Valery Feodorovich Bykovsky, 28. LISTEN WORLD, headlined Izvestia, SOVIET MAN IS AGAIN STORMING THE COSMOS. But this time, Soviet Woman was storming right along. Two days later, Bykovsky was joined in orbit by the first female in space, Lieut. Valentina Vladimirovna Chereshkova, 26, at the controls of Vostok VI. In radio and television transmission to the breathless spectators on the ground, he referred to himself as "The Hawk," while she called herself "The Seagull...
...Bykovsky soared through his orbit, at a speed of 18,000 m.p.h. and in an oval that ranged from 109 miles to 139 miles above the earth, he dined on roast beef and chicken, manually operated the controls of his spacecraft. From the capsule, live television images were periodically flashed to Soviet viewers. Bykovsky waved his logbook, let his pencil and other objects float in the cabin to demonstrate weightlessness. On his fourth orbit, the cosmonaut talked directly to Khrushchev in the Kremlin. Not yet a full-fledged party member, Bykovsky said: "I want to be a Communist, a member...
This was man's first radar contact with the distant planet. It is a tough target to hit, for it is only 3,010 miles in diameter, not very much bigger than the moon, and its orbit keeps it close to the troublesome sun. When Goldstone's radar waves set out for Mercury, they had an effective strength of 25 billion watts. By the time they straggled back, they mustered only five ten-thousandths of a billionth of a billionth of a watt. They had lost the even regularity of oscillation with which they had started...
...knowledge about the target planet. JPL's radar contact measured the distance of Mercury with an error less than 100 miles-an accuracy that is not possible in optical astronomy. It also timed Mercury's slow rotation, which has the same speed as its 88-day orbit around the sun. Most of the results agreed with predictions. But there was one surprising variation: the surface of Mercury proved to be unexpectedly rough. "We're not talking about vast mountains and valleys," says JPL Radio Astronomer Richard Goldstein. "We're talking about something the size...