Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Sweet Words." To watching Americans, the flight began uneventfully. Sitting in the control center at Cape Canaveral, Gus Grissom, handling the ground-to-space communication, told Carpenter that Aurora 7 was in a near-perfect orbit. "Sweet words," replied Carpenter. "I have the moon in the center of the window, and the booster is off to the right slightly." During his flight, Carpenter was supposed to complete several experiments that Glenn had been unable to carry out because of attitude-control system problems. He was scheduled to photograph cloud formations, test for the polarization of sunlight, look for comets close...
...washer appeared from nowhere and floated weightless around the cabin: Carpenter picked it out of midair. Approaching Guaymas, Mexico, on his first orbit, Carpenter tried one of the major experiments of his flight: he deployed a 30-in. balloon from his capsule on a nylon line to see what kind of drag it would have in the near vacuum of space. But the experiment was ruined when the multi-colored balloon inflated only partially...
...second orbit, the temperature of the cabin and of Carpenter's space suit fluctuated widely. Carpenter complained that he was sweating profusely. His body temperature was recorded...
...wire and the automatic control systems was only 45% full. Flight Director Christopher Columbus Kraft ordered Carpenter to start flying the capsule by the manual control system, which uses a separate fuel tank. As Carpenter approached California, Kraft decided that there was still enough fuel for a third orbit. But he told Astronaut Shepard at the microphone in the tracking station at Point Arguello: "We still want to emphasize to him to limit his auto fuel usage...
Changed Concept? Besides drawing a precision map of the solar system, Dr. Lowther's artificial planet may get a crack at even more interesting jobs. Since its orbit will be slightly but measurably disturbed by the gravitational attraction of all the other passing planets, its waverings can be used to check the mass of individual planets. It may also detect large meteors that chance to streak close by. It may point to far-out, undiscovered planets, or even to dark, invisible stars. Its most radical use, Dr. Lowther figures, will be to check the inverse-square law, which says...