Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...pair of space missions designed to help pave the way for a U.S. manned landing on the moon got off to success ful starts. Lunar Orbiter 2, which will begin surveying the lunar surface for suitable landing sites this week, was eased into a high orbit around the moon. Astronauts James Lovell Jr. and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. blasted off for the last of the dozen Gemini flights, and, despite a radar failure, performed with polished perfection the complex rendezvous and docking maneuvers that simulate those to be made on the Apollo moon mission...
Launched on a near-perfect trajec tory toward the moon, Orbiter 2 briefly lost and then regained its navigational lock on its guiding star Canopus; other wise it was not bothered by glitches. As it sped toward the moon 93 hours later, some 2,770 miles above the lunar sur face, Orbiter's retrorocket fired, slowing the craft enough for lunar gravity to draw it into an elliptical orbit...
Dipping to within 112 miles of the moon at its perilune, or closest ap proach, and swinging out to 1,145 miles at its apilune, or farthermost distance, Orbiter will remain "parked" in high or bit until late this week. Another blast of its retrorocket will then place it in an orbit that will come within 28 miles of the moon. Only then will its cameras go into action to shoot medium-and high-resolution landing site pictures...
...comet in question has apparently been disintegrating for centuries, strewing its orbit with solid particles. Every year, in mid-November, the earth passes through this orbit, and some of these enter our atmosphere and burn up, producing a yearly shower of shooting stars. But the fantastic spectacle of 1833, as well as similar ones in 1799 and 1866, come from a large swarm of particles which only comes by every 33 years...
Unfortunately, astronomers the world over, trembling with anticipation, observed nothing unusual at the last two predicted returns. They concluded that the swarm had been de- flected slightly by the gravitational pulls of Jupiter and Saturn. No one knows if the orbit has now been shifted back. The only indication that it might have is that the regular yearly meteor shower has been steadily increasing for the last three years...