Word: orbiter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...viewers also saw the dramatic jettisoning of the Apollo escape tower, which arced high above the spacecraft before plummeting back toward earth. Finally, about 10½ min. after launch, out of IGOR's range, Apollo 7, still attached to the second-stage Saturn 4B rocket, glided into an orbit 140 miles high at perigee and 174 miles at apogee -remarkably close to the programmed 142-by 176-mile orbit. "We're having a ball." Schirra reported happily to ground controllers...
...their week-and-a-half space journey, they will start Apollo's large, 20,500-lb.-thrust engine eight times to test its reliability. That engine literally means the difference between life and death. On actual moon missions, it will be used to guide an Apollo spacecraft into orbit around the moon, and, later, to fire the craft out of lunar orbit into a trajectory that will return it to earth...
Spectacular Bonus. Apollo 8, which will carry Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders into orbit late in December, was originally designed to duplicate this week's flight and to recheck any equipment or procedures that go wrong on Apollo 7. Now, spurred by growing concern that the Soviets are planning to upstage the U.S. by sending the first manned craft around the moon, NASA has folded a spectacular bonus into Apollo 8's schedule. If all goes well with Apollo 7, Apollo 8 will be shoved from earth orbit to ward the moon by the last...
Near the moon, the spacecraft will be braked enough to be pulled into a 60-mile-high lunar orbit. It will make ten 2-hr. circuits while the astronauts shoot movie and still pictures of the lunar surface below. Then Apollo 8 will return to earth, using re-entry techniques tested last April during the unmanned flight of Apollo...
Come February, Astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart are scheduled to zoom into earth orbit aboard Apollo 9, the first complete moon package to be shot into space. In addition to the Saturn 5 rocket and the Apollo command and service modules, the package will include the trouble-plagued lunar module (LM) that is destined, eventually, to land on the moon. The mission will include space walks, rendezvous and docking maneuvers, and the first transfer in space of astronauts between Apollo...