Word: orbiters
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...Irwin should dock with the command module Endeavour (named for the ship used by 18th century English Navigator and Explorer James Cook). That will also reunite them with Worden, who will have conducted more scientific experiments than any other command-module pilot during his three days alone in lunar orbit...
...miles of lunar terrain, traveling to the very edge of a winding, quarter-mile-deep gorge called Had ley Rille in the forbidding lunar highlands. Before their return to earth with an expected haul of 250 Ibs. of moon rocks, they will put a tiny scientific satellite into lunar orbit...
...mission commander, Lieut. Colonel Dobrovolsky, 43, reported that the undocking from the larger ship was uneventful. Then, after orienting their ship at the proper angle the cosmonauts fired Soyuz's main rocket to slow the ship down, drop it out of orbit and send it back into the earth's atmosphere. The rocket functioned perfectly. At the end of the burn, however, there was an ominous development. Long minutes before the radio blackout that always occurs as a returning spacecraft is enveloped by hot, ionized gases, Soyuz 11 unexpectedly lapsed into silence...
...cosmonauts climbed back into Soyuz, taking the films, logbooks and other scientific data accumulated in three weeks aloft. Typically, Russian space officials made no prior announcement of the flight's impending end. On the contrary, there had been hints all along that the cosmonauts might stay in orbit as long as a month. If there were reasons to foreshorten the mission, however, they were apparently not medical. Only a few days before, Soviet doctors had reported that except for slight fatigue, the trio were in exceptionally good health. Thus, when disaster struck, it was totally unexpected. "None...
...Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in 1967 when Soyuz 1 crashed to earth after its descent-parachute shrouds tangled at the end of a 17-orbit mission. Only three months earlier, Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaftee were killed when a flash fire engulfed their Apollo 1 spacecraft during a simulated launch at Cape Kennedy...