Word: orbiters
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...astronauts are legitimate space-age heroes, dedicated men who risk their lives on lean military salaries modestly enhanced by the flight pay that is partially earned in orbit: some $80 for every quick trip around the earth. But there are fringe benefits too: the seven original spacemen got about $70,000 each for selling personal accounts of their experiences to LIFE. Last week, their ranks swollen by nine new volunteers, the astronauts did just about as well with the second chapter of their story. For a total of $1,040,000, they sold the publishing rights to LIFE...
...roughly three minutes at the peak of the rocket's orbit, the spectrometer functioned in its first mode of operation, recording the intensity of ultraviolet light over a narrow range of frequencies. Three and one half scans were completed before the Aerobee plunged back towards earth...
...airglow layer from their soaring Mercury capsules and found it as bright from that vantage point as the earth under a quarter moon. Then, last May, Gordon Cooper took a special camera aloft with him and photographed the airglow as he passed over Australia on his 16th orbit. With color film twice as fast as anything available commercially, he shot a sharply defined green band 16 miles thick, distinct from the blue-white earth some 65 miles below. "It must have been a tremendous experience, seeing this wedding ring sticking up all around," says Physicist Edward P. Ney, who prepared...
Getting the communication satellite Syncom II smoothly into its 22,500-mile, 24-hour orbit (TIME, Aug. 2) was only the beginning of the job. There was still a series of delicate maneuvers to be performed before the spacecraft could do its appointed work. Accurate guidance was needed to match Syncom's orbit to the earth's rotation; it was moving a little too fast, drifting ahead of the earth by about 7.5 degrees of longitude per day. Out on the Navy control ship Kingsport in Lagos harbor, Nigeria, engineers sent radio signals that fired jets of hydrogen...
...soon as possible. Present plans call for two satellites launched by the same rocket. They will climb to 60,000 miles, well above the influence of the earth's magnetic field. There they will separate and be jockeyed into positions about 180 miles apart on the same orbit. They will circle the earth once every 92 hours, sniffing for suspicious bursts of soft X rays. Soon other satellites will join them. If any nation breaks the test ban, the same apparatus will be ready for taking part in immediate U.S. space tests and reporting the results...