Word: orbiters
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Silently tumbling in a near-Polar orbit last week was a mysterious object described as a spook satellite. Spotted by Navy radio space scanners, it is 19 ft. by 5 ft., and ranges in its orbit from an apogee of 1,074 miles to a perigee of 134 miles. The Soviets declared it was not one of theirs. U.S. spacemen said it was not one of theirs. Was it an enemy's "seeing-eye" space station (as retired Army Lieut. General James Gavin darkly suggested), or a curious visitor from outer space? No one knew for sure. Best guess...
First-graders could grasp only qualitative ideas, but Karplus' second-level curriculum (second, third, fourth grades) introduced numbered quantities through use of such devices as rubber-band scales made in class by the pupils. By the sixth grade, the children were innocently testing the influence of orbit size on centrifugal force...
...Force Discoverer satellite failed to orbit (because malfunctioning ground gear cut off its in-flight power 15 seconds too soon). Discoverer's record in nine tries: six orbits, three misses (all due to ground equipment lapses). ¶The Saturn cluster engine, with an awesome 1,500,000 pounds of thrust, was earmarked for another $90 million in 1961 budget cash, lifting it to a fat $230 million for the year. The Saturn will shake through its first ground tests at Huntsville, Ala. in April, when Rocketeer Wernher von Braun will switch on two of its engines; later tests will...
...make the Agena ignite a second time called for tricky engineering. A second charge of solid propellant to restart the turbopump was comparatively simple. But since the rocket would be fired while in orbit, when everything on a satellite is weightless, the fuel might be anywhere in the partly empty tanks-perhaps gathered in a ball in the center. To coax it into a position where the pumps could get hold of it, two small, solid-fuel rockets are fired, giving the main rocket a slight forward push. The fuel responds momentarily as if to gravitation, settles to the rear...
...second stage of a satellite launcher, it will use most of its fuel to make the satellite climb toward a high apogee on the far side of the earth. Left to itself, the satellite would descend again to the low point (perigee) where it first went into orbit. But at apogee the Agena will fire a second time, giving enough additional push to put the satellite on a high, near-circular orbit, and keep it there...