Word: orbiting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...they have wrought and yearn restlessly to get on with what they are certain will one day come to be. In a mere quarter-century, the human race has broken its immemorial bond to the life-sustaining surroundings of the home planet. U.S. space pioneers have been able to orbit the globe, walk on the moon, ring the earth with communications satellites and send a machine nearly 1.8 billion miles to inspect the planet Uranus. Such wonders are indeed extraordinary...
...problems worsened. On April 18, a startled Air Force watched its once trusty Titan rocket explode at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. Lost in the fiery metallic shower was a Big Bird spy satellite, intended to keep a keen polar-orbit eye on the Soviets. The explosion was the second successive Titan 34D failure within a year, after nine perfect flights. NASA bravely tried another launch, and on May 3 was dismayed when its long-reliable Delta rocket, carrying a hurricane-spotting satellite, had to be detonated over Cape Canaveral after its main engine shut down prematurely...
Suddenly the U.S. had no way to lift even a medium-size payload into orbit. Temporarily, at least, the nation's vaunted space program has been grounded, its wondrous space future receding. "How bad is it?" asked Bruce Murray, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's really terrible --worse than some Government officials realize...
None of the three remaining shuttles, which can lift as much as 65,000 lbs., are expected to fly until the summer of 1987. The Titan 34D, which can put 27,500 lbs. into orbit, will be grounded for at least six months. The Delta, which had run up 43 successes since the last failure in 1977, has a 7,500-lb. lift capability that will be lost until August. The nation's other medium-lift rocket, the Atlas-Centaur (13,500 lbs.), was scheduled to loft a Navy satellite on May 22, but that launch has been postponed until...
Despite that impact, insists Air Force Major General Donald Kutyna, a member of the presidential commission, "we are not, as some have suggested, in a crisis situation." He referred to the "relatively healthy" key satellites the U.S. has in orbit. A single KH-11 spy satellite, which is even more effective than the Big Bird, is still operational, keeping special watch on the Soviet Union and the Middle East. It has enough maneuvering fuel to last at least another year. Similarly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an orbiting weather satellite identical to the one lost in the Delta...