Word: orbiting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...January of 1978, the Soviet spy satellite Cosmos 954 dropped out of orbit and fell to earth. It did not completely disintegrate in the atmosphere. Instead, debris from the satellite fell across almost 40,000 square miles of northwest Canada. Metal from the sky is frightening enough, but this metal was radioactive...
...still remains in the atmosphere. And just a few months ago, Cosmos 1900, a satellite also containing more than 100 pounds of enriched uranium 235, burned up in the upper atmosphere. Luckily, the satellite jettisoned its nuclear reactor, which is still floating in space, at a higher, longer-lived orbit...
...next mission of the space shuttle Discovery. Last week a hapless worker, whose name has been withheld to protect him from humiliation, tripped on the tail of his lab coat and piled into the exhaust nozzle of a space rocket that is to ferry an important communications satellite into orbit next February. The accident caused a crack in the heat-resistant carbon nozzle that was too serious to be fixed with a simple patch, and NASA will have to replace the entire first stage of the expensive rocket. Total cost: about $6 million...
...heavy black lines, elemental colors and vigorous figures, Byron Barton follows the exploits of a futuristic young traveler who says I Want to Be an Astronaut (Crowell; $12.89). All the experiences are cataloged and exhibited: zero gravity, concentrated meals, a space walk, even the building of a factory in orbit. Once upon a time such adventures seemed the stuff of daydreams. This user-friendly manual makes them not only plausible but likely...
Just how destabilizing such systems could be was illustrated last week when the Army conceded that SDI could severely threaten the Soviet Union's satellite system. Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. depend heavily on low-orbit satellites for military intelligence, navigation and communications. The Star Wars antimissile weapons, sitting in space, could easily be turned against Soviet satellites traveling in predictable orbits. Such a prospect is as unacceptable to the Soviets as it would be to the U.S. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara describes SDI as so destabilizing that he believes the Soviets would "be justified in shooting...