Word: orbits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...certainly was. As the shuttle eased into orbit, mission commander Hauck felt only delight at the immediate tasks at hand. "We're looking forward to the next four days," he said. "We have a lot to do, and we're going to have a lot of fun doing it." Several hours later, astronauts Mike Lounge and David Hilmers, manipulating controls in the cabin, raised and tilted the TDRS package in the cargo bay, and activated springs that pushed it out of the open doors into space. After Hauck and pilot Dick Covey had maneuvered the shuttle to a safe...
There, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, it unfolded two huge solar panels and two large umbrella-like antennas. Together with its sister satellite, TDRS-1 (already in orbit over the Atlantic), the new TDRS will give NASA the ability to communicate through a single ground installation with dozens of U.S. civil and military satellites...
...Still, gnawing doubts remained. Despite exhaustive ground testing of the new and modified shuttle parts, none had been tried in the harsh environment of a launch, or in orbit or re-entry. Moreover, some of them are among the more than 1,500 "criticality 1" parts -- that is, items without backup whose failure could end the mission, perhaps catastrophically...
NASA's new manner was in marked contrast to its bold, often arrogant and occasionally careless approach in pre-Challenger days. NASA initially promoted the shuttle as a routine "space truck," an efficient, economical transport vehicle capable of lofting any payload -- commercial, scientific or military -- into orbit. Washington succumbed to that pitch, allowing NASA to decree ! that expendable rockets such as the Delta, Atlas and Titan be phased out in favor of the shuttle...
...extending our view to the edges of the universe, fell years behind schedule. Crucial deadlines were missed for shuttle launches of the planetary probes Magellan, designed to map the surface of Venus, Galileo, to survey Jupiter and its moons, and Ulysses, to conduct solar studies from a polar orbit around...