Word: orbits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...feels her blood turn "as though the moon had swayed it." For all of the characters in Elizabeth Spencer's elegantly written novel, her first in twelve years, the salt line divides past and present, memory and desire, placidity and jeopardy. Crossing it brings everyone into the swirling orbit of the book's protagonist, Arnie Carrington. Arnie, sixtyish, is a former professor of English at an upstate university, a lifelong activist who reigned during the 1960s as a champion of campus protest movements ("Carrington cares!" the students once chanted). He left the university much as his hero Byron...
Despite a satellite loss, Challenger opens a new era in orbit...
When the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from Florida last week, the roaring flames signaled the start of NASA's busiest year in space. Ten missions are scheduled for 1984, including one with a secret Pentagon payload. But Challenger had barely settled into orbit 190 miles above the earth on the tenth shuttle mission when space gremlins struck. A multimillion-dollar communications satellite, one of two carried on board, mysteriously vanished into the void. Still, in spite of the embarrassing loss, NASA hoped to redeem itself with another of its spectaculars. This week, for the first time, astronauts plan...
...These orbital theatrics have a high purpose. In pushing off from Challenger's open cargo bay, Astronauts Bruce McCandless II, 46, and Robert Stewart, 41, both of whom are making their initial shuttle trips, will be rehearsing the first repair of a satellite in orbit. That is slated to take place in April, when astronauts attempt to retrieve and revive a $150 million robot scientific observatory nicknamed Solar Max, which has been spinning helplessly since it broke down three years ago. If this tinkering succeeds, it could pave the way for even more ambitious efforts, including the assembly...
Preliminary studies agree that the station will have to be freighted piecemeal into orbit inside the space shuttle's big cargo bay. This "building-block approach," as the chief of NASA's Space-Station Task Force, John Hodge, calls it, will take a minimum of five flights. The components will include two or more cylinder-shaped modules, each with the volume of a large recreational vehicle. These will serve as working and living ("habitation modules" in NASAese) quarters for the astronauts. Solar panels will catch sunlight and turn it into electricity. Huge radiators will shed excess heat from...