Word: orbits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Columbia was lofted into a 137-mile high orbit by 6.4 million pounds of thrust from its three liquid fuel engines and by two rocket boosters, which trailed a thick column of white smoke as they burned their solid fuel...
...above the earth, Columbia will try out a $100 million, Canadian-built "arm in space." Unless the Remote Manipulator System, as the huge skyhook is called in NASA jargon, really works, the shuttle will be unable to perform one of its key roles in space: to place satellites into orbit and retrieve them when they fail...
...spectra can also be created by directing a light beam or, say, X or gamma rays at an object. As the radiant energy strikes the atoms, their electrons hop from one orbit (or, in the language of quantum mechanics, one energy level) to another, absorbing or emitting light at specific frequencies. Such spectra yielded invaluable data about atomic and molecular structure...
More drastic still is the imminent dismantling of Project Galileo, a $500 million enterprise that would place an unmanned spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter and drop a probe directly into the giant planet's atmosphere. More than $200 million has already been spent, including several million dollars by the West Germans...
Also seriously threatened: VOIR (for Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar), a scheme to place a radar-equipped robot in orbit around Venus and map its cloud-covered surface. NASA officials are even talking about mothballing the Deep Space Network, a globe-girdling array of antennas that acts as a vital communications "downlink" with all U.S. unmanned planetary spacecraft. One effect of such a move would be to silence the transmissions of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is scheduled to pass by Uranus...