Word: orbitting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...boosting the rocket to an altitude of 115 miles before it, too, was jettisoned. Now it was the turn of the third-stage S-IVB. Firing its engine, it inserted itself, the attached Apollo spacecraft, its service module and the lunar module-a total of 140 tons-into orbit, with an apogee of 119 miles, a perigee of 114 miles. It was an impressive demonstration that, after ten years, the U.S. had finally overtaken and surpassed Russia in brute rocket power. The heaviest loads ever orbited by the Soviets were the 13-ton Protons...
Vital Difference. Basically, FOBS can pack the punch of some ICBMs-with a vital difference. Shot into a low orbit of 100 miles, the FOBS rocket slows and ejects its nuclear bomb before completing its route around the globe. This combination would prevent anti-ballistic missile radar (BMEWS), presently the U.S.'s main screen against surprise attack, from ascertaining the point of impact until the rocket "deboosts"-about three minutes and 500 miles from target. By contrast, the U.S. now has a 15-minute warning against ICBMs. Experts say that the Soviet FOBS could carry the maximum payload equivalent...
Probably launched from the Tyuratam Cosmodrome in central Kazakhstan, the first of the satellites, Cosmos 186, lifted off on Oct. 27. Western scientists immediately noted that it was traveling in an orbit remarkably similar to that of Soyuz 1, which crashed on landing last April, killing Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir M. Komarov. Three days later, a cylindrical object called Cosmos 188 was rocketed aloft into the same orbital track, a scant 14.9 miles from Cosmos 186. The accuracy was remarkable, but it had to be. Western space experts have learned that Russian spacecraft radar lacks power for long-range precision...
...launching, Russian scientists say, computers aboard Cosmos 186, reportedly large enough to carry a crew of five, began the sophisticated automatic process of finding and linking up with Cosmos 188, the passive, beaconlike partner in the space pas de deux. Then, while 188 was still in its first orbit, the two spacecraft oriented their docking mechanisms toward one another. Painstakingly, 186 moved closer. Then, high over the Ascension Island area in the South Atlantic, 186 slipped its pronged nose into a docking collar mounted on 188, linking the electrical circuits of the two vehicles. For 31 hours, the two spacecraft...
...announcement following the feat, Tass hinted windily at the purpose of the unmanned docking maneuver. The mission, it said, was a step toward the "creation in orbit of big scientific space stations capable of carrying out complex and multifaceted exploration of outer space and planets." Sir Bernard Lovell, Director of Britain's Jodrell Bank observatory, agreed that this was "a logical explanation." But Lovell, as well as other Western observers, believes that the space docking project could also be part of a Soviet effort toward orbiting the moon from a space platform circling the earth. All this is necessary...