Word: radar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last winter Venus was explored by two Pioneer spacecraft: one a radar-equipped orbiter still spewing data, the other a multiple probe that dropped five instrument packages into the Venusian atmosphere. Among the findings: the neighboring planet has an extraordinary five-layered cloud cover, is riddled by continuous lightning bolts and scarred by a rift valley and mountain peak more grandiose than any on earth, and has totally unexpected abundances of primordial neon and argon. Their presence suggests new ideas about the nature of the great cloud of gases and dust from which the sun and planets were born...
Despite all their wondrous tracking stations, bristling with huge radar antennas and feeding the most advanced electronic computers, America's top military and civilian space scientists could not predict even roughly where Skylab would fall. Until the final hours, they could narrow the area of eventual impact only to a vast global band between 50° north latitude and 50° south latitude?a sweep of about 109 million sq. mi., or nearly 56% of the earth's area. Conceded Hal Sierra, one of the technicians monitoring Skylab's death throes from the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center near Houston...
...worldwide array of NORAD'S space-tracking stations, using infra-red detection devices as well as radar, is so discerning that it can track an object even smaller than a basketball at a range of 20,000 miles. Even an astronaut's glove is being tracked. Beyond Skylab, the heaviest object aloft is now Salyut 6, the Soviets' manned spacecraft. Every month about 40 man-made objects re-enter the atmosphere, but only a fourth survive to strike the earth. There has never been a reported injury, although the fall of Cosmos 954 over northern Canada in January...
...prepare a vehicle to rescue the three astronauts was undertaken. The astronauts shut off the leaking system, and the rescue mission proved unnecessary. On the third and final mission, on Nov. 16, 1973, Astronauts William Pogue and Edward Gibson struggled for three hours outside Skylab in getting a vital radar antenna adjusted and repaired...
...find part of the beach bathed in light from huge lamps installed by the Cubans against precisely such a pre-dawn strike. Later, they even discovered two microwave radio towers alongside the bay. Far offshore, the U.S. Navy maneuvered four destroyers in a manner designed to scare Cuban radar operators into thinking that a massive Normandy-style landing was under way. As it happened, Castro had no radar capable of detecting the ruse...