Word: radar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Russian military officers stared wide-eyed at the glowing image on their radar screens: an incoming missile on course to hit Moscow in 15 minutes. They were tracking a rocket about the size of a U.S. submarine-launched Trident that seemed to be streaking in from the Norwegian Sea. There had been no particular tension between Russia and the U.S. on Jan. 25, 1995. Still, the officers knew that if this were a surprise attack, the first American missile to be fired would probably be from a submarine, aimed to detonate over Russia and generate an electromagnetic storm that would...
...flashed and Klaxons blared, alerting the troops in charge of the country's strategic nuclear weapons to get ready to use them. Yeltsin and his military commanders, linked by phone, waited to hear whether an attack had been confirmed. About 12 minutes after the mystery missile soared onto the radar screens, military analysts could see that it was not heading for Russian territory. It turned out to be a Norwegian scientific rocket sent aloft to observe the aurora borealis. The Norwegians had dutifully notified the Russian embassy in Oslo, but the word was never relayed to the military...
Even before Cassini's work begins and Galileo's ends, other ships could be on the way to join them in the outer solar system. NASA is tentatively planning several new Europa probes, including one that will photograph its surface and take radar soundings beneath its crust. If the radar picks up the telltale echoes of liquid water, another spacecraft would be sent to land on Europa and release a heated probe designed to melt through the ice layer and look for signs of life in the seas below...
...airplane." Some 185 flights by dozens of aircraft ranging from U-2 spy planes to Army helicopters have joined the search, which as been slowed by severe weather. The Air Force has given up an earlier theory that the plane vered off course while on autopilot after radar data and visual sightings suggest that Button was in control of the plane. CNN has reported that a religious conversion by Button's mother may have caused Button to be suicidal. "That's certainly the buzz right now in the pilot's community," says TIME's Mark Thompson. "But most attempted suicides...
...highly unlikely they both would have cut out simultaneously. In other words, one engine could have provided the thrust to force the plane in a circular direction." This scenario, combined with the fact that skiers near Vail heard a loud explosion at about the time the aircraft vanished from radar screens, makes the possibility that Captain Button stole the plane more remote. But the theory won't go away until search and rescue crews come up with the hard evidence, a difficult task considering the four feet of new snow that has buried the entire region...