Word: retrorocket
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...Moscow time, said Gagarin, he was over Africa, and the spaceship's automatic controls signaled that back in Russia preparations were being made to turn on a braking device, presumably a retrorocket. "This meant," he reported, "that the final stage of the flight had begun-the return to earth, which was perhaps more crucial than ascent into orbit and orbiting itself. I readied myself for it. I faced transition from a condition of weightlessness to new and perhaps even greater overloads. I also faced tremendous heating of the ship's outer surface on entering the denser layers...
...satellite's nose downward until it pointed to earth at a 60° angle. Pins kicked loose, freeing the 349-lb. instrument capsule for its descent to earth, and the newly installed gas jets immediately set it spinning at 60 r.p.m. The quick blast of a retrorocket slowed its speed of descent. As the Discoverer capsule knifed into earth's atmosphere, it stopped spinning, shed all useless encumbrances-its gas jet equipment, the retrorocket, and the remains of a protective nose cone-and pared itself down to a svelte 143 Ibs. At 50,000 ft. the capsule...
...times on a polar orbit, it passes over Kodiak, Alaska, where a radio control station sends an order that sets the guidance system on a new track, tilting it 60° from the horizontal. An electric impulse fires explosive bolts to kick off a re-entry capsule, a retrorocket slows the capsule's speed, a drag parachute pops out, a radio beacon shrills signals, and aluminum chaff is released to show on the radar screens of the recovery aircraft and ships waiting anxiously below. All this must be accomplished on a rigid time schedule with millisecond accuracy...
Something must have gone wrong. The way to bring a satellite, manned or unmanned, down to the atmosphere is to fire a forward-pointing retrorocket to reduce its speed. If this is done properly, the satellite will curve down into the denser air, where it will be slowed further by friction. If the retrorocket is fired in the wrong direction, it will speed the satellite up and put it on an orbit with a higher apogee. The U.S. Air Force Discoverer satellite program has suffered from just such aiming errors...
Last week the Department of Defense explained that the retrorocket had probably fired when it was pointing in the wrong direction. Instead of slowing the recovery capsule and bringing it down, the rocket's thrust had increased the capsule's speed and put it in a different and higher orbit, where it circled for five months before the still-inexperienced Dark Fence watchers noticed...