Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...years to the day after the beeps of Sputnik I proclaimed the beginning of the space age, the U.S.S.R. celebrated the anniversary by announcing a far more advanced step into space: a rocket shot that this week sent a 600-lb. instrumented payload hurtling into space on a trajectory calculated to curve around the moon and swing back toward the earth. The moon probe (see SCIENCE) required a rocket thrust of at least 600,000 Ibs., twice the thrust of the U.S.'s most powerful rocket engine. The Soviet feat was all the more embarrassing to the U.S. because...
...Attention, attention, dear comrades," said the Moscow radio. "Listen now to the signals coming in from the cosmos, from the third cosmic rocket launched today." Then came the signals, sounding like hoarse violin notes at A above middle C. By that time, 1 p.m. Moscow time Oct. 4 (6 a.m. New York time), Lunik III was already 67,000 miles from the earth. Britain's big radio station at Jodrell Bank, instructed where to look by a telegram from Moscow, picked up the signal too and held it for 20 minutes. Then the violin notes stopped suddenly...
...official Soviet announcement was a mixture of specific information and cagey reticence. "The launching was done," it said, "by means of a multistage rocket carrying an automatic interplanetary station. After reaching the necessary speed, the last stage of the rocket put the station into the required orbit...
Million-Mile Radio. Since rocket test shots are almost useless unless the rocket sends information about its performance, J.P.L. was forced to explore the electronic labyrinth of telemetering. One electronic job led to another, and now J.P.L. products ride in nearly all U.S. satellites, reporting the magnetism, heat and cosmic rays encountered in the unknown reaches of space. Such information has grown so voluminous that J.P.L. has its own computer to interpret it. For tracking space vehicles far out in the solar system, J.P.L. has built a radio telescope 85 ft. in diameter in the Mojave Desert, which can track...
...side of the moon. Biggest single project is Vega, the U.S.'s most advanced space vehicle. Expected to fly in about 18 months, the first Vega will use an Atlas D as its first stage. The second stage, powered by a General Electric X405 rocket engine, is intended to place a 2½-ton satellite in a 300-mile orbit. Later Vegas will have third stages fueled with a J.P.L.-developed mixture, hydrazine and nitrogen textroxide, and should be capable of putting a 500-lb. vehicle on Mars...