Word: soiling
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...usually prompted by disappointed love. "My country, right or wrong" is not a very American slogan. We Americans have a hard time accepting a situation in which our country is wrong, not because we are more arrogant than other people, but because our country's rightness is our soil, our home. One loves one's birthplace or one's parents because they are one's birthplace or one's parents, regardless of whether the place is especially attractive or the parents especially worthy. One loves them because they exist. America demands to be loved...
...Martian Soil. At this point, instruments aboard Viking will begin sniffing the atmosphere, counting charged particles and identifying the gases as the craft descends. Farther down, other instruments will begin recording temperature, pressure and density of the thickening atmosphere. At 19,000 ft., now descending at only 560 m.p.h., the lander will unfurl a parachute, jettison its aeroshell and extend its landing legs...
...will be disturbed as little as possible, each of the braking rockets will fire through a showerhead arrangement of 18 nozzles to diffuse the blast. The rocket fuel is also hydrocarbon-free to avoid confusing Viking's life-seeking instruments. When the first Viking foot pad touches Martian soil, it will trip a sensor that shuts off the engines. Eighteen minutes later controllers will know, by signals sent from the lander, if a successful touchdown has been made...
Viking will not wait for any congratulatory messages from Pasadena. Within seconds after touchdown, with almost unseemly haste, it will automatically point a camera down and take a picture of one of its foot pads and the surrounding soil. Scientists programmed this quick shot so that they could at the very least learn about grain sizes, erosion and other surface conditions near Viking's feet in the event that some catastrophe befalls the craft soon after the landing. Six minutes later, like a wary human set down on alien soil, Viking will look cautiously up from its foot...
NITROGEN FIXATION. At present only legumes such as peas, beans and alfalfa-with the aid of a soil-dwelling bacterium called rhizobium-are known to be naturally capable of fixing nitrogen from the air-joining it to other substances to form compounds necessary for plant growth. Most other plants must obtain their nitrogen from natural and man-made fertilizers. But scientists are seeking to give more plants this nitrogen-fixing ability. At Utah's Brigham Young University, biologists are attempting to "infect" other species of plants with rhizobia. Scientists in England have isolated the segment of the rhizobial...