Word: soiling
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...turboprop Hercules carefully flew over the Red Sea, protected by Israeli air force jet fighters, and were refueled in midair. For the return trip, however, the transports made a quick refueling stop in Kenya. Four hours later the planes and their shaken but much relieved passengers touched Israeli soil...
...heptachlor, aldrin, dieldrin, toxaphene and endrin. Wartime research on nerve gases also led to the development of a whole family of phosphorus-based insecticides, such as parathion, malathion and dimethoate, which, unlike DDT and other chlorine-based compounds, tended to break down more quickly into innocuous substances in the soil...
...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...
...first color pictures-the ingeniously conceived and packaged laboratory (which occupies about a cubic foot of space) will begin operating. The surface sampler, a power-shovel-like bucket, will be extended from Viking by a boom that can reach 10 ft. It will scoop up a sample of Martian soil, which will then be distributed to three separate chambers of the laboratory. Using nutrients, radioactive tracers and analyzing devices, the lab will look for evidence of living organisms or their byproducts. Other experiments will identify both organic and inorganic substances in soil samples...