Word: solarity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...FALLING. NASA warns that three U.S. satellites may soon crash to earth. First to fall, perhaps next month: the Solar Max Scientific Satellite. The agency hopes to rescue the eleven-ton Long Duration Exposure Facility, designed to test the effects of solar radiation on computer chips, by using the shuttle Columbia to retrieve it from orbit in December. A supersophisticated Air Force-CIA Key Hole spy satellite failed after deployment on Aug. 8. The $1 billion snooper is tumbling wildly, but the time of its demise cannot be predicted...
...mapped every inch of creation, laying over it a fabric of images that can obscure the underlying realities or throw them into greater relief. Because every patch of earth, no matter how remote, is littered with discarded film cans, cameras have to patrol the far edge of the solar system to find sights that still rank as exotic. Bring us the rings of Neptune. Saturn's we've already seen...
...more significant because it is part of a trend. In March British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who in the mid-1980s denounced environmental activists as the "enemy within," convened an international meeting on the depletion of the atmosphere's ozone layer, which protects the earth from harmful solar radiation. That same month the Prime Ministers of Norway, France and the Netherlands chaired a conference that proposed creation of an international authority with the power to draft and enforce environmental regulations around the world...
...even the most sweet-tempered soul, August is a test of patience and ingenuity, when office workers lunch by a fountain and hope for a strong wind. Shoppers browse through Chicago's Hammacher Schlemmer, lured by inflatable water shoes (pontoons for the feet), or a solar-powered ventilated golf cap, or, for sun worshipers who don't know any better, a sun-tracking beach chair that rotates 360 degrees for maximum exposure. For those who prefer refrigeration to recreation, swank, Dallas-based Neiman Marcus is prepared to cater a private picnic for customers in its fur vault, which is kept...
Admittedly, we have gained knowledge about our planet and our solar system, but the question is by no means settled as to whether we could have accomplished the same using robot craft...