Word: spacecraft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...brighter than a faint shooting star, shone against the thick, purplish clouds. Apollo 11 had come home; now it was streaking through the earth's familiar atmosphere after completing the most momentous journey in man's history. Two of the three human beings aboard the returning spacecraft had actually landed on the moon, strode effortlessly across its tortured surface and brought a few chunks of lunar rock home with them...
Aboard the spacecraft, the astronauts were briskly preparing for the final perilous moments of descent. They had jettisoned the Service Module just before the atmosphere dramatically braked their speed from 24,602 miles per hour to only 168. Then, before the searingly hot gasses that envelop a spacecraft on re-entry blacked out communications, Neil Armstrong reported, almost nostalgically: "We have the moon in the field of view right...
After Luna 15 reached the vicinity of the moon, it went into an 83-by 179-mi. orbit. On that basis, Lovell predicted that the Russians would attempt "to land the whole spacecraft, or part of it, and collect some rock." Most Western scientists, however, doubted that such a feat could be brought off successfully on the first try. They know that the Soviets have not yet even tested a rocket large enough to launch a Luna with enough fuel to land on the moon and take off again. They also believe that Russian space techniques are still not sophisticated...
...same time, NASA will attempt increasingly complex unmanned probes. Two unmanned Mariner spacecraft will soon pass within 2,000 miles of Mars and radio back enough close-up photographs to map about 20% of the Martian surface. In 1973, other Martian orbiters will eject two instrument-packed capsules for soft landings on Mars...
Mars, however, is only one of NASA's planetary targets-and a relatively close one at that. In 1972, the space agency will send two Pioneer spacecraft on a flyby of Jupiter, largest planet in the solar system. A year later, another Mariner will try the first multiple-planet probe. After a sweep of Venus, it will use the Venusian gravity to boost itself on toward Mercury, the sun's closest and smallest satellite. In the late 1970s, the so-called "outer planets" will be so favorably aligned that a spacecraft passing Jupiter could use its gravity...