Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...their nation's most highly touted space projects: Phobos 2, an unmanned craft launched last July to dispatch two landing probes onto the Martian moon Phobos. Repeated attempts to re-establish contact were fruitless. A companion vessel had been lost in space last August. The two spacecraft were part of the longtime Soviet push to explore Mars, an effort that Moscow has several times invited the U.S. to join. Although Phobos 2 had managed to send back information on the Martian atmosphere, magnetic field and environment, some U.S. analysts believe the mishaps in the $500 million project raise questions about...
...liftoff should come in April, when the shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to send a craft called Magellan on its way to Venus. The space probe will begin orbiting the planet next year, using radar to map its cloud-hidden surface. The best maps now in existence, compiled by Soviet spacecraft, show features as small as a quarter-mile across, but Magellan is expected to do about ten times as well...
...news has upset antinuclear activists and raised questions about American + plans for nukes in space. The U.S. has not launched a nuclear satellite since 1977, relying instead mostly on solar-powered models. But Pentagon officials are planning the eventual use of atomic spacecraft in the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Government's proposed space-based defense system. To prevent that idea from going any further, U.S. Representative George Brown, a California Democrat, introduced a bill in Congress last week that would bar American nuclear-power sources from space -- on the unlikely condition that the Soviets do so first. The only exceptions...
Although the U.S. doesn't fuel its spy satellites with nuclear reactors, we have sent up more than 20 spacecraft powered by plutonium. One of these had an accident in 1965 from which we received two-thirds of all the plutonium-238 in our atmosphere today. About 20 percent of all nuclearpowered spacecraft sent up by the U.S. and Soviet Union have broken down in some...
...further scientific knowledge of space. Even sending astronauts beyond earth orbit would be a welcome break from the cargo-hauler routine of the shuttle, for it would at least appeal to the imaginatior of the average person. Clearly, however the greatest scientific returns come from increased use of spacecraft. Although the shuttle is back in service, the United States still lacks a successful space program...