Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Eleven years ago a small, unmanned spacecraft looking like the product of a child's Erector Set took off from Florida on a historic mission. Equipped with primitive electronic eyes and other instruments, Pioneer 10 flew past the giant planet Jupiter, providing the first startling close-up view of that distant world. Now the surprisingly durable robot, whose working parts were designed by its builder, TRW, to last only two or three years, has scored another remarkable achievement. Propelled by a gravitational boost from Jupiter, it has become the first man-made object to leave the solar system...
Anticipating Pioneer's wanderings into the cosmos, where it might be intercepted by intelligent beings, Sagan and a Cornell colleague, Frank Drake, along with Sagan's former wife Linda, an artist, created a gold-anodized aluminum plaque that was affixed to the spacecraft's side. The plaque shows a nude male and female, a representation of the solar system, plus other scientific clues that might help inhabitants of other worlds trace Pioneer's origins...
...first, some old hands in the brotherhood, like Moonwalker Al Bean, who instructed the new recruits, doubted that women could tackle such "male things" as spacecraft and computers. But as Ride and the other women demonstrated their mettle-actually she had spent many hours in graduate school at computer terminals-Bean had a change of heart. The women, he finally agreed, performed as well as the men. In 1980, encouraged by the female experience, NASA added two more women to the astronaut corps...
...orbital TV shows). Included as well are tampons, linked together lest one drift off when the box is opened. The shuttle's single privy was already designed with women in mind. Instead of the flexible hose used by the male-only crews of the old Gemini and Apollo spacecraft, NASA provided a wide cuplike attachment that fits over the crotch. A curtain is being added to give Ride some privacy, though she did not ask for it. Notes Astronaut Mary Cleave, an environmental engineer: "Guys don't like to perform vital functions in front of everybody either...
Challenger's cargo is a revolutionary new satellite called TDRS (for tracking and data-relay satellite). It will open up communications with spacecraft beyond the range of ground stations. Additional delays would play havoc with NASA's timetable, postponing the placing in orbit of as many as 30 other satellites. Rescheduling would also stall the launch of Spacelab, Western Europe's contribution to the shuttle program, now listed for a September flight on Challenger. Says one irreverent NASA official: "Abrahamson is praying, 'Engines, heal thyself...