Word: spacecrafts
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Usually NASA's biggest headache is to get spacecraft safely off the ground. But after the White Sands wave-off last week, Houston was confronted with a new sort of crisis: deciding when and where to bring one of its ships down. There was little time to spare. Columbia, already in or bit for a week, had no more than three days of fuel left for generating electricity to run the spacecraft's life-support systems or get it out of orbit...
...time, Columbia's instruments monitored a surprise eruption of a huge solar flare, a fiery burst of hot gases from the sun's surface. Such plumes often reach thousands of miles into space and give off a flood of charged particles that can play devilish tricks on spacecraft. In 1979, Skylab, NASA'S abandoned space workshop, came crashing prematurely to earth after its orbit was disturbed by solar activity...
...radio breakdown, were all relatively minor, and it was unfortunate that they obscured the mission's true importance. By making a record-breaking third voyage into space, Columbia was providing stunning proof of NASA's basic vision: that the U.S. could build and operate a spacecraft capable of moving in and out of orbit with the reliability of a commercial jet flying between terrestrial cities...
Webb said the State Department is pressing Congress for funds to develop two orbiting laner stations which would control space and prevent spacecraft from leading earth orbit. "We are facing an extraordinary situation where, for the first time in history, a frontier may be closed off." Webb said...
Like all new spacecraft, including the U.S. space shuttle Columbia, Ariane has had its problems. Its second trial in May 1980 ended with a mid-air explosion. But since then, it has carried four satellites, two per launch, into high earth orbit. The most recent lift-off came in the predawn darkness on Dec. 20, when Ariane awoke the sleeping jungle with a fusillade of flame and thunder. Last week, in Paris, the eleven-nation European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed what Ariane's customers had been eagerly waiting to hear: that the rocket was ready and able to launch...