Word: spacecrafts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last winter Venus was explored by two Pioneer spacecraft: one a radar-equipped orbiter still spewing data, the other a multiple probe that dropped five instrument packages into the Venusian atmosphere. Among the findings: the neighboring planet has an extraordinary five-layered cloud cover, is riddled by continuous lightning bolts and scarred by a rift valley and mountain peak more grandiose than any on earth, and has totally unexpected abundances of primordial neon and argon. Their presence suggests new ideas about the nature of the great cloud of gases and dust from which the sun and planets were born...
Last week another automatic spacecraft named Voyager 2 picked up where its twin left off. Programmed by controllers at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to fill in gaps left by the first flyby, Voyager 2 did its closest reconnoitering of the larger Jovian moons on its approach to Jupiter rather than on its way beyond it, as Voyager 1 had done. That gave scientists at J.P.L. a totally different perspective on these little worlds...
Farther out, beyond the asteriod belt, Jupiter has been visited by several unmanned spacecraft, most recently Voyagers I and II. The most massive planet in the solar system has no surface to speak of, but the patterns in its stormy atmosphere and bands of swirling colors would please Dali. Also, Saturn no longer has a monopoly on rings. For hundreds of years, it looked that way, but since 1977 rings have been discovered around both Uranus and Jupiter. Surprise...
...builders had nearly caused the meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island. The mysterious cracks emerging in engine mountings of the DC-10 jumbo jets had led to the grounding of the fleet and America's most tragic air disaster. Now a giant spacecraft, crippled at birth six years ago, is plunging toward a premature end which its creators have no way to prevent...
...shuttle is also the first NASA spacecraft to have a military role. Though the Pentagon is paying about a sixth of the shuttle's cost, or $1.5 billion, it is not saying much about its plans. But these are not too hard to figure out. To control the military "high ground" of the future, the shuttle will not only launch satellites but track down others, nudge up to them and disable them if they present a threat. All of which may explain why the Soviets, who apparently have their own capacity to hunt down and kill satellites, have complained...