Word: spacecrafts
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...miles) of the Jovian cloud tops. Back at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab, controllers waited breathlessly to see whether the plucky robot would survive that dangerous encounter. But even before Voyager 1 made its closest approach on Monday, the 826 kg (1,820 lb.) unmanned spacecraft sent home a trove of new findings about Jupiter, including evidence that its atmosphere is even more violent than anyone supposed. The craft also provided the most dramatic and detailed pictures yet of long-puzzling Jovian features like the Great Red Spot...
...only relative motion, that is, the motion of one observer with respect to an other. 2) Regardless of the motion of its source, light always moves through emp ty space at a constant speed (this seems to violate common sense, which suggests that light projected forward from a moving spacecraft, like a bullet fired from a plane, would travel at a speed equal to its velocity plus that of the craft). From these statements, using thought experiments and simple mathematics, Einstein made deductions that shook the central ideas of Newtonian physics...
...fickle and depend on the relative motion of observers. The only absolute remaining is the speed of light. Out of this theorizing emerged some bizarre conclusions about the effect of so-called relativistic speeds, those near the velocity of light. As an observer on earth, for example, watches a spacecraft move away at about 260,000 km (160,-000 miles) per second, time aboard the ship (assuming he is able to see the ship's clock) seems to him to move at only half the rate that it would on earth. The mass of the ship and everything...
...explained a laboratory curiosity called the photoelectric effect, which occurs when a light beam hits a metallic target and causes it to give off electrons. (This phenomenon makes possible a host of today's electronic gadgetry, ranging from electric-eye devices to TV picture tubes and solar panels for spacecraft.) In this paper Einstein borrowed from a theory by German Physicist Max Planck, who had solved a vexing problem about the radiation of heat and light from hot objects by proposing that this radiant energy is carried off or absorbed in tiny packets, or quanta. Planck himself was dissatisfied with...
...June 19, 1976, an alien vessel, hurtling toward Mars, blasted its remaining rocket engine and moved into an elliptical orbit. It was the first of twin Viking spacecraft, each with an orbiter and a lander, launched by NASA to help satisfy man's curiosity about the possibilities of life on the planet. The Viking I orbiter's immediate chore was to survey the Martian surface and transmit pictures of potential landing sites. Once the lander was safely down (on July 20, 1976), the orbiter began snapping away at its aerial photographic study...