Word: spacecrafts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...enabling the lander to begin its historic life-seeking experiments. Some 19 minutes later, as telemetry confirming that the arm was no longer jammed appeared on the console screens at JPL, scientists and engineers broke into cheers. Said Meteorologist Seymour Hess: "Happiness is a functioning instrument in a spacecraft...
Speculation that life exists on Mars has decreased this week even though the Viking spacecraft that landed on the planet more than two weeks ago relayed data back to Earth indicating Martian soil samples were emitting large quantities of oxygen...
Barghoorn said the production of oxygen "is a mystery." At two meetings of the exo-biology panel last year and this past March at which possible problems with the biology experiments on board the spacecraft were discussed there was never any suggestion that oxygen would be released...
...after the little ship touched the surface. Signals from the controllers ordering Viking to avoid the site would take another 18 minutes to return to the craft, far too late to do any good. Russian space scientists can testify to the risks. In their four known attempts to land spacecraft on Mars, one ship missed the planet completely, two apparently crashed, and the fourth transmitted for only 20 seconds, sending an undecipherable portion of one picture before lapsing into silence...
Still, in the control center at J.P.L., there was confidence that Viking 1, despite the delay, would not fail. Other than a helium leak that caused excess pressure in the spacecraft's propulsion system as it neared Mars, Viking had performed flawlessly since leaving Cape Canaveral last August on its journey across space. As it neared its destination a fortnight ago, gathering speed as the pull of Martian gravity increased, Viking took increasingly detailed pictures of Mars. They showed no evidence of the swirling sandstorms that had obscured the surface as Mariner 9 approached in 1971, and the proposed...