Word: spacecrafts
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After reconnoitering cloud-covered Venus with eight separate unmanned spacecraft-three American and five Russian, including two Soviet landing vehicles-scientists are now certain that De Fontenelle's Eden is, in fact, more like Dante's Inferno. Its surface temperature is a hellish 900° F. Its atmosphere, consisting largely of carbon dioxide, is at least 90 times as thick as the earth's, producing crushing surface pressures of 1,500 Ibs. per sq. in. Its clouds are laden with sulfuric acid. Yet a major mystery remains: Why has a planet so like the earth in size...
Space shots may be old hat to launch crews at the Kennedy Space Center. But there was an unusual air of excitement as technicians made final preparations for the blast-off of the first of two Viking spacecraft bound for Mars. Each of the ships carries a lander, the first ones designed specifically to seek evidence of life beyond the earth. Viking I, scheduled to take off this week, will follow an arcing, 460-million-mile path for more than ten months before it goes into orbit around Mars in mid-June 1976.* The spacecraft will circle the Red Planet...
Critics of the mission who have complained that the Soyuz spacecraft is too "primitive" to bother docking with should realize that if it weren't for the launching of that spacecraft, we would not be launching an Apollo for any reason. The Soyuz program, however primitive it may be, is still advancing steadily. By contrast, Apollo and Skylab are dead. When viewed in this light, it is actually the Soviets who are condescending to dock with us. Soyuz is just coming into its own, while Apollo is putting on its encore performance...
Drifting lazily to earth under its canopy of three red and white parachutes, the Apollo spacecraft hit the gentle Pacific swells northwest of Hawaii just 4½ miles off the bow of the recovery carrier New Orleans. The only visible problem aboard the craft as it returned from its historic space rendezvous with a Soviet Soyuz was minor. Some of the parachute shrouds caught on the Apollo's nose and capsized it; that left Astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Donald ("Deke") Slayton hanging face down from the straps holding them in their contour-fitted couches for several minutes...
...Navy frogmen swam toward the capsized spacecraft, Stafford yelled into his microphone, "Get this -ing hatch open as soon as possible." After a moment, he cracked the hatch open himself. Most of his words were lost in the poor radio communication between the ship and Mission Control, apparently because a microphone had been left open during the hurried efforts to revive Brand. By now aware of a problem, a frogman clambered onto the edge of the ship, peered into a window and gave a thumbs-up sign to reassure everyone that the astronauts were all right. It was not until...