Word: spacecrafts
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...month, when the Soviet tracking ships Gagarin and Komarov sailed out of the Black Sea, passed through the Mediterranean and headed full steam into the Atlantic, Western observers knew that something was up. The vessels are known to carry elaborate electronic gear and serve as communications links between Soviet spacecraft and ground controllers. Last week these suspicions were dramatically confirmed when the Soviets orbited Salyut 2, a 17¾-ton space lab. At week's end, they were expected to launch a smaller Soyuz spacecraft that would carry cosmonauts to the orbital...
...interruption of nearly two years. During the last manned mission, in June 1971, three cosmonauts lived in Salyut 1 for almost 24 days-longer than anyone had previously spent in space. But the three crewmen were killed on their way back to earth; the hatch of their Soyuz spacecraft leaked-perhaps jolted by the retrorocket firing prior to re-entry-resulting in a fatal loss of oxygen. Since then Soviet engineers have redesigned the hatch to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy. As an added precaution, the cosmonauts will also wear their pressure suits on the return flight, something...
...young Scottish science writer and part-time astronomer named Duncan A. Lunan, they may well be true. Writing in Spaceflight, a publication of the British Interplanetary Society, Lunan, 27, says that the words are his translation of a message that may have been relayed to earth by a robot spacecraft from a highly advanced civilization far beyond the solar system. More astonishing, Lunan adds, the automatic vehicle may have been circling the moon for thousands of years, waiting patiently for earthlings to acquire the necessary know-how to contact...
While scientists debate the existence of the robot vehicle supposedly sending messages from an extraterrestrial civilization, the U.S. is launching a message-bearing spacecraft of its own. Scheduled to blast off this week, a second Pioneer spacecraft will begin the two-year, 620-million-mile journey to the planet Jupiter-and beyond. Pioneer 11 is an almost identical twin of its predecessor, Pioneer 10, which will pass close enough to Jupiter in December to send back pictures and data about the atmosphere, strong magnetic field and puzzling red spot of the giant planet. Because the new craft, like Pioneer...
...least 4,000,000 miles from those larger (at least seven miles in diameter) and rarer asteroids that can be seen by telescope on earth. Said NASA's newly confident Dr. William Kinard: "We're firmly convinced that the asteroid belt presents little hazard for future spacecraft going to explore the outer planets...