Word: spacecrafts
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...Apollo 17, a dozen U.S. astronauts had walked on the lunar surface and-as President Nixon noted last week-"of 24 men sent to circle the moon or to stand upon it...24 men returned to earth alive and well." Said Christopher Kraft, director of Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center: "Apollo was the greatest engineering feat of all our lives...
...cost of equipment left on the moon during the Apollo program-including the still operative scientific observatories-to $517 million. The craft landed only nine miles from the valley it had just left. Two days later, on America's 76th revolution of the moon, the astronauts fired the spacecraft engine to blast themselves out of lunar orbit and start them on their voyage home...
Despite gloom at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, there are encouraging signs that man's ability to explore the solar system will not be completely lost. Next year NASA will use one of its surplus Saturns to launch Skylab, a primitive orbital station in which three men will remain in space for up to 56 days. In 1975 a spare Apollo will take part in the greatly publicized linkup with a Soviet Soyuz, an operation that will serve as a gesture of amity between the two great space rivals and also help develop space-rescue techniques. Finally...
...armed with a new doctorate in geology from Harvard, Schmitt joined the U.S. Geological Survey at Flagstaff, Ariz. There he was assigned the job of assembling photographs taken by unmanned Ranger spacecraft into detailed lunar maps for future moon walkers. Schmitt was fascinated by the task. Recalls former NASA Geologist Gene Shoemaker: "Jack caught the space bug." Indeed, as soon as NASA began recruiting scientist-astronauts in 1965, Schmitt applied. He was accepted despite a minor physical problem: an unusual and painful elongation of the large intestine...
...April 1986, one year since the giant spacecraft blasted out of orbit around earth and headed into deep space, propelled by powerful nuclear engines. The earth is now so far away that it looks no bigger than a bright star. On board, the crew is too busy for sentimental homeward glances. In a few minutes, three astronauts will enter a smaller spacecraft and cast off from the mother ship to start the final lap of a momentous journey. Their little craft will carry the space travelers to man's first landing on the surface of Mars...