Word: spacecrafts
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Second of the week's big shots sent a smaller bird aloft, but the flight of the Ranger VIII moon probe was an even greater achievement. After a 66-hour, 234,300-mile trip, the spacecraft's six cameras panned across the luminous lunar surface taking thousands of snapshots of the great craters and dusty plains that U.S. astronauts hope to explore. Before the automated voyager crashed within 15 miles of its preselected impact point, the exquisite accuracy of all its maneuvers testified to the growing skill of U.S. spacemen...
Correct Correction. The first step toward a precision Ranger shot is to put the spacecraft on a parking orbit around the earth. That orbit is then analyzed by computers; the spacecraft's altitude, speed and direction must be measured with infinite care, for the next burst of power must boost the spacecraft through an imaginary target 120 miles above the earth and only ten miles in diameter. Only then can a mid-course correction of trajectory put the spacecraft inside the selected area...
Ambitious Voyage. For 50 hours, Ranger VIII cruised through space, its speed gradually slowing under the backward pull of the earth's gravitation. Then it felt the forward pull of the moon's gravitation and began to gain speed. As the spacecraft curved into its final dive, it swept across the face of the moon at a lower altitude than its predecessor. In 23 minutes it sent back 7,000 pictures, nearly twice the number returned by Ranger VII, over a five-minute longer span...
...Cooper remain as active participants: Virgil Grissom will command the first of the Gemini flights, and Walter Schirra Jr. will lead the stand-by crew. Donald ("Deke") Slayton, who resigned his Air Force commission in 1963 after doctors discovered a heart murmur, is now assistant director of the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston, in charge of crew operations. Marine Lieut. Colonel John Glenn made an abortive try at politics, later retired from the Marine Corps, is now a director of a soft-drink company. Alan Shepherd was grounded 1½ years ago as a result of an infection...
Among cash-rich oil companies, realty investment has become a major sideline. In partnership with Contractor Del Webb, Houston's Humble Oil is erecting a satellite city next to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (for which Humble cannily donated the land). Gulf Oil guaranteed a $20 million bank loan to the developer of the new town of Reston, outside Washington, in exchange for gas-station sites, and made a similar deal with another builder near San Francisco. Union Oil owns a 45% interest in a firm planning a big community in Simi Valley near Los Angeles...