Word: spacecrafts
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...doubt, some catchy consumer items to match the smoke detectors and cordless vacuum cleaners born of NASA. Above all, the piloted space program is good propaganda. "Just as England went to North America and made it British, China needs to stake its claim in space," says Xu Shijie, a spacecraft designer who has worked on the Shenzhou...
...DESTROYED. Galileo, unmanned spacecraft whose 14-year mission to Jupiter revolutionized understanding of the giant planet; in Jupiter's atmosphere. Operated by a version of the same computer chip used to run the Pong video game, Galileo beamed down more than 14,000 photos during its life span, providing evidence that a vast subterranean ocean exists on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. Galileo was running out of fuel and NASA worried the craft might spread microorganisms from Earth if it crashed into Europa...
...triumphant mission of the U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 [in 1965] brought some reality to musings about Mars. The craft flew past the planet at a distance of only 9,800 kilometers, transmitting 22 television pictures of a bleak, moonlike landscape pockmarked by craters and showing no signs of life. Even so, hope persisted. To demonstrate that a Mariner flyby at a distance of thousands of miles might completely overlook a thriving civilization, a young and still unknown Carl Sagan that same year sifted through a thousand pictures of Earth shot by a weather satellite orbiting only 480 kilometers...
...Other observers question whether Beijing merely knocked off Russia's manned program. Indeed, China's first two astronauts received instruction at Star City, the space-training center outside Moscow. China purchased a Soyuz spacecraft from Russia as a model for Shenzhou'sairframe, plus life-support systems and a single pressurized space suit. The Shenzhou bears a resemblance to the Soyuz, but with substantial Chinese modifications. In a clear advance over the Soyuz, the Shenzhou III employed a forward orbital module with a solar panel that remained in space. Future flights could one day dock with the module to form...
...fashion, on how to exploit intergalactic travel for a quick buck. Stamps bearing the Shenzhou image have become collector's items, and the Jianlibao company promotes its sports drinks with pictures of an astronaut. Several companies have even applied to run their corporate logos on the side of the spacecraft for its first manned launch. "There are no such plans [to allow this] at present," state-run media responded. But when commerce and spaceships meet in China, the sky's the limit...