Word: spacecrafts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Closing in at 42,500 m.p.h., one of the largest and most complex spacecraft ever built will pass only 725 miles from Earth early next week on its way to a 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, its spectacular rings and its giant moon, Titan. The ship is Cassini, and while it's an object of pride for space scientists, it's an object of fear for antinuclear activists...
Some 117 million miles from Earth last week, a small, unmanned ship named Deep Space 1 swooped to within 10 miles of newly named asteroid Braille. The dramatic encounter marked by far the closest approach ever to an asteroid by a spacecraft and helped validate new and previously untried systems for unmanned spaceflight...
...track the asteroid properly, producing only six tiny and disappointing images shot from 8,700 miles away. But DS1's remote-sensing instruments downloaded streams of data that should reveal much about Braille's composition. Having consumed only 25 lbs. of its original 180 lbs. of xenon fuel, the spacecraft has enough left to intercept and investigate two comets, one burnt out, the other highly active. Appropriately enough, if NASA gives the go-ahead, DS1 would reach those comets in the year...
...that taught NASA a thing or two about adventure), noted that the very thing that qualified lunar astronauts to fly the missions they were flying disqualified them from experiencing them fully. Can you fathom the utter, hostile emptiness of translunar space and still retain the calm to fly your spacecraft blithely through...
...always wanted a robot. So many drudge jobs in my life--doing the dishes, making coffee, harassing office neighbor Joel Stein--could just as easily be relegated to an R2D2-like servant. Until recently, though, the only robots I ever saw were in movies or, worse, in those spacecraft that carry aliens who abduct you and prod you with metallic objects that leave no visible scars...