Word: spacecrafts
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Astronaut John Glenn used to dread going to NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. As a rookie pilot in the space agency's Mercury program, the 40-year-old Marine would periodically be required to strap himself into the tiny pod of a spacecraft simulator and wait for technicians to set it spinning in three dimensions at speeds exceeding 30 r.p.m. Using nothing more than a joystick, Glenn would have to bring the tumbling cockpit to heel. If he succeeded, he would continue in the program. If he failed, he could be bilged...
...into space lasted less than five hours in a craft so cramped he never left his seat. This time he will spend 10 days aloft in the comparative gymnasium of the shuttle--a vehicle famous for causing space sickness. Moreover, as both captain and crew of his old Mercury spacecraft, Glenn was accustomed to being in charge. This time he will be passenger and scientific subject in a spacecraft piloted by astronauts young enough to be his sons--or daughters...
...Lunar Prospector blasted off toward the moon last week, it carried a small capsule containing an ounce of Gene Shoemaker's ashes. On brass foil surrounding the capsule was an image of Arizona's Meteor Crater, where Shoemaker trained NASA's astronauts. After reaching the moon this week, the spacecraft will ease into a 63-mile-high orbit, peer down and begin a search for minerals, gases and any evidence of water. Then, some 18 months from now, Prospector will crash onto the lunar surface, carrying Gene Shoemaker's ashes to their final resting place...
...handy way to figure it out. If he held up his thumb at arm's length, he could blot out a patch of sky equal to about 1 1/2[degrees] of arc--a point of reference he could use, along with his watch, to determine how fast a spacecraft was moving. Foale swam over to the window, spent a few minutes watching stars come and go behind his thumb, and swam back to Tsibliyev and Lazutkin. "Tell them we're moving one degree per second," he said...
JUNE 25, EARLY EVENING To Foale, there was nothing more perversely beautiful than a dead spacecraft. It had been two orbits since mission control had stabilized Mir, but while controllers had been able to stop the station's rotation, they hadn't been able to point it toward anything useful. With the solar panels still in shadow, the cabin lights and instrument panels went dead, and the fans and pumps that gave the spacecraft the atmosphere of a low-decibel boiler room fell silent. Huddling together in the main module, Tsibliyev, Lazutkin and Foale spent a few serene hours watching...