Word: spacecrafts
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This week, after a six-year, 2.3 billion-mile odyssey, a 2 1/2-ton, instrument-crammed spacecraft named after the Italian astronomer will hurtle past two of those moons, Europa and Io, then swing into orbit around Jupiter. There, if all goes well, it will conduct the most thorough study ever of the solar system's largest planet and its swarm of moons (Jupiter is known to have at least...
...hard to fully accept the articles about the Galileo spacecraft in the papers this week. The diagram on the front of the New York Times yesterday, with its careful description of the stages of parachute fallout on the surface of Jupiter, was masterfully done, but was more reminiscent of a high-school science text than a miracle of modern technology...
...year, 2.3 billion-mile odyssey will culminate Thursday when the Galileo spacecraft swings into orbit around Jupiter. "The accuracy of this is really amazing," says TIME's Leon Jaroff. "Scientists were able to make incredibly precise calculations to place Galileo in exactly the right place, using Venus and the Earth in a 'crack-the-whip' maneuver to boost the probe's velocity to give it sufficient speed to make it all the way to Jupiter." Also Thursday, a smaller probe released from Galileo 147 days earlier will enter Jupiter's atmosphere. "There won't be any dramatic pictures, just...
...explosion. "After the Challenger, they trucked the probe back to California to be put into storage. What engineers think happened is that the vibrations of the transcontinental trip may have worn out some of the lubricants that should have helped the antenna to open." Because of the delay, the spacecraft will only transmit hundreds of pictures back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory rather than the thousands originally scheduled. Even at the slower speeds, scientists there still say that Galileo should meet 70 percent of its original goal...
...Star Trek: The Next Generation as host, debuted to surprisingly high ratings in late August. It was hastily scheduled to play again a week later with some unaired footage. The program will air a third time on Saturday, with clips that may reveal hints of the alien's spacecraft and language. Says executive producer Robert Kiviat: "We're approaching it like a detective story." By doling out a few new clues in each episode, Alien Autopsy could end up running more times than Murder...