Word: sputniked
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Twilight Sight. The Russians made their sputnik more conveniently visible in their own territory than in the U.S. during its first trips around the earth, but U.S. observers will get their chance eventually. Dr. Joseph A. Hynek, director of the observatory's satellite-tracking program, calculates that the satellite's orbit shifts around the earth at 4° per day. This will bring it over the U.S. at twilight on about Oct. 20, when it should be visible through small telescopes or binoculars...
During the first night, the sputnik's familiar beep-beep must have been heard by radio or TV, by a great part of the world's population tone music-minded Swedish radio listener firmly asserted that the beep is in A-flat). U.S. experts could not tell at first whether the signal, which alternates between 20 and 40 megacycles, is a mere series of beeps, or whether it carries coded information from instruments in the satellite...
...Russians have not told much except the sputnik's weight and speed (about 18,000 m.p.h.). It circles the earth, they say, every 96.2 minutes. The plane of the orbit stands fixed in space while the earth rotates inside it, so successive trips carry the sputnik over different territory. General Anatoly Arkadievich Blagonravov, head of a three-man Russian delegation to last week's satellite convention in Washington, says that it has four radio antennae and that the power of the radio signal is one watt (enough for a U.S. radio ham to talk with Australia). He estimates...
...Generation. American scientists have verified most of the meager information coming from the Russians, but many believe that the whole story has not been told. One bit of news from Russia backs this suspicion. Soviet Scientist Yury Dmitrievich Boulanger said on the Moscow radio that the sputnik was radioing information about its encounters with micro-meteors. If so, it is probably making other observations...
...thrust is only 27,000 lbs. Even if working perfectly, a Viking is barely strong enough to place a 21½-lb. satellite on its orbit. There is no margin for less-than-perfect performance. The Russians, according to General Blagonravov, used their most powerful rocket to launch the sputnik. Their launching vehicle must have taken off with at least 200,000 lbs. of thrust...