Word: sunlight
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When carefully analyzed, Stratoscope's spectroscopic studies should yield new information on the atmosphere and climate of the red planet. Mars has no light of its own. The light that it sends to the earth is sunlight that passes down through the thin Martian atmosphere and is reflected out again. Loss of certain infra-red wave lengths during these two passages will prove the presence of water vapor, carbon dioxide and other interesting, life-supporting constituents...
...must plot celestial courses, and enormous vacuum chambers are needed to test behavior in simulated space. These strange space creatures are almost a new type of life, comparable in zoological terms to the first venturesome animals that crawled out of sea water and learned to live in air and sunlight. To breed them calls for the talents of many branches of science...
When the spacecraft passes beyond Earth's atmosphere, its real life begins. The shroud around it falls away; there is no air now to do damage. Gravity has fallen to zero, and frail antennae and solar panels can swing outward, pushed by feeble springs. The spacecraft absorbs sunlight, as a baby breathes air, and electrical energy pulses through its metal circulatory system. It is now a denizen of space...
...each object in space assumes a temperature that depends on the balance between the radiation that it absorbs and the radiation that it emits. A dab of paint (if it stays in place) can spell the difference between cold and hot. So can a shiny part that reflects sunlight to a light-absorbent part. Keeping all parts at proper temperatures is one of the hardest jobs in designing a viable spacecraft...
...stage, with Mariner II in its nose, went smoothly into parking orbit. After 16 minutes, its engine fired again, soaring out on a curving course that would lead to Venus. A few minutes later, a cluster of exploding pins popped and the spacecraft spread its, wings into the hard sunlight. All this was reported by telemetry to JPL's 85-ft. dish antenna in South Africa and relayed to the control center at the lab. "We were flying blind during lift-off and injection," says Bill Collier, Assistant Project Manager. "But about the time the panels came open, there...