Word: sunspots
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ironically, despite NASA'S concentration on solar research with Skylab, the agency's failure to anticipate the extent of sunspot activity during the vehicle's years in orbit contributed substantially to the craft's death. Russian scientists as well as America's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted considerable solar disturbances, including great magnetic storms and solar flares. When they erupted in 1977 and 1978, they warmed the gases in the earth's outer atmosphere, increasing the drag on Skylab. Never fully powered because of its lost solar wing and failing batteries, the craft began to slip ever...
Perhaps so. But such assurances did not ease NASA'S embarrassment over the whole Skylab affair, which arose because of a scientific error about the extent of sunspot activity in the late 1970s and its effect on Skylab. By spewing out clouds of charged particles, these great solar magnetic storms help heat up and expand the earth's upper atmosphere. That creates more drag for objects in orbit, hastening their reentry. Confronted by a falling Skylab, NASA last spring began developing the $26 million booster engine. But it was clear, especially after troubles with the shuttle...
...contrast with these high-flying Soviet space efforts, NASA is still struggling to save the unoccupied Skylab space station from plunging prematurely to earth. Late last year, Skylab began to show a dangerous loss of altitude, a byproduct of atmospheric effects caused by unexpectedly strong sunspot activity during the current solar cycle. Skylab's descent is being hastened by its wobbling motion, which increases friction as the ship moves through stray molecules of atmosphere in its path. Ground controllers twice tried unsuccessfully to stabilize the craft, hoping to keep it aloft at least until...
What NASA did not reckon with was the unexpected intensity of solar disturbances accompanying the current sunspot cycle. More sunspots have appeared than were anticipated, great magnetic storms and solar flares are raging on the sun, and more charged atomic particles-which make up the solar wind-are being hurled into space. The stronger solar wind heats the thin gases in the outer fringe of the earth's atmosphere, which causes them to expand outward into the orbit of Skylab. That increases the drag on the craft...
...droughts, rather than surprised by them, because they are a regular feature of the U.S. climate. Although the timing of droughts cannot be predicted, they have been occurring in the plains states at roughly 20-to 22-year intervals, and are possibly related in an unknown fashion to sunspot activity (which has an average eleven-year, peak-to-peak cycle of intensity...