Word: transiting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...working like a Swiss watch right now." That, last week, was the judgment of a top member of the team that developed the Navy's navigation satellite Transit IVA. Following three earlier Transits that suffered from minor but decisive bugs (e.g., a burst battery), Transit IVA, launched last fortnight, is doing its electronic job better than anyone had hoped. Though planned as an experimental model, it will become a regular part of the navigation-satellite system if it continues to work well...
...Transit's intricate workings [TIME, July 7] depend on an electronic system that ground stations can "inject" with information enabling the satellite to tell where it is on its orbit. Ships with proper equipment (a precision receiver and a computer) can pinpoint the moment when the satellite comes closest to them, how far away it is, and in what direction. From this information, the computer can quickly deduce the ship's position...
...long-nosed rocket that rose from its pad at Cape Canaveral last week contained the most practical crew of explorers yet launched into space: a three-part package of instrument-crammed satellites. Heftiest part of the load (175 lbs.) was Transit IVA, latest of the Navy's navigation satellites, which looked like a bass drum spangled with bright solar cells and patches of white paint. Perched on top of it like the gobs of a three-scoop ice cream cone were a polished aluminum sphere, the Naval Research Laboratory's Greb III solar radiation satellite, and a smaller...
...Transit IVA, which was built for the Bureau of Naval Weapons by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, is the Navy's fourth and most significant step toward establishing a system of satellites from which ships and airplanes can determine their position anywhere on earth (TIME, April 25, 1960). None of the earlier transits worked very well, but the first signals from Transit IVA promise that it will do far better...
Most interesting improvement on Transit IVA is its nuclear power supply, built for the Atomic Energy Commission by the Martin Co. Tucked under Transit's big drum is a 5-in. white metal ball surrounding a pellet of plutonium 238*, a rare isotope of plutonium that gives off enough alpha radiation to heat itself as it decays. Thermocouples transform this ever-renewed heat into 2.7 watts of electricity for two of Transit's four transmitters. The little generator weighs only 4.6 lbs., but its plutonium fuel, with a half life of 90 years, is expected to supply power...