Word: vela
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...only known evidence of earlier supernovas in the Milky Way are the pulsars they left behind. One of the closest to be detected is in the Gum nebula, which is in the constellation Vela and only 1,500 light years away. Thus, when the star that formed Gum exploded-some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago (an estimate derived from the current signal rate of the pulsar)-it probably flared up briefly in the sky as bright as a quarter-moon. It also may have showered the earth with enough dangerous radiation to have produced significant mutations in terrestrial...
...SPAN consists of six observatories that monitor the sun 24 hours a day. During this week's Apollo flight, they will feed information into a space environment console in Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, where physicists and medical men will keep a constant vigil. In addition, Pioneer, Vela and other patrolling satellites will report any changes in solar radiation. Should SPAN report a suspicious-looking flare during the Apollo mission at the same time the satellites signal a corresponding increase in high-energy proton radiation, the astronauts in the vulnerable lunar module would be ordered back...
...orbiting objects are surveillance satellites that guard the U.S. against surprise attacks and provide constant watch over both Russian and Red Chinese territory. Since the U-2 flights over Russia were halted in 1960, the U.S. has had to depend heavily on its Samos, Ferret, Midas and Vela systems for vital intelligence about the Soviet Union. With those satellites, the U.S. has mapped and photographed Russia's missile sites and radar installations, followed the stages of nuclear progress in Red China, watched troop movements in both countries and eavesdropped on conversations at the Russian cosmodromes...
...miles away from the earth -but such tests "would involve years of preparation, plus several months to a year of actual execution, and they could cost hundreds of millions of dollars per successful experiment." Anyway, he said, the U.S. plans to launch within two months twin satellites under the Vela-Hotel program (TiME, Aug. 9). These space-snooping detectors are designed to spot unshielded nuclear blasts 200 million miles away from the earth...
Delayed Debris. Easiest to detect-provided the proper instruments are orbiting in space-are the soft X rays; they are by far the largest product of the explosion. The Vela-Hotel instrument package is expected to detect soft X rays from a one megaton explosion 200 million miles away from the earth and distinguish them from X rays from solar flares and other natural sources. Some instruments are also sensitive to gamma rays and neutrons...