Word: vostok
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...frozen continent of Antarctica is almost equally deadly, but at the other end of the temperature scale. Drill into the ice cap a mile, then another, and you reach, improbably, a body of water known as Lake Vostok that rivals Lake Ontario in size. While scientists haven't yet drilled into the lake itself, they have pulled up samples of frozen lake water clinging to the bottom of the ice cap that contain unmistakable evidence of microbial DNA. Although it hovers near the freezing point, cut off from light and outside nutrients, Lake Vostok is teeming with microorganisms. "Nobody," marvels...
Last week marked several important dates in the history of space exploration. Forty years ago last Thursday, an unknown 27-year-old Soviet pilot named Yuri Gagarin took flight in the small spherical Vostok capsule. His one-orbit, 108-minute flight made him the first man to travel in space and marked one of the most important events of the 20th century. Twenty years later, also on Apr. 12, the space shuttle Columbia entered space. The 54-hour maiden voyage of the reusable spacecraft signified the dawning of a new age of exploration...
...South Pole, the average temperature is -49 degrees C (-56.2 degrees F) and the record high is -13.6 degrees C (7.5 degrees F). During the . perpetual darkness of winter, the temperature falls to almost inconceivable levels. The lowest ever recorded was in 1983 at the Soviet Union's Vostok Base: -89.2 degrees C (-128.6 degrees...
...launch a huge helium balloon. Its purpose: to follow circumpolar winds around the entire continent, gathering data on cosmic rays and solar flares and testing the behavior of high-density computer chips in the intense radiation of the upper atmosphere. And deep in the interior, glaciologists at the Soviets' Vostok Base dug out ice samples that carry clues to the planet's atmosphere in layers laid down in the polar ice cap tens of thousands of years...
...have been ordered by Khrushchev personally, was a technical flop. A millworker by profession, she was poorly prepared (she had done only some amateur parachute jumping) and, according to word from Soviet defectors, became severely ill during the flight. Indeed, even as she was being strapped into her Vostok capsule, as a last-minute replacement for the original woman candidate, she complained of feeling sick and dizzy. But with Khrushchev looking over their shoulders, Soviet space officials sent the reluctant Tereshkova...