Word: infra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...biggest satellite. Roaring into near perfect orbit around the earth went Midas II, weighing 5,000 Ibs. with a 3,600-lb. instrument package. But Midas was more than a mere heavyweight monster. It was alive and alert, and in its nose was its reason for being: an infra-red sensor able to detect unusual sources of heat on earth or high in the atmosphere-and thus, by spotting exhaust flames, to give the U.S. warning of hostile missiles streaking toward it from distant lands...
Discoverer is an ambitious craft. It car ries in it a complicated guidance system that watches the horizon with infra-red eyes and shoots high-pressure gas through a series of jets to keep the rocket horizontal in respect to the ground below. When a Discoverer - and there have been eleven fired so far - has circled the earth 17 times on a polar orbit, it passes over Kodiak, Alaska, where a radio control station sends an order that sets the guidance system on a new track, tilting it 60° from the horizontal. An electric impulse fires explosive bolts...
...lieutenant, was off on an intrepid flight that would ultimately carry him up the spine of the Soviet Union. From south to north, his high-flying instruments would record the effectiveness of Russian radar, sample the air for radioactive evidence of illicit nuclear tests. The U2's sensitive infra-red cameras could sweep vast arcs of landscape, spot tall, thin smokestacks or rocket blasts-if there were any-on pads far below...
Varied Menus. Presently out in front is Chicago's Automatic Canteen Co. (1959 gross income: $140.5 million), which both makes and operates vending machines. Automatic Canteen has developed a battery of vending machines that offer a complete snack line including infra-red toasted sandwiches, hot soup, chili, baked beans, pastry, coffee and cigarettes. Says Automatic Canteen Chairman Nathaniel Leverone: "The sales potential in in-plant feeding alone is at least as great as the entire automatic vending business is now." In an industry where profits for operating companies run about 3% of sales after taxes, Automatic Canteen expects...
...weather satellite Tiros I (from Television and Infra-Red Observation Satellite) went into an almost perfectly circular orbit that will keep its cameras at an efficient picture-taking distance. Its farthermost point of 468 miles from the earth is only 32 miles higher than the low point. The feat of orbital precision, unequaled by either U.S. or Soviet satellites, was accomplished by a special Bell Telephone Laboratories guidance system in the rocket's second stage...