Word: launchful
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...mission specialist. Jan. 28, 1986, was Hilmers' 36th birthday. But it was no time for celebrating: that was the day Challenger disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Ever since, Hilmers has had a dream that "one day a shuttle would once again make its way to the launchpad to launch Americans into space." A religious man, he says his anxiety about the mission was "soothed by my faith in God." Hilmers, who doubles as Covey's backup pilot, is a math whiz. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell College, in Iowa, and earned an electrical-engineering degree from...
...Americans who crowded the beaches and causeways around the Kennedy Space Center last week, and for millions of other Americans clustered around TV sets, the tension was palpable. As the countdown clock flashed out the number of seconds until lift-off, the eyes of an entire nation focused on Launch Pad 39-B and the gleaming white shuttle Discovery, flanked by its two solid rocket boosters and clinging to the side of the giant, rust- colored external fuel tank. In the minds of many, however, another vision intruded: the hellish yellow-orange burst in the middle of a Y-shaped...
...years ahead. Since the Challenger tragedy, America's lead over the Soviets has slipped, ambitious plans for scientific experiments in space have stalled, and commercial and military payloads have for the most part been grounded. Declared J.R. Thompson, director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama: "One good launch doesn't make a space program, but it's a damn good start...
...morning countdown, however, the shuttle shuffle appeared destined for a scrub. All week NASA technicians had isolated small glitches, from a tiny gas leak on a main engine to a slight scratch on a thruster rocket. Finally they seemed confident that only bad weather might postpone the shuttle's launch. Although launch day dawned bright and sunny, meteorologists warned that the high-altitude winds in the shuttle's flight path, normally unruly in the Cape Canaveral region during late September, had uncharacteristically died down. The problem: Discovery's computers had been programmed to maneuver the craft through strong, buffeting winds...
...exactly 11:32 a.m. last Monday, bathers at Israel's Palmachim Beach heard a sudden roar and watched in awe as a white rocket streaked into the sky. They were witness to the launching of Israel's first space satellite, which made the country only the eighth (after the Soviet Union, the U.S., France, Japan, China, Britain and India) to possess a rocket powerful enough to put a satellite into orbit. That capability, revealed by TIME in August, offers impressive evidence that Israel can launch missiles and hit targets in most Arab countries...