Word: solarized
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...depleting Skylab's already reduced power supply. After an emergency meeting in Houston, top NASA officials concluded that there was only one hope. To provide more electrical power, the astronauts would have to take a space walk outside the ship this week and attempt to free the inoperative solar panel that remains jammed in the side of the orbital workshop (the other workshop panel was ripped off completely during Skylab's launch...
...renewed crisis occurred after the astronauts thought they had their electrical problems well in hand. Power available from the four working windmill-shaped solar wings atop Skylab's telescope mount, and from fuel cells in the adjoining Apollo command module, was only about half what scientists had considered necessary for the mission. But by prudent rationing (turning off unnecessary lights, curtailing some experiments), the astronauts were able to perform most of their scheduled tasks. When they flipped Skylab over to begin earth-surveying photography with six high-resolution cameras, the functioning solar panels were turned away from...
Soon afterward, they successfully switched on the $ 121 million solar telescope array, opening the first manned observatory of the sun above the earth's obscuring atmosphere. They also began making visual and photographic reconnaissance of the earth below...
Despite all the activity, prospects for completing the entire mission were still uncertain at week's end. Said Flight Controller M.P. Frank: "This may well be the last manned mission to Skylab. If we can't fix the solar panel, we might not be able to keep the lab alive long enough to get another crew up there." Indeed, as concern grew about possible further deterioration of the batteries, NASA advanced the launch date of the second Skylab crew from the originally scheduled Aug. 8 to July...
...Skylab's sophisticated observatory-may make the most fruitful observations of all. All the observations will be aimed at determining the structure of the comet and its origin-probably beyond the planet Pluto, where billions of comet-like objects are believed to be orbiting as remnants from the solar system's creation...