Word: solarized
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...attempt to free the solar panel that had been jammed by Skylab's meteoroid shield...
Without the electrical power from the inoperative panel, Skylab would have to depend on its windmill solar panels and on Apollo's fuel cells, which would be depleted in about three weeks. That meant that many of Skylab's planned experiments would have to be curtailed...
...greatest attention was devoted to developing the various sunshades. That effort required the skills and ingenuity of a wide assortment of specialists, ranging from pipefitters and seamstresses to space physicists and polymer chemists (who were needed to evaluate the effect of solar radiation on the thin, aluminized Mylar and nylon sheet used to construct the canopies). Because plastics are notoriously vulnerable to the sun's ultraviolet radiation, technicians taped a thin, gold-colored protective material on the outside of one of the shades. But they quickly discovered that the coating made the canopy too bulky to fold and pack...
...third option, the Apollo command module carried the "Spinnaker Shade," which had been the original first choice of space officials. They had second thoughts about the sail-like canopy, because they feared that the light jet plumes from the command module's thrusters might fog the still functioning solar wings on the telescope mount. As he hung out of the open hatch of the command module, an astronaut would have to fasten the canopy in place while the ship hovered at Skylab's side. The final decision about which technique was to be used was left...
Although the comet is now visible only as a speck of light in telescopes, solar radiation will boil off gases and dust from the nucleus as it approaches closer to the sun. In the "solar wind," the stream of electrically charged particles that continually emanate from the sun, the material from the nucleus should be swept into the characteristic comet's tail. As it reacts with the charged particles, the tail should begin to glow brightly-so brightly, in fact, that Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory believes that the comet could be visible to the naked...