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National Geographic : 1974 Oct
Contents
question about human orientation in zero gravity. "You do have a sense of up and down," he tells colleagues on earth, "and you can change it in two seconds, whenever it's convenient to you. If you go from one module into the other and you're upside down, you say to your brain, 'I want that way to be up,' and your brain says, 'OK, then that way is up.' It's strictly eyeballs and brain." The men find that they have to shout to be heard. "We're hoarse all the time," notes Kerwin. This is because sound carries poorly in the lab's thin atmosphere, only a third the pressure of earth's. Kerwin also discovers that for the same reason he can't whistle. "You've got to hold your lips a little farther apart," advises Weitz. A change takes place in the astronauts' appearance, a phenomenon space travelers have observed before. Part of the body fluid, no longer pulled by gravity into the lower limbs, has migrated upward. Their faces fat ten and cheeks rise; Conrad calls it "our Chinese look." Also, their spines, freed of gravity, have lengthened. Each astronaut has grown at least an inch since launch. They'll lose it quickly after the mission ends. Crewmen Aim a Battery of Telescopes The men pursue Skylab's scientific exper iments, involving complex devices whose functions-and malfunctions-will largely dominate their lives in space. Kerwin, the science pilot, has already acti vated the solar observatory. Eight telescopes, as much as ten feet long, cluster inside the structure that holds the solar panels (page 462). Five telescopes view the sun in its X-ray and ultraviolet wavelengths-radiations that our atmosphere cuts off. A sixth telescope, blocking out the solar disk, creates artificial eclipses for studying the corona, the sun's little-understood outer atmosphere, best seen from earth during natural eclipses. The other two scopes televise images of the disk, serv ing as eyes for the crew as they search for targets to study. Taking turns at the telescope control con sole, the crew members grow familiar with solar features-lacy filaments and promi nences, turbulent active regions, and huge "holes" in the corona that may spew high speed streams of the solar wind. Auto-racing buff Conrad is not distracted from a down-to-earth interest, the impending but postponed Indianapolis 500. He is not surprised when Mission Control tells him tor rential rains have again delayed the classic. "We can see the weather," he says as Skylab whisks them over the cloud-covered Great Lakes region. The solar phenomenon they want most to see is a flare. The largest of these awesome eruptions usually last only an hour or so, yet send billions of tons of matter hurtling out ward, bombarding the earth with X rays and particles that disrupt communications, and may even affect the weather. The astronauts search intently for a flare amid the features writhing on the TV consoles. An alarm will alert them if a flare erupts while the console is unmanned. The Sun Obliges at Last HONK! HONK! H-O-N -K! The flare alarm blares, and Kerwin mans the solar telescopes. The crew have forgotten to dis connect the device as they pass through the radiation-charged South Atlantic anomaly, a region where earth's magnetic field bends the Van Allen radiation belts abnormally close to the surface. The anomaly has triggered the automatic alarm. Days later, with Weitz at the console, the alarm blares again. As he zeroes in the tele scopes, Kerwin announces to Mission Control, "I'd like you to be the first to know that the pilot is the proud father of a genuine flare." On earth, solar scientist Dr. Giuseppe Vai ana of American Science and Engineering, Inc., hails this look at the solar eruption as "hundreds of times better than anything we've had before." A battery of six cameras, covering the en tire visible spectrum and part of the infrared, surveys the surface of the earth passing be low. Another camera's vision is so acute that even at this altitude-farther than from New York City to Washington, D. C.-it can spot trailer trucks on the highways. A scanner, recording the distinctive "sig natures" of vegetation, can tell a computer not merely that a crop is corn, but what type -f ield or pop. A radarlike device can detect the height of ocean ripples within inches. A radiometer maps the ever-changing regions of ice and snow-vital factors in navigation, water supply, and weather forecasting. In rapid unseen sweeps Skylab takes crop inventories of Holt County in Nebraska, studies land use in Indiana's Wabash River basin, measures the extent of strip mining in National Geographic, October 1974 456
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