The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

pilotless aircraft research division at Wallops Island
(1946–1952), and explored the possibility of human
spaceflight before the creation of NASA. He served as
assistant director at Langley from 1952 to 1959 and as
assistant director (manned satellites) and head of the
Mercury Project from 1959 to 1961, technically assigned
to the Goddard Space Flight Center but physically
located at Langley. In early 1961 T. Keith Glennanestablished
an independent Space Task Group (already the
group’s name as an independent subdivision of the Goddard
center) under Gilruth at Langley to supervise the
Mercury Project. This group moved to the Manned
Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas, in 1962. Gilruth then
served as director of the Houston operation from 1962 to
1972. 144
gimbal
(1) A device with two mutually perpendicular and intersecting
axes of rotation on which an engine or other
object may be mounted. (2) In a gyro, a support that provides
the spin axis with a degree of freedom. (3) The rotation
of a rocket’s motor nozzle to control the direction of
thrust and hence help steer a spacecraft; the nozzles of
the Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters, for example,
can gimbal up to 6°.
Ginga
Japanese X-ray satellite, launched by ISAS (Institute of
Space and Astronautical Science), that measured the time
variability of X-rays from active galaxies and quasars in
the energy range of 1 to 500 keV. Ginga, whose name
means “galaxy,” was known before launch as Astro-C. It
stopped working in November 1991.
Launch
Date: February 5, 1987
Vehicle: M-5
Site: Kagoshima
Orbit: 395 × 450 km × 31°
Mass: 420 kg
Giotto
An ESA (European Space Agency) probe—the agency’s
first interplanetary probe—that encountered Halley’s
Comet on March 13, 1986; it was named after Giotto di
Bondone (1266–1337), who depicted the comet in one of
his paintings. Giotto measured Halley’s composition
and, on March 16, 1986, returned color images of the
comet’s nucleus. Fourteen seconds before its closest
approach to the nucleus (596 km), the spacecraft was
struck by a dust particle that knocked its communications
antenna out of alignment with Earth. Further impacts
GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) 161
also rendered the probe’s camera and some other instruments
nonfunctional. However, communications were
reestablished after the encounter and Giotto subsequently
flew by Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup on July 10,
1992, sending back valuable data. The spacecraft passed
close by Earth on July 1, 1999.
Launch
Date: July 2, 1985
Vehicle: Ariane 1
Site: Kourou
Mass: 583 kg
GIRD (Gruppa Isutcheniya
Reaktivnovo Dvisheniya)
Group for the Investigation of Reactive Motion. A
Moscow-based society, formed by Sergei Korolev and
Fridrikh Tsander, which in 1933 launched the Soviet
Union’s first liquid-propellant rocket.
GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope)
A high-energy astrophysics orbiting observatory designed
to map the gamma-ray universe with up to 100 times the
sensitivity, resolution, and coverage of previous missions.
Giotto Giotto being prepared for tests prior to launch. European
Space Agency