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astronaut

(Encyclopedia)astronaut, crew member on a U.S. manned spaceflight mission; the Soviet term is cosmonaut. Candidates for manned spaceflight are carefully screened to meet the highest physical and mental standards, a...

El Segundo

(Encyclopedia)El Segundo ĕl sēgŭnˈdō [key], industrial city (2020 pop. 16,504), Los Angeles co., S Calif., on ...

Titusville

(Encyclopedia)Titusville tīˈtəsvĭl [key], city (1990 pop. 39,394), seat of Brevard co., E Fla., on Indian River (a lagoon); inc. 1886. It is a growing, regional trade center. The construction in the 1950s of th...

Baikonur Cosmodrome

(Encyclopedia)Baikonur or Baykonur Cosmodrome both: bīˌkəno͞orˈ [key], formerly secret aerospace launch complex, Qyzylorda prov., S central Kazakhstan, near Baikonur (originally, 1958–95, Leninsk) but c.200 ...

vacuum

(Encyclopedia)vacuum, theoretically, space without matter in it. A perfect vacuum has never been obtained; the best human-generated vacuums contain less than 100,000 gas molecules per cc, compared to about 30 billi...

Vesta, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)Vesta vĕsˈtə [key], in astronomy, the fourth asteroid to be discovered. It was found in 1807 by H. Olbers. It is the third largest asteroid in size, with a diameter of c.326 mi (525 km). Its averag...

Alexander, Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Alexander, Samuel, 1859–1938, British philosopher, b. Australia. From 1893 to 1924 he was professor of philosophy at Victoria Univ., Manchester. Strongly influenced by the theory of evolution, Alexa...

presbytery

(Encyclopedia)presbytery prĕzˈbĭtĕrˌē, prĕsˈ– [key], in architecture, the space in the eastern end of a church reserved for the higher clergy. It was also known in the early Christian Church as the apse, ...

McDonnell, James Smith

(Encyclopedia)McDonnell, James Smith, 1899–1980, American aviation pioneer, b. Denver, B.S. Princeton, 1921, M.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1925. He designed the Doodlebug (1929), a small monoplane, ...

parity

(Encyclopedia)parity or space parity, in physics, quantity that refers to the relationship between an object or process and the image that it can produce in a mirror. For example, any right-handed object will produ...