Longest Stretch

The big bird screamed upward off its Cape Canaveral launching pad, nosed over toward the southeast, curved down the length of the Atlantic and navigated 9,000 miles before its nose cone splashed hard by its chosen target just south of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. In exactly 52 1/2 minutes last week, the 130-ton, 75-ft. Atlas rocket set a new U.S. missile record and beat the Russians' best distance mark by more than 1,000 miles.

The long shot needed a nicety of aiming and timing. Soaring 1,000 miles toward outer space at speeds up to 17,000 m.p.h., the instrument-packed Atlas would have arced into orbit if its trajectory had been a shade lower or if its engines had cut out seconds late. But everything clicked precisely. As the earth spun beneath it, the rocket traced a twisting trajectory across the surface of the globe. It shaded the coast of Brazil, looped around the Cape of Good Hope, was heading almost due east when it dumped its payload into the sea.

It had flown across one-third of the world without once flying over land.

Originally, like the Russians' dummy in a spaceship, the shot had been scheduled to impress the world on the eve of the summit, but technical failures delayed it.

Even after the delay, it made its point: that the Atlas can reach any target in the world from hardened bases in the continental U.S. And it proved that the missile has enough extra boost to indulge in a roundabout, enemy-confusing route.

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