He and wife Kate were taking children Amy, nine, and six-year-old Charlie to the Orbit.
So close, in fact, that it will be inside the orbit of some telecommunications satellites.
But nearby East Palo Alto, a relatively poor city, lies outside the orbit of that sun.
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At 114.5 metres (376ft), The Orbit gives panoramic views across London's skyline of up to 20 miles.
Take the Apollo program: No human has been beyond the orbit of the Earth since the Nixon administration.
Earlier this year when the Orbit was first unveiled, London's mayor claimed it was better than the Eiffel Tower.
Before that it was in an orbit that went from the orbit of Jupiter out past the planet Uranus.
Within the orbit of those companies are a lot of experienced senior management.
Since the orbit of the moon is not a perfect circle, there are times when the moon is closer to our planet.
In July 2013, the Orbit is expected to re-open as a ticketed attraction with a cafe that can also host private functions.
To tour the Orbit, visitors gather under its base, a red fibreglass canopy that resembles the mouth of a gigantic red trombone.
When it goes into mass production at the end of this month, the Orbit will be available in two models.
The Pyramid acts as a home base and remote control unit for the Orbit and features a custom-designed, reprogrammable micro-controller.
To get the Orbit's blades whirring, users first need to set a pre-determined goal by adjusting a slider in the app.
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Less therapeutic and more just cool, the Orbit flies up when you concentrate and can drop back down when you break concentration.
By the time it crosses the orbit of Saturn, a few months later, the probe will be moving at around 80km a second.
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The more easily visible outlier in Saturn's famous bands of ice and dust is its E-ring, which encompasses the orbit of the moon Enceladus.
It better accounted for oddities of nature, such as anomalies in the orbit of Mercury, that classical physics, as formulated by Newton, could not explain.
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They have measured microwaves as they warped around the sun, studied variations in the orbit of Mercury, and bounced signals off the Moon and Mars.
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He and later astronomers spent decades looking for the missing planet within the orbit of Mercury which, they were convinced, explained what was going on.
Those with day tickets for the Olympic Park or for sporting events there can also buy tickets for the same day for the Orbit Tower.
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Apple ( AAPL) is in this model, doing just fine trading in the orbit of Planet Earth worth about a half a trillion dollars.
While it hibernates, the Orbit will continue to serve as a landmark, illuminated by coloured spotlights, and from time to time there will be a 15-minute light show.
We Londoners are a resilient lot, however: We like to grumble about the foolishness of the Orbit, but no doubt we will get used to it.
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Eventually, when it is within the orbit of Mercury, the innermost planet, it will tack, turn its sail to the sun, and start to accelerate outwards again.
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This will push the dust through the orbits where space junk can be found, and the resulting drag will, in theory, disrupt the orbit of the small debris.
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Unfortunately the Orbit will also become a permanent legacy, a paying visitor attraction in the new semipublic Queen Elizabeth Park, as the Olympic Park will be named post-Games.
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Now, with Greece acting like a Black Dwarf, pulling the other troubled countries towards the orbit marked bailout, bond investors are starting to contemplate a total disaster scenario.
Their orbital periods range from ten to 118 terrestrial days, which would put all but one of them inside the orbit of Mercury, were they going round the sun.
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