Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...flawless launch, NASA lofted into earth orbit an $87 million remote-controlled astronomical observatory that should help answer some of the most fundamental questions about the universe. Two days later, some 29 million kilometers (18 million miles) further out in space and closing in on Venus, a U.S. spacecraft ejected the first of four probes that will thoroughly analyze the atmosphere of the cloud-shrouded planet before hitting its scalding surface...
...instrument on board the cylindrical observatory is a 1,440-kg (3,200-Ib.) X-ray telescope, which is larger and has higher resolving power than any other ever built. From its perch high above the earth's obscuring blanket of air, it will provide new and sharper images of the myriad and puzzling sources of X rays found across the skies-and new insights into such bizarre phenomena as quasars, pulsars and black holes. As Harvard Astrophysicist Jonathan Grindlay put it: "We are at the dawn of a new era in our understanding of the universe." In honor...
...miles) an hour. They will drop through clouds thought to consist of sulfuric acid droplets. But their real test will come near the planet's surface, where temperatures reach 480° C (900° F) and the atmospheric pressure is nearly 100 times that of earth's at sea level...
...different too; it will ease into orbit around Venus, and in addition to scanning the atmosphere below with an array of instruments, it will beam powerful radar signals through the Venusian clouds and bounce them off the surface. Pioneer 1 will then radio the radar data back to earth, where scientists hope to produce a topographic map of 35% of the hidden Venusian surface showing details 100 meters (330 ft.) high and 16 km (10 miles) across. Earlier radar scans of the surface by the giant radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, indicate that Venus is pockmarked with craters, possibly...
...surveys of the giant planet Jupiter and its larger moons. The surveys will be made with television cameras that have as much as 40 times better resolution than the devices carried by Pioneers 10 and 11, which flew by Jupiter in 1973 and 1974, and returned color photographs to earth. After approaching as close as 280,000 km (174,000 miles) of Jupiter's upper atmosphere, Voyager 1 will be catapulted by the powerful Jovian gravity toward Saturn, which it will not reach until 1981. Following closely behind, Voyager 2 may be sent even farther afield...