Word: pioneers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...computer industry. It was designed to have a useful life of three years, at most. Yet today, after a quarter-century, when Fischer has disappeared from the chess scene and the IBM 360 is merely a nostalgia item on display at Boston's Computer Museum, the doughty little spacecraft Pioneer 10 is still plugging along...
...this week, Pioneer is 6 billion miles from Earth, making it the most distant man-made object in the universe. Its signals--barely discernible against the cacophony of background space noise--continue to register on the giant radio telescopes of NASA's Deep Space Network, reassuring scientists that Pioneer is still alive and calling home. Perhaps most remarkable, those signals emanate from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and take more than nine hours to reach Earth...
Cruising through the cosmos at 27,700 m.p.h., the Energizer bunny of NASA spacecraft is measuring cosmic rays and solar emissions, probing for the outer boundary of the solar system and even abetting the efforts of scientists pursuing SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. When Pioneer was launched in March 1972, its primary assignment, ordained by NASA, was to reach the environment of Jupiter. At the time, says physicist James Van Allen, the discoverer of Earth's radiation belt and a principal contributor to Pioneer's achievements, "this objective was regarded as a bold one." While unmanned U.S. and Soviet...
...swung by Jupiter in November 1973, Pioneer took the first close-up photographs of the giant planet and its moons, detected and mapped its immense magnetic field and intense radiation belts, analyzed its turbulent atmosphere and discovered that it was encircled by a faint Saturn-like ring...
Enter on big, rough wheels the state of California, which helped pioneer the tricky practice of democracy through referendum. This year's most controversial example is Proposition 215. It would permit patients with cancer, aids, glaucoma, arthritis and other serious illnesses to grow, possess and use marijuana. It would also allow doctors to "prescribe" pot without fear of prosecution--or merely to recommend it, without committing themselves to a note pad. Though the change would not overrule federal or state laws that criminalize the recreational use of marijuana, Prop 215 would provide voter-approved legal backing for patients or doctors...