Word: pioneers
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...Pioneer lacked a sharp eye, it made up for that deficiency with its other sensors. Last week, as scientists at NASA'S Ames Research Center near San Francisco skimmed data transmitted during the spacecraft's flyby of Saturn, they made an exciting discovery. While Pioneer was close to Saturn's rings, a detector recording a bombardment by charged particles fell practically silent for twelve seconds, then began registering particles again. Analysis indicated that Pioneer had been briefly shielded from the rain of particles as it flew under a massive object...
...object was very close," says Physicist John Simpson of the University of Chicago. "It could be rocky or composed largely of ice. Either material will effectively block high energy particles." The moonlet, in orbit about 90,000 km (56,000 miles) above Saturn's cloud tops, was nicknamed "Pioneer rock" by the scientists, and it is being officially designated as 1979 S-l (for the first new moon of Saturn discovered this year...
Further study of radiation data revealed that besides the fifth and sixth ("E" and "F") Saturnian rings observed a few days before in Pioneer photos, there was an outermost and tenuous seventh ring as much as 960,000 km (600,000 miles) from the planet. Other facts disclosed by Pioneer's telemetry: Saturn, as expected, has a magnetic field. But it is only 700 times stronger than the earth's, a fifth as intense as scientists had expected. Because this field traps particles radiated from the sun, Saturn has radiation belts that Pioneer detected as it neared...
...early last week Pioneer scientists announced that interference from solar storms, occurring just as Pioneer was transmitting Titan temperature readings, had obliterated the data. Two days later, NASA explained that signals from a Soviet earth satellite, not solar storms, had. caused the interference (NASA took the blame, explaining that it had failed to notify the Soviets, who would have cooperated by silencing their satellite's radio at the crucial time...
Finally, the Pioneer scientists shamefacedly confessed that they had found in their recordings some Titan temperature data that were partially garbled - not because of satellite signals but because of interference from solar storms and communications problems between a tracking antenna in Spam and the Ames control center. Still, enough information was retrieved to confirm that the temperature at Titan's cloud tops was a frigid -200° C (-328° F). That seemed to rule out surface temperatures warm enough to allow the formation of amino acids, the building blocks of life. But scientists were withholding final judgment until...