Word: planetful
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Last winter Venus was explored by two Pioneer spacecraft: one a radar-equipped orbiter still spewing data, the other a multiple probe that dropped five instrument packages into the Venusian atmosphere. Among the findings: the neighboring planet has an extraordinary five-layered cloud cover, is riddled by continuous lightning bolts and scarred by a rift valley and mountain peak more grandiose than any on earth, and has totally unexpected abundances of primordial neon and argon. Their presence suggests new ideas about the nature of the great cloud of gases and dust from which the sun and planets were born...
...DIFFERENT. Mariner 10 went to Mercury and found a heavily cratered, dessicated world; and to Venus, sending thousands of views of the carbon dioxide clouds that shroud the planet. Mars, thought by some to be as "boring" as the moon, turns out to be a world with as many oddities and mysteries--with the probable exception of life--as earth. (Where else can you jump off a four-mile cliff or find a volcano that would stretch from Harvard Yard to Toronto?) The planet, as Viking I showed us, looks like a nice place to go for a walk...
Farther out, beyond the asteriod belt, Jupiter has been visited by several unmanned spacecraft, most recently Voyagers I and II. The most massive planet in the solar system has no surface to speak of, but the patterns in its stormy atmosphere and bands of swirling colors would please Dali. Also, Saturn no longer has a monopoly on rings. For hundreds of years, it looked that way, but since 1977 rings have been discovered around both Uranus and Jupiter. Surprise...
...problems with reduced budgets and technical mishaps, the space program survives. Indeed, it shows definite signs of increasing its slackened pace. This very week Voyager 2, a brilliantly conceived robot, is streaking past Jupiter, directing its color cameras and multiple instruments at the giant, banded planet and its great moons. Seized by Jovian gravity, Voyager 2 will swing around the planet and then fly off in the cosmic wake of its twin, Voyager 1, for a reconnaissance of Saturn in August...
From their perches in orbit, Landsats and Seasats allow us to look at our planet with new eyes, surveying instantaneously all its agricultural, mineral and hydrological resources. And, equally important, monitoring their misuse...