Word: saturn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Until now all space probes have been powered entirely by chemical rockets. Though they can develop enormous thrust, they are voracious consumers of fuel. In only nine minutes, the Saturn 5 moon rockets burned up 3,000 tons of liquid fuel. With such propellants, even larger rockets and exorbitant amounts of fuel would be needed to rendezvous with fast- moving objects like comets, which travel at 198,000 km (124,000 miles) per hour in the vicinity...
...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 the planet. But when...
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the mission was the failure to record atmospheric and surface temperatures on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Scientists have been particularly fascinated by Titan because it is slightly larger than the planet Mercury and has a thick atmosphere that may be similar to that of the primitive earth. Spectroscopic readings by earthbound astronomers showed, for example, that the atmosphere is rich in methane gas, which is believed to be one of the primary ingredients in the earth's early atmosphere. Given the right temperatures, scientists speculated, some form of life, or at least...
...week's end Pioneer was already millions of miles beyond Saturn. Its systems, sustained by a tiny nuclear power source, were still operating; but other than to record an occasional micrometeorite hit, there was little for Pioneer to do. Yet the little spaceship is destined for even greater adventures. Some time in 1993, Pioneer will pass beyond Pluto, leave the solar system and head for the stars...
...Because the orbits of Saturn's moons are not precisely defined, some scientists think that the object could be one of the planet's ten known moons...