Word: saturn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Phoebe, Saturn's ninth moon, was discovered in 1898, and astronomers have been vainly looking for others ever since. Their long quest has finally been rewarded. French Astronomer Audouin Dollfus reported last week that he had found another friend for Phoebe-a tenth moon orbiting close to the outer edge of Saturn's rings...
...moon, photographed Mars and crashed onto Venus, the more distant planets of the solar system are still beyond the practical grasp of man. None of the rockets now used in either the U.S. or Russian space programs are powerful enough to reach them. Even the huge and yet-unproven Saturn 5, which will carry men to the moon, would require an additional stage to send only a tiny payload on one-way trips, and would require six years to reach Saturn, 16 years to Uranus and 30.7 years to Neptune. But the planetary timetable may soon be revised. An ingenious...
Proved by Mars. Under Stewart's direction, scientists at JPL's Advanced Studies Office have calculated that a Saturn 5-powered craft launched on Oct. 1, 1978, would gain so much speed as it passed Jupiter that it could reach Saturn in only 2.8 years and Uranus in 5.9 years. A flight launched into a proper trajectory on Nov. 1, 1979, would be picked up by Jupiter's gravity and hurled to Neptune - like a skater at the end of a crack-the-whip line - in only 8.1 years. The scientists also discovered that the outer planets...
...using an ion engine instead of chemical fuel for deep space acceleration, Stewart believes, scientists will be able to launch outer planet probes with rockets as small as the Atlas-Centaur, or send considerably larger payloads aloft with the Saturn 5. Combined with gravity assists from the planets, the ion engines should allow sophisticated unmanned probes to give man a close look at the outer planets, regions outside the solar system - and even the sun itself...
...even farther away. Both times there were only disappointingly modest increases in the Leonid showers-partly because of the meteoroids' 33¼-year orbital period and partly because the main swarm had probably been pulled into a slightly different orbit as it passed close by Jupiter and Saturn...