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After a marathon journey of twelve years and more than 4 billion miles, the remarkable Voyager 2 space probe is finally approaching its last port of call. Having made historic flybys of Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981 and Uranus in 1986, it is poised for an Aug. 24 rendezvous with Neptune, the most distant of the giant planets. (It will not encounter Pluto, whose bizarre orbit now places it closer to the sun than Neptune is.) Voyager's aging cameras and electronic sensors are somewhat impaired, and the probe is so distant that its signals take four hours...
...tilted orbit. But 1989-N1 is just "sitting there," says Voyager project scientist Torrence Johnson, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Johnson expects that the probe will discover more moons, shedding light on Triton's origins. "All of the outer planets have lots of junk around them," he notes. Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus have at least 15 moons apiece. "It would be amazing if we got to Neptune and didn't find a bunch of these things...
Like Jupiter and Saturn, but unlike its near-twin next-door neighbor, Uranus, Neptune appears to have distinct weather patterns. The probe's cameras have glimpsed a streak of white that may be an atmospheric jet stream, longitudinal bands that could mark prevailing winds, and a dark blotch, perhaps similar to Jupiter's ancient high-pressure system known as the Great Red Spot. Neptune, Jupiter and Saturn all generate more heat than they receive from the sun, while Uranus does not; the excess heat may be the source of the turbulence...
Another burst of information should come in August, when Voyager 2 makes the last swing on its grand tour of the outer planets. Launched in 1977, the probe has already accumulated scientific data and taken spectacular pictures at Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Next stop: Neptune. From earth, Neptune appears as a tiny, fuzzy green ball of light, and its major moon, Triton, as an orange dot. Voyager will provide the first closeup view of both. Triton is especially tantalizing, since it is believed to have its own thin atmosphere of methane, and may be partly covered by oceans of liquid...
...assassination and domestic strife. For the first time, men saw the entire globe floating in the void. It was the centerpiece of a new era, a new consciousness: the Space Age. In the cramped confines of an 11-ft.-long module, blasted aloft by a 363-ft. Saturn 5 rocket, the three astronauts embodied an American urge for restless exploration, wedded to an unheard-of degree of technical precision. With the nation's self-confidence in tatters, its international prestige besmirched, the U.S. could do something wonderfully right...