Word: saturns
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...took nearly 6½ years and a journey of 2 billion miles, but NASA's Pioneer 11 spacecraft is also on the verge of making history. On Saturday, Sept. 1, the 260-kg (570-lb.) robot will become the first envoy from earth to reconnoiter Saturn, passing within 21,300 km (13,300 miles) of the solar system's second largest planet. If the flyby goes as planned, Pioneer 11 will not only send back 50 colored closeups of the great ringed gaseous sphere but provide valuable data on its interior structure, temperature, density and magnetic field...
...also sent back new data about Jupiter's Jovian radiation fields and found a "hot spot" of plasma, whose temperatures reach 300 million to 400 million degrees C. It even discovered a thin ring of debris around Jupiter, making it the third planet in the solar system (after Saturn and Uranus) known to have such a feature...
...robot swept around Jupiter itself, coming within 404,000 miles of the cloud tops, the J.P.L. controllers fired Voyager 2's small thruster engines for 76 minutes, a "slow burn" that changed its speed slightly. Thus, after sailing by its next target, Saturn, in August 1981, Voyager 2 will continue on to Uranus, more than 1.6 billion miles from earth. It will reach Uranus 4½ years later, in January 1986. Leaving Jupiter, Voyager took an edge-on look at the planet's ring, which emerged on J.P.L. TV screens as a glow-'ng white neon-like...
...sure were the scientists of the success of the mission that they were already Bopping champagne corks before the actual flyby. "Here's to Saturn," toasted Jniversity of Arizona Planetary Scientist Bradford A. Smith. Added Physicist Torrance Johnson: "And on to Uranus...
...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...