Word: watt
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This was not surprising: the voice came from a five-watt transmitter 8,000,000 miles away from the earth. Britain's 250-ft. radio telescope at Jodrell Bank could still hear the signal, but the U.S. station at South Point. Hawaii had to strain its 60-ft. ear. So the time had finally come to shoot the works-by switching on the probe's 150-watt transmitter...
...paddle-wheeled planetoid Pioneer V, launched March 11, is on its way around the sun in an orbit between Earth and Venus, sending back information on radiation, temperature, micrometeorites and magnetic fields on its small, five-watt transmitter...
There is no doubt that radio messages can span interstellar distances. Dr. Purcell estimates that the total power of all the 21-cm. waves that bathe the earth's surface is equal to the power of only one watt, but modern antennas can pick them up easily. And this week's Project Ozma is a first small step in an effort that might take one year or 10,000 to turn a dream into reality...
Five Months Away. As Pioneer V curved toward the sun, the 5-watt transmitter performed perfectly, delivering reports from its sensing instruments: two radiation counters, a magnetometer to feel for magnetic fields in space and a device to count micrometeorites. When Pioneer V recedes a few million miles from the earth, a 150-watt transmitter will take over. NASA scientists estimate that Jodrell Bank will be able to hear Pioneer V 50 million miles away. It will reach the limit of this range in about five months...
...other space probes, one U.S. and the other Russian, have gone into solar orbits, but their radios went dead a few hundred thousand miles from the earth. Pioneer V's 150-watt transmitter is designed to work indefinitely. It will accumulate information in a recording device, send it in a five-minute burst, and then rest for five hours while the solar cells recharge its batteries. NASA scientists hope that it will still be transmitting in 1963 when Pioneer V will overtake the earth and again come within the 50 million-mile range...