Word: spacecraft
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week the space agency announced the award of $1.15 million contracts to Boeing and Lockheed for preliminary studies of a new rocket. Its purpose: to power an unmanned spacecraft that will intercept Halley's Comet as it sweeps around the sun. Known as the solar electric propulsion system, the engine could become the workhorse of deep space, carrying probes on far-flung missions across the solar system...
...thrust is minuscule and far too feeble to lift payloads from the earth, the ion engine performs efficiently in the vacuum of space. It can function for years because it draws on solar energy and uses fuel sparingly. It can be stopped and restarted countless times and accelerate spacecraft to extremely high speeds...
...Jovian lightning flashes, they exposed the gases to ultraviolet light and shot electric discharges through them. The brown and yellow hues of the organic compounds that formed in the container closely resemble those in the spectacular pictures of the Jupiter clouds taken by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, which flew by the planet earlier this year. This finding strongly suggests that organic compounds also exist on Jupiter...
Based on these readings and others that showed changes in the surrounding magnetic field, scientists concluded that the spacecraft had passed within about 2,500 km (1,560 miles) of what appears to be a previously undiscovered moon* with a diameter as large as 600 km (370 miles). "The object was very close," says Physicist John Simpson of the University of Chicago. "It could be rocky or composed largely of ice. Either material will effectively block high energy particles." The moonlet, in orbit about 90,000 km (56,000 miles) above Saturn's cloud tops, was nicknamed "Pioneer rock...
...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 the spacecraft passed through the rings on its approach to Saturn, the radiation abruptly ceased-"as though cut off by a guillotine," says Physicist James Van Allen of the University of Iowa. The radiation had apparently been blocked by the icy particles in the rings. Says Van Allen, discoverer of the earth...