Word: robotics
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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Voyager 1's performance was the equal of the marvels it found. Commanded only by its own computers, the robot soared past the mysterious moon Titan, approaching to within 4,000 km (2,500 miles) of its shrouded surface. Gathering ever more speed under the tug of Saturnian gravity, it plunged downward toward the outer edge of Saturn's rings, swirling bits of cosmic debris. Reaching a peak velocity of 91,000 km (56,600 miles) per hour, Voyager skirted within 124,240 km (77,200 miles) of the planet's banded cloud tops for its nearest...
...urge to explain, explicate, examine, describe, capture, evoke, demythify, demystify, dismantle and put together again a university has obsessed others, with unspectacular results. Recognizing this vacuum, a handful of students has taken it upon itself to present the machinery inside the Harvard robot. Humorously. Entertainingly. Unfrivolously...
...revelry. The orgiastic festival, perhaps coinciding with the winter planting, was staged to propitiate Saturn, the sickle-wielding deity of agriculture. Now scientists gathered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena may be tempted to hold their own Saturnalia. Next week, after traveling for more than three years, their robot Voyager 1 spacecraft will achieve its closest encounter with Saturn, providing the most spectacular view yet of the beautifully ringed planet and its system of moons...
Since August the robot has been performing its magic on Saturn. Pictures already transmitted by Voyager show light and dark horizontal bands in Saturn's atmosphere as well as ovals and whirls that are apparently great storms. And Saturn's moons, until recently only flecks of light in earthly telescopes, have become clearly distinguishable little orbs...
Back in 1971, the Mariner 9 spacecraft had just become the first ship from earth to orbit another planet. The target was Sagan's old favorite, Mars. In less than a year of reconnaissance, the robot accumulated more information about the Red Planet than had been gathered in three centuries of earlier observation from earth. Yet to Sagan's chagrin, the feat was virtually ignored by American television. Four years later, the even more spectacular Viking landings on Mars were again all but ignored. Sagan decided something had to be done. Joining up with an equally dismayed colleague...