I came out here Ito and a lot further
again
hey babe
I am
welcome to this edition of NASA images
this is Lynn Bondurant during this show
were focusing on historic NASA
documentary footage showing some of the
discoveries about the solar system and
stars made by unmanned probes in 1979
and later our first film clip is from
1979 and shows some of the results of
the Voyager spacecraft encounters with
Jupiter and the Pioneer spacecraft flyby
of Saturn Jupiter largest of the sun's
nine planets was photographed close-up
by the voyagers 1 & 2 spacecraft what
their camera eyes recorded as they
passed by the giant planets churning
clouds were ribbon like streaks of red
and brown and yellow the wealth of data
and photographs left behind by the
voyagers are providing scientists a
valuable source of raw material to be
studied from Jupiter's newly discovered
ring to the active volcanoes of IO one
of its 14 surrounding moans the voyager
discoveries have surprised and delighted
nasa scientists information that may one
day help us better understand our own
earth and the voyagers mission did not
end at Jupiter the two spacecraft are
now speeding toward a rendezvous with
Saturn in 1980 and 1981 acting as
Pathfinder for the voyagers Pioneer 11
the 570 pound spacecraft climaxed
six-and-a-half years and a two billion
mile voyage in deep space as it swept by
Saturn at 70 1,200 miles per hour
scientists watched anxiously as pioneer
made its - our passage of Saturn's rings
four times the spacecraft was hit by
small pieces of debris but emerged
safely despite the collisions pioneer
had a closer look at Saturn that all the
observations that have been made in the
last 400 years photographs show what
appeared to be jet streams swirling
around Saturn at 300 miles an hour a new
ring circling the planets equator
and radiation belts that are more like
Earth's in their intensity and energy
levels the Pioneer 11 spacecraft dwarfed
by the objects it was sent to observe is
speeding out of the solar system in an
endless journey just before Voyager 1
was to fly by Saturn nASA released this
pre encounter film clip in October 1980
we have looked beyond our atmosphere
many times but never have we seen what
we were about to see two Voyager
spacecraft are now approaching the
planet Saturn ring spectacle of gas and
ice and the second largest of our
planets there are special cameras aboard
the voyagers though which will
revolutionize our knowledge about Saturn
it's curious rings and it's 10 minutes
launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977 the
voyagers completed their tour of Jupiter
in 1979 when they returned 33,000
pictures to earth
because of photography uncovered some
remarkable findings
there's rumors like Saturn and 116
settle of experience has volcanic
activity
the Voyager encounters with Saturn will
sharpen our impressions of the outer
reaches of our solar system it's cold
out there
nearly a billion miles from the Sun and
yet one of Saturn's moons the giant
Titan may have an atmosphere that could
support organic life an exploratory
spacecraft pioneer 11 journey past
Saturday year ago with less
sophisticated cameras pioneers
successfully passing through the
dangerous ranges and discovered a fifth
one which the voyagers should verify
with photographs
well we can expect very good quality
photographs of Saturn one of the things
that made the the Jupiter pictures so
interesting with the surprises that were
that were seen in these in these
pictures now we know even less about the
about the Saturn system and so we might
expect more surprises than we had even
interpreting these computer-generated
pictures show what larger one will see
traveling toward its closest encounter
on November 12th it should reveal some
exciting discoveries about Saturn which
have been beyond our grasp on that date
Voyager 1 will dip near the clouds have
tightened to look for potential life
there then if we pass behind Saturn's
rings to study the planets mixture of
water and ice scientists think the rains
might have been formed from a shattered
satellite or some other body that was
pulled into Saturn's orbit by gravity to
us they seemed sleek and smooth but the
Rings are composed of huge chunks of ice
at close range they appear as an
asteroid snowstorm
Saturn's composition has been a
scientific puzzle because of the dense
clouds that extend 37,000 miles from the
planets rocky core we don't really even
know exactly how large many of the
Saturnian moons are because they're so
hard to measure from the earth and in
fact one of the major experiments that
we're conducting with all of the
instruments onboard the Voyager
spacecraft is a comparison of the
Jupiter system with the Saturnian system
to see how they differ and why they
differ the voyagers were planned to
affirm our beliefs about Saturn and
Jupiter but they've been so successful
that NASA is sending Voyager 2 on to
Uranus after it tours Saturn next August
Voyager 2 will travel at an average
speed of 60,000 miles per hour reaching
the seventh planet Uranus by 1986 after
that the spacecraft may venture even
farther to Neptune
when the voyagers finished their mission
they will lose contact with earth and
tumble and enslave into new galaxies but
then they will observe their members for
what was Fantasia and speculation in our
minds has become factual knowledge about
space one of the last frontiers when
Voyager one dead speed through the
Saturn system there were some surprises
as we'll see next and we'll also see a
short report on how the solar max
satellite looked at the Sun these people
here in Mission Control were responsible
for guiding NASA's 1,800 pound unmanned
Voyager 1 spacecraft some billion miles
through space on November 12th after a
three-year journey
Voyager 1 made its closest encounter
with the planet Saturn Voyager has
returned more than 18,000 photographs
photographs that are giving scientists
excellent close-up views and new
information about the huge planet and
its many moons with the help of computer
animation you can take a ride on Voyager
to Saturn and its major moons voyagers
11 scientific instruments probed deep
into the atmosphere of Saturn and gave
us an unprecedented view of those
incredible rings we now know there are
six major ring systems made up of
possibly as many as a thousand rings the
Rings are Sun reflecting icy objects
ranging from Boulder sized to small
particles that whirl around the planet
at very high speeds and those moons are
satellites like outriders they encircle
Saturn generating as much scientific
interest as the great ringed planet
itself
- Tethys D&E
rheya Titan and a host of smaller ones
more than a thousand journalists were on
hand to witness the India
and attend the science briefings that
follow and these were some of the
storytellers the engineers and
scientists themselves it's always
gratifying to have the results be
something more than what was expected
and Saturn and what we have found was
not expected I suspect even for the next
few years
we will find new discoveries in the data
which we've acquired in the last few
days and as we see more and more
examples of the way the universe can put
planets together we find that our
terrestrial perspective in explaining
our own planet has been rather limited
we get new ideas from this what we
learned about Saturn during that
encounter and during the months that
preceded it have really rewritten the
text books on Saturn next August Voyager
2 will approach Saturn pass by the ring
spectacle of gas and ice from a
different angle and then fly on to
Uranus arriving there in 1986 it may
also travel to Neptune before leaving
our solar system from Earth it appears
as a warm friendly ball an integral part
of everything living but up close it's a
churning solar furnace that spouts solar
flares in an atmosphere that's
constantly changing and explosive little
wonder that our star the Sun has been
the focal point of scientific
investigation for centuries to reel a
sophisticated pictures and data about
the Sun and its energy cycles NASA
launched the solar max in 1980 short for
solar maximum mission being returned are
the first true close-up views of the
mysterious spots and solar flares that
energized the sun's surface all this
part of an effort to learn how we can
channel the Sun into an even more
effective energy source our next clip
from September 1981 shows us some of the
Voyager 2 results from Saturn
those music like sounds are actually
radio waves picked up by the plasma wave
detector on NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft
as it approached and swept by the planet
Saturn after a four-year billion mile
journey
Voyager 2 passed within 63,000 miles of
the many-colored planet and transmitted
back thousands of extremely clear
pictures astronomers were surprised at
the complexity of Saturn's rings
including what appeared to be spokes
running across them
during one experiment scientists watched
a star come out from behind Saturn and
go behind the Rings they then measured
the amount of starlight a hundred times
a second as it blinked on and off what
they found were many many individual
streams of particles orbiting Saturn
like waves in the ocean Saturn also has
very interesting weather
according to imaging team leader dr.
Bradford a Smith the in fact have found
that there are similarities between the
Saturnian weather and terrestrial
weather so that the analysis which is
still going on in trying to understand
the dynamics of that of that Saturn
system those analyses sooner or later
are going to be helpful in interpreting
our own Earth's meteorology Saturn is
surrounded by signs of collisions small
odd shaped bodies of rock and ice the
Lawrence a soda blossom chief of astro
geologic studies for the US Geological
Survey specializes in the study of
Saturn's moons or satellites what we've
seen from the combined missions now is
that the collection of objects that we
find in the Saturnian satellite system
extremely varied and unanticipated in
terms of the geologic activity and the
degree to which these objects have
remained active and alive Enceladus
whatja to discovered has been active
over most of geologic history this is
extremely puzzling thing to have an
object that has been continually
replacing sections of a surface but
actually has a mass that's something
like one part in a hundred thousand the
mass of the earth the planet-sized moon
Titan has many of the characteristics
that may have existed on earth in its
early geologic history its atmosphere is
dominated by 82% nitrogen gas compared
with 79% on earth but instead of oxygen
it has methane and hydrogen and it's
very cold and smoggy Voyager twos
cameras have been turned off and will
remain off most of the time for the next
four years
even so engineers at NASA's Johnson
laboratory will be watching and guiding
it toward its next rendezvous with the
planet Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in
1989 Voyager project scientist dr. Eadie
stone made these observations about the
importance of this type research well I
think we all want to understand where we
live and it's interesting that we now
have the capability to include in where
we live the solar system in which we
live now that is interesting because
we're very curious people and where we
live on one of the planets the solar
system which has obviously evolved to
where it is today and which is
continuing to evolve it's very difficult
when you're looking at something now to
be able to accurately go back in time
and or to go forward in time but by
looking at a number of examples of
things as they exist now in the solar
system I think we have a better idea of
both how to look backward in time to the
beginning and possibly how to look
forward in time to how things will
evolve now let's turn to the inner solar
system to learn more about Venus from
this 1982 report stop the Earth's
rotation remove its friendly
neighborhood moon push it just slightly
closer to the Sun and scientists believe
the earth would become like this planet
Venus recent findings indicate that the
earth and Venus are identical in many
ways at one point in Venus history it
might even if at oceans similar to ours
these are some of the new discoveries
resulting from an International Venus
science conference many of the new
findings have come from the several
pioneer Venus spacecraft sent there by
NASA to study the cloud shrouded planet
at close range know that Venus has got
dense sulfuric acid clouds that would
seem to us to be something like a smog
or a heavy fog which would burn your
skin if you were exposed to these clouds
the bottom of the clouds is about 30
miles above the surface and below that
the atmosphere is
you can see for great distances as you
go deeper and deeper into the atmosphere
it gets hotter and hotter and eventually
when you get to the surface it's about
800 degrees Fahrenheit uns like being
inside of a self-cleaning oven the
temperatures are so hot that it would
kill anyone who was exposed to them and
the pressures are equivalent to being
3,000 feet deep in the ocean so the
pressures would be crushing the light
levels are so dim at the surface during
the day that it's sort of like the
cloudiest day that we ever experience on
the earth so it's a dim hot crushing
place during the early years of the
solar system's history conditions may
have been right for life to exist on
Venus one of the key elements was water
according to geologist dr. Harold
Mazursky well we think that there was a
lot of water in Venus like there is on
the earth but it's not there now it's
way too hot there's water vapor in the
atmosphere so the big question is early
in its history did it have condensed
water on the surface and we can look for
that in high-resolution radar pictures
and the way we do it is you look for
shorelines because there are dried lakes
now in the western United States that
were full of water during the Ice Age
and we can see that evidence clearly
there are short bars that were made when
there was water so we can look for those
kinds of things that may have been there
in the past on Venus surface we were
utterly surprised on Mars by
understanding that the history was
different early and the same thing is
true the earth so it would be strange if
Venus had always been the same as it is
now
lightning active volcanoes upside-down
clouds that caused a drizzle of sulfuric
acid and a super hot surface slowly but
surely Venus is giving up some of its
secrets new information that will help
us better understand our own planet both
past and future by May 1983 when the
next clip was released the Pioneer 10
spacecraft was about to become the first
man-made object to leave the solar
system
launched in 1972 NASA's pioneer 10
spacecraft has accomplished many firsts
over the course of its 11 years Space
Odyssey 1 was a successful passage
through the rocky asteroid belt a feat
which greatly alleviated the fears of
scientists concerned about damage too
far traveling spacecraft having safely
journeyed the some two and a half
billion miles to Jupiter pioneer 10
transmitted valuable scientific
information back to earth information
shedding new light on the composition
and evolution of Jupiter and its moons
On June 13th of this year pioneer 10
will travel beyond all the known planets
and become the first man-made object to
leave the solar system as NASA's Deep
Space Network continues to track the
spacecraft out to around five billion
miles researchers hope to learn more
about the boundary between the sun's
atmosphere and true interstellar space
pioneer 10 a spacecraft that has
journeyed further than any other to the
outer planets and now beyond our solar
system a man-made object which will from
a new vantage point in Whitman's words
look up in perfect silence at the Stars
as pioneer ten is speeding out towards
the stars astronomers are using radio
telescopes to examine planets and stars
as this 1983 report shows astronomers
calculate that there are approximately
100 billion other stars in the Milky Way
an infinite number of these stars could
conceivably have planets orbiting them
possibly supporting some sort of life
a scientific approach to the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence has become
possible in recent years thanks to the
extraordinary development of new and
more sophisticated instrumentation radio
telescopes such as the Deep Space
Network at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California are being used
by scientists as part of a five-year
research program but the Big Ear on the
universe is the Arecibo Observatory the
world's largest radio radar telescope
flying deep within the mountains of
northern border Rico in a natural
depression formed by the collapse of
huge limestone caves the instruments
collecting area is larger than all the
combined collecting areas of all
telescopes ever built as a radio
receiver the 1,000 foot structure
listens for signals coming from other
stars in our galaxy as a radar the
telescope sends out the strongest signal
now leaving earth a signal which may be
detected by similar instruments anywhere
in our galaxy operated by Cornell
University the observatory was initially
conceived to study the composition of
the Earth's upper atmosphere later NASA
supported the installation of a large
transmitter so it could be used to study
other planets in our solar system the
surface roughness of Mars was examined
prior to the Viking landings in 1976
high-resolution studies were also done
on Venus director of the Arecibo
telescope is dr. Don Campbell NASA
realized the utility of the improved
Arecibo telescope which would be
powerful enough to study the surface of
Venus it would also allow us to look
more with more detail at the surface and
mercury surfaces and Mars and laser
altitudes to complement the photography
that was done from the Viking orbiters
and also to look at the outer planets
the satellites of Jupiter the rings of
Saturn and numerous asteroids and comets
that might come by the very large
collecting area captures radio waves
come
from stars and galaxies giving
scientists a clue to the distribution of
mass throughout the universe other
interesting cosmic radio sources are
pulsars dying stars which emit pulsating
radio signals as they spin in space one
of these fascinating stars was
discovered at Arecibo in 1982 director
of radio astronomy at Arecibo is dr.
Mike Davis this new pulsar that has been
discovered recently at the observatory
is rotating 642 times per second that's
more than 20 times as fast as the next
fastest pulsar the one in the Crab
Nebula and these neutron stars as
they're called were predicted as long
ago as 1934 but nobody knew that they
would come with a rotating flashlight
beacon like a lighthouse shining out to
sea every time this beacon flashes past
the observatory we pick up a pulse
astronomers have also detected quasars
emitting enormous quantities of radio
energy which traveling at the speed of
light have taken as long as 10 billion
years to reach Earth Arecibo listening
for signals from space in an attempt to
solve some of the mysteries of our
universe our final report shows how an
international group of probes was to
study comet Halley and how Voyager 2 was
approaching the planet Uranus comet
Halley is making its regular 76 year
pilgrimage around our Sun as it has been
doing for countless centuries the comet
is the target of study for five
exploratory spacecraft from Europe Japan
and the Soviet Union
each whizzing by the giant snowball of
ice gas and dust from different vantage
points the European Space Agency's
Giotto spacecraft will be the most
daring probe by taking a flight path
just 300 miles in front of the Comets
head Giotto hopes to photograph the
comet's nucleus
two other highly instrumented Soviet
spacecraft Vega 1 and Vega 2 are
scheduled to fly by the comet at a
distance of six thousand miles hoping
also to obtain images of the comet's
nucleus lastly two japanese spacecraft
studying halle our planet a which
approaches the Sun would side of Halle
at a distance of 120 thousand miles and
Sakigake which will pass about 4 million
miles from the comet in order to get the
best use out of all the research being
done on the comet the International
Halle watch was organized thousands of
scientists and amateur and professional
astronomers from 47 different countries
have joined forces the Halle encounter
is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study
one of the most primitive objects in our
solar system a program dedicated to
visiting some of the planets in our
solar system with two unmanned probes
has had a history of success ever since
its beginning in 1977 Voyager 1 and
Voyager 2 were both launched on their
way to Jupiter and Saturn now having
logged nearly 2 billion miles in space
since 1977 Voyager 2 will point its
sensors and TV cameras at a planet we
have never seen up close Uranus
Voyager project scientist dr. Edward
stone NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena California well there are
several unique things about Uranus first
of all it's the most remote planet that
we will we will have visited in the
Solar System it formed in a much colder
region of the solar nebula and therefore
is made of different materials than
either Jupiter or Saturn so we will be
studying the different properties of
Uranus and its satellites the other
interesting thing about Uranus is that
it's tipped over on its side with its
spin axis at this time basically
pointing at the Sun so it's it has a
much different orientation with respect
to the Sun
many questions will be answered during
the encounter before the tiny one-ton
spacecraft ventures even further into
our solar system to visit the eighth
planet from the Sun Neptune Voyager to
successfully examine Uranus in early
1986 comet Halley was also studied by an
armada of spacecraft during an X program
we'll see comet Halley and Uranus
results that's all we have for this
edition of NASA images but before we go
let me remind you that you're cordially
invited to see the displays at the
visitor center here at the NASA Lewis
Research Center we're located near the
Hopkins International Airport in
Cleveland admission is free until next
time this is lynn Bondurant saying
goodbye