Space voyager nears distant planet

Press, 6 December 1985, Page 6

Space voyager nears distant planet

NZPA-AP Washington Flying where no spacecraft from Earth has gone before, America’s Voyager 2 is working perfectly as it closes in on Uranus for the first visit to the distant planet, space agency officials say. • ’ The 827 kg robot craft is sending back fuzzy images of its distant target and accompanying moons. Problems that had cropped up since its launch from Earth in August, 1977, had been resolved, the officials said at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration briefing. “The Voyager 2 encounter with Uranus will be at least as significant as Voyager’s contacts with. Jupiter and Saturn,” said Burton* Edelson, a N.A.S.A. associate administrator.

The spacecraft’s voyage will not end at Uranus.

Engineers have Voyager 2

on a path past Uranus that will use the planet’s gravity to swing the spacecraft off toward Neptune for a hoped-for first encounter with that even more distant planet in August, 1989. So little was known about Uranus, the solar system’s seventh-outermost planet, that -scientists would learn more during the six-hour closest approach on January 25 than they had found-out in the 200 years since Uranus was discovered, Mr Edelson said.

Richard Laeser, the project manager, said that engineers now understood the lubrication problem that had caused the craft’s scan platform, a mounting for cameras and other instruments, to stick during its fly-by of Saturn in 1981. The spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 1, visited Jupiter in 1979 and later Saturn.

Voyager 1 went off into deep space after that last

encounter, and scientists used the gravity of Saturn to help propel Voyager 2 towards Uranus.

- Upon reaching Uranus, a giant gaseous planet 51,200 km in diameter with a solid core estimated to be about the size of the Earth, Voyager 2’s cameras and instruments are expected to send back pictures and data on the planet, its thin-ring system and five known moons.

The Uranus system is unique in the solar system, in that the planet and its satellites are tipped 95deg on their vertical axis, making the system appear to lie on its side compared with the orientation of the other planets. The planet is surrounded by a system of at least nine thin rings made of a substance as dark as charcoal, and scientists hope to get the first pictures of these nearly invisible rings during the fly-past