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1993-05-03
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PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Nov. 11, 1988
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, now less than a year
away from its encounter with the planet Neptune, successfully
completed a critical change-of-course maneuver today that
will bring Voyager 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) closer to
the planet during its Neptune flyby next summer.
Voyager 2, operated by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., will pass about 5,000
kilometers (3,000 miles) from Neptune's cloudtops at 9 p.m.
Pacific Daylight Time on Aug. 24, 1989. Five hours later,
the spacecraft will also fly about 38,000 kilometers (24,000
miles) from Neptune's moon Triton, which may harbor lakes of
liquid nitrogen.
Responding to commands radioed from Earth, Voyager
2 fired its hydrazine thrusters for 3 minutes and 29 seconds,
beginning at 6:55 a.m. Pacific Standard Time today. Radio
signals received from Voyager at JPL indicated that the
maneuver was properly executed, according to Dr. Lanny
Miller, manager of the Voyager flight engineering office.
Voyager 2, now 4.2 billion kilometers (2.6 billion
miles) from Earth, is controlled by radio signals sent from
giant dish antennas owned by NASA in California, Spain and
Australia. Traveling at the speed of light (186,000 miles
per second), the signals take nearly four hours to reach
the spacecraft.
The Neptune flyby will be Voyager 2's fourth and
final planetary encounter before the spacecraft heads out of
the solar system to explore interstellar space. Voyager 2
was launched in 1977 along with a twin spacecraft, Voyager 1.
Voyager 1 completed flybys of Jupiter and Saturn and their
moons, and is headed out of the solar system. After
completing its Jupiter and Saturn encounters, Voyager 2 was
sent on to explore Uranus, which it flew past in January
1986, and Neptune. The spacecraft is now 414.7 million
kilometers (257.7 million miles) from Neptune.
The Voyager project is managed by JPL for NASA's
Office of Space Science and Applications.
#####
11/11/88
#1213 MBM