Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/JPLNEWS2/1291.PR

Text File | 1993-05-03 | 4KB | 82 lines

PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE [phone]




FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                        Feb. 12, 1990


        NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its
mission along with Voyager 2 to explore the outer planets,
will use its cameras February 13-14 to take an unprecedented
family portrait of most of the planets in our solar system.
        The collection of images will be from a unique
point-of-view -- looking down on the solar system from a
position 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane in which the
planets orbit the Sun.  No other spacecraft has ever been in
a position to attempt a similar series of photos of most of
the planets.
        Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is now about 6 billion
kilometers (3.7 billion miles) from Earth.  The Voyager
spacecraft are controlled by and their data received at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
        "This is not just the first time, but perhaps the
only time for decades that we'll be able to take a picture of
the planets from outside the solar system," said Voyager
Project Scientist Dr. Edward C. Stone of Caltech.  No future
space missions are planned that would fly a spacecraft so
high above the ecliptic plane of the solar system, he said.

        Starting shortly after 5 p.m. (PST) on Feb. 13 and
continuing over the course of four hours, Voyager 1 will
point its wide- and narrow-angle cameras at Neptune, Uranus,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth and Venus.  Mercury is too close
to the Sun to be photographed by Voyager's cameras, and Pluto
is too far away and too small to show up in images taken by
the spacecraft.  Beginning with the dimmest of the targets --
 Neptune -- and working toward the Sun, Voyager 1 will
shutter about 64 images of the planets and the space between
them.
        The constellation Eridanus (The River), stretching
behind the planets from Voyager 1's perspective, will
provide the backdrop for the images.
        Due to the schedules of several spacecraft being
tracked by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), the images will
be recorded on board Voyager 1 and played back to DSN
receivers on Earth in late March.  The Voyager imaging team
estimates that processing the images to reveal as much
detail as possible will take several weeks.  Most of the
planets will appear as relatively small dots (about one to
four pixels, or picture elements, in the 800-by-800 pixel
frame of one Voyager image).
        The enormous scale of the subject matter makes it
unlikely that the entire set of images can be mosaicked to
produce for publication a single photograph showing all the
planets.  Even an image covering the planets out to Jupiterwould easily fill a poster-sized photographic print.  At the
least, imaging team hopes to assemble a mosaicked image
composed of the frames showing Earth, Venus and perhaps Mars
together.
        Voyager 1, rather than Voyager 2, received the
solar system photo assignment largely because of Voyager 1's
improved viewpoint of the planets.
        Voyager 1 completed flybys of Jupiter and Saturn in
1979 and 1980, respectively.  Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter in
1979, Saturn in 1981, Uranus in 1986 and Neptune last August.
Both are now on missions that will take the spacecraft to the
boundary of our solar system and into interstellar space.
        According to Voyager engineers and scientists, the
only potential damage from pointing the cameras toward the
Sun is that the shutter blades of the wide-angle camera might
warp.  There are no plans, however, to use Voyager 1's
cameras after the solar system photo series is completed.
        The Voyager mission is conducted by Caltech's JPL
for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications.
#####

#1291MBM
2/9/90