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The Planetary Report (ISSN 0736-3680J Is Published Six That Bridge, and As Anyo Ne Can Understand, You Can't Have Th E One Without the Other

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The Planetary Report (ISSN 0736-3680J Is Published Six That Bridge, and As Anyo Ne Can Understand, You Can't Have Th E One Without the Other The Volume III Number 5 September/ October 1983 Board of Directors CARL SAGAN BR UCE MURRAY COLUM N REPRI NTED FROM THE PLAYGROUND DAILY NEWS, FORT WALTON BEACH, FLORIDA: President Vice President Dir ect or , Labor atory Professor of for Planet ary Studies, Planetar y Scien ce, Cornell University Ca li fo rnia Institute "Planetary Society is on the right track" LOUI S FRIEDMAN of Techn ology by Del Stone Executive Director HENRY TANNER JOSEPH RYAN Assistant Treasurer, O· Melveny & Myer s Califor nia Institute recently became a member of an organization which - unlike the more established scientific of Technology l societies that measure their life spans in musty eons-entered this world a scant two years ago. Board of Advisors I'm speaking of The Planetary Society. It is an association of scientists, engineers and lay people DIANE ACKE RMAN CDRNELIS DE JAGER poet and author Pr ofessor of Space dedicated to a common goal: the furth erance of space exploration. Resear ch, The Perhaps what is most refreshing about this organiza tion is the fierc e dedication it applies to ISAAC ASIMOV Astronomical Institute at author Ut recht . The Netherlands meeting its objecti ves. The Society has actually underwritten some of the projects for which it has RICHARD BER ENOZEN JAMES MICHENER solicited funding. When the federal government eliminated money for the SETI (Search for President. author Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, the association stepped in with funding for a new receiver. Am erican University PHILIP MORRI SON These men and women are dreamers, yet their dreams are grounded in the firmament of JACQUES BLAMONT Institute Professor, Chief Scientist, Massachusett s . empiricism. They are engaged in a war-a war to educate th eir fellow man and muster popular Centre National Institut e of Technology support for space exploration. That presents the Society with a task nearly as formidable as the d'Etudes Spatia les, France PAUL NEWMAN engineering behind interplanetary projects themselves. The space program has been vilifi ed by a actor RAY BRADBURY money-conscious Congress. The public has supported space exploration in moments when national poet and au thor BERN ARD M. OLI VER Vice President . prestige seemed at stake, but generally has, for lack of tac til e benefits, been lukewarm or JOHNNY CARSON Research and Develop­ occasionally hostile to the question of space program funding. ent ertainer ment. Hewlett-Packard Corporation Backers of the interplanetary exploration effort have watched in frustration as money for their FRANK DRAKE Professor of Astronomy, ROALD Z. SAGDEEV projects has been funn eled into the development and proc urement of the Space Shuttle delive ry Cornell University Dir ector , Institute for system. Retrenchment of the U. S. space exploration effort , especially at a time when other nati ons Cosmic Research, LEE A. OUBRIOGE Academy of Sciences are expanding their programs, is risky business. America possesses the resources and technologi cal former presidential of the USSR science advisor expertise to lead th e planetary exploration field, yet it lags behind while its competitors move ahead. HARRISON H. SCH MITT America cannot risk a space exploration monopoly. JOHN GARDNER fo r mer U.S. Senator, founder, Common Cause New Mexico The exploitation of space resources-the potential for energy generation, mineral resources, SHIRLEY M. HUFSTEDLER LEWIS TH OMAS li ving room, development of technology necessary to utilize those resources and the enri chment of educator and jurist Chancell or , the general fie ld of planetary knowledge -is a plum ripe for the pi cking. The United States should Memorial Sloan GARRY E. HUNT Kett er ing Cancer Center be aggressively pursuing this opportunity. Head of Atmospheric Group. Imperial College of JAMES VAN ALLEN Budget cuts and the diversion of funds to the Space Shuttle have sorely hurt interplanetary Science and Technology. Professor of Physics projects. The Shuttle is a revo lutionary delivery system that will make space more accessible to man. London. U.K. University of Iowa Yet it represents only part of the bridge to the stars. Planetary research is laying the groundwork for The Planetary Report (ISSN 0736-3680J is published six that bridge, and as anyo ne can understand, you can't have th e one without the other. times yearly at the editorial offices of The Planetary The Planetary Society aims to make people aware of the space potential, and the obstacles that Society. 110 S. Euclid Avenue, Pasadena, CA 911 0 1. D Editor, Charlene M. And er so n; are impeding efforts in this direction. Tec hnical Edit or , James D. Burke ; Art Di rector, Bar bara Smith ViewpOints expressed in columns or editorials are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent positions of The Planetary Society, its officers or ad visor s. ANOTHER AsTEROID DISCOVERED Copyright © 1983 by The Planetary Society. ELEANO R HELI N AN D HER TEAM have discove red another asteroid, their fourth this COVER: The Sun has set on Mars, but twilight year. Helin describes the new object, 1983 PA, as a "dee p Mars-crosser" that does not lingers, casting a reddish glow on the Martian trave l in an orbit that wou ld bring it close to the Earth. 1983 PA is a ve ry bright asteroid, surface (left) and the top of Viking Lander 1 (right). Red dust in the atmosphere scatters the suggesting that it may also be very large. sunlight, producing the color of the sunset. Eleanor Heli n's co ntinuing asteroid search is supported by grants from The Planetary The colored rings in the sky are not real; they Society, administered by the World Space Foundati on. are artifacts of severe contrast enhancement produced by computer processing of the camera's transmitted image. IMAGE:JPLlNASA - -------- ---- The first image Viking 1 by Jonathan Eberhart returned to Earth was of t's only a machine. Sophisticated, to be sure, packed with would be an audacious undertaking - four spacecraft to its own footpad. I advanced electronics, ingenious instruments and keen­ be controlled on a day-to-day basis by a vast flight team of The camera eyed cameras, but a machine nonetheless. And yet , after nearly 800 people. And its primary goal-a landing on began its scan more than six years of receiving its messages from another Mars-would be an attempt to reverse an unbroken record 25 seconds after world and being carefully tended by engineers and scien­ of failures. The United States had not even tried such a feat touchdown and tists, it is difficult to think of the silence that has overtaken (and only four of the seven Surveyors had worked on the caught what it in terms as prosaic as the breakdown of a piece of MoorY. But the Soviet Union had tried-at least four times appears to be falling dust by the first Viking launch. Those four attempts, called Mars equipment. kicked up by The Viking Lander 1 craft sent its first message from the 2, 3, 6 and 7, resulted in one complete miss, one (and pos­ the landing surface of Mars on July 20, 1976; its last on November 13, sibly a second) crash, and a post-landing transmission last­ spacecraft 1982. During its final year at work it was essentially run­ ing perhaps 20 seconds, long enough to include only a (the streaks ning on automatic, studying the planet on its own and narrow slice of a single, featureless television frame. at far left). transmitting its findings to Earth whenever it was asked. It Launch Drama IMAGE: JPLlNASA was programmed to do so through 1994 -- but the Few if any spacecraft have had completely trouble-free requested message of November 19 never came. There was launches and, seen against the history of past Mars-landing just silence, without a clue as to what might be wrong. The attempts, the launch of Viking I (the combined Lander and project's engineers could only hypothesize, and they spent Orbiter) continued the drama. On August 11, 1975, with the next half-year trying one scheme after another in hopes liftoff only three hours away, engineers discovered a minor of triggering a response, but to no avail. The Lander had technical problem which they expected would take about exceeded its intended 90-day operating lifetime by 25-fold, a day to fix. With that work underway, however, other outlasting its Viking 2 twin elsewhere on Mars as well as problems surfaced, leading to the decision to swap the the two Viking Orbiters that still cruise mutely overhead. original craft with what had been Viking 2, and repair the But its lifetime had now ended. faulty machine in time for the second "launch window." The concept that ultimately became Viking began at the The new Viking I took off on August 20, nine days Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the mid-1960s. At that time it late, aimed to take up orbit around Mars the following was called Voyager, a name subsequently passed on to the June 19. The Orbiter's primary purpose was to provide high­ mission whose spacecraft have now been to Jupiter and resolution pictures of the proposed landing sites, largely Saturn. Voyager 2 is still on its way to encounters with selected from Mariner 9 imagery, to confirm their safety. Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. The original Mars­ The Lander was to be detached from the Orbiter for its bound Voyager was to have been launched in 1973, two momentous touchdown on the 4th of July in the United years after the Mariner 9 orbiter that discovered such Mar­ States' bicentennial year. tian spectaculars as Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris.
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