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The Planetary Report A Publication of THEPLANE~ SOCIETV o o o. o-8;--e- o o Board of Directors FROIVI THE CARL SAGAN BRUCE MURRAY EDITOR President Vice President Director. Laboratory for Planetary Professor of Planetary Studies, Cornefl University Science, California Institute of Technology LOUIS FRIEDMAN Executive Director JOSEPH RYAN O'Me/veny & Myers MICHAEL COLLINS Apollo 11 astronaut STEVEN SPI ELBERG director and producer THOMAS O. PAINE former Administrator. NASA HENRY J. TANNER Chairman, National financial consultant Commission on Space Board of Advisors rover from Earth has landed on A Mission to the Pluto-Charon DIANE ACKERMAN JOHN M. LOGSDON A Mars! In this issue of The Planetmy System-Many of you have asked us: poet and author Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University ISAAC ASIMOV Report, we reveal for the first time in "What about a mission to Pluto? How author HANS MARK Chancellor, print that the Soviet Union landed a rov­ soon can we complete our reconnaissance RICHARD BERENDZEN University of Texas System educator and astrophysicist ing vehicle on Mars during their 1971 of the solar system?" From Mercury out JAMES MICHENER JACOUES BLAMONT author Mars 3 mission. (A sister craft, Mars 2, to Neptune, our spacecraft have visited Chief Scientist, Centre National d'Eludes Spatiafes. MARVI N MINSKY crash-landed on the planet.) This news is every planet but Pluto, and now missions France Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts exciting, because for many years Mars to this distant world are on the drawing RAY BRADBURY Institute of Technology poet and author rovers have been on the wish-lists of plan­ boards. This article enumerates the ques­ ARTHUR C. CLARKE PH ILIP MORRISON Institute Professor. Massachusetts etary scientists. Both the Soviet Union tions Pluto poses to us and describes a author Institute of Technology COR ~I ELIS DE JAGER and the United States hilVe been studying possible mission to answer them. Professor of Space Research, PAUL NEWMAN The Astronomies/Institute at actor such missions for the late 1990s or early Page 24-World Watch-Momentum Utrecht, The Netherlands JUN NISHIMURA 2000s. Until now no one outside of the toward Mars is building in the Soviet FRANK DRAKE Director-General, Institute of Space Professor of Astronomy and and Astronautical Sciences, Japan Soviet Union knew that a rover was al­ Union and in the American administra­ Astrophysics. UniverSity of California al Santa Cruz BERNARD M. OLIVER ready on Mars. For this exclusive story, tion, but progress is not equal on every Chief, SET! Program, LEE A. DUBRIDGE_ NASNAmes Research Center turn to page 4. front. In this column we report on a few former presidential science advisor SALLY RIDE Director, California Space Institute, Page 3-Members' Dialogue-In our steps forward and one step back. JOHN GARDNER Unwersity of California, San Diego founder. Common Cause and former astronaul March/April issue, a member suggested Page 2S-Society Notes- We 've trun­ MARC GARNEAU ROALD Z. SAGDEEV that Mars exploration can wait until we cated this edition of "Society Notes" to Canadian aslronaut former Director. Institute for Space Research, solve difficult problems facing humanity bring you more news in "World Watch," GEORGIY GOLITSYN Academy of Sciences of the USSR Institute of Atmospheric Physics, here on Earth. This suggestion triggered a but check out this column for announce­ Academy of Sciences of the USSR HARR ISON H. SCHMITT former US Senator, NM flurry of letters; we print here two repre­ ments of some exciting and fast-ap­ THEODORE M. HESBURGH and Apollo 17 astronaut President Emeritus, sentative responses. The Search for Ex­ proaching events. University of Notre Dame S. ROSS TAYLOR SH IR LEY M. HUFSTEDLER Professorial Fellow, Australian traterrestrial Intelligence and a correction Page 26-Spark Matsunaga, 1916- National University, Canberra educator and jurist to a photo caption round out this column. 1990-We don't often run obituaries in GARRY E. HUNT LEWIS THOMAS space scientist, Chancellor. Memorial Sloan Page 4-From the Moon Rover to the The Planetary Report, but when someone United Kingdom Kettering Cancer Center SERGEI KAPITSA JAMES VAN ALLEN Mars Rover-The Soviet Union has been dies who has played a major role in the Institute for Physical Problems, Professor of Physics. Academy of Sciences of the USSR Unwersity of Iowa building planetary rovers since the late exploration of our solar system, we feel it 1960s and continues a vigorous program fitting to remember him or her. Spark The Planetary Report (ISSN 0736-3680) is published six times yearly at that may well lead to another Mars rover Matsunaga was a politician, not an aero­ the editorial offices of The Planetary Society, 65 North Catalina Avenue. Pasadena. CA 91106. (818) 793-5100. It is available to members of The mission by the end of the century. Author space engineer or a planetary scientist, yet Planetary Society. Annual dues in the US or Canada are $25 US dollars or $30 Canadian. Dues outside the US or Canada are $30 (US). Alexander Kermurjian has worked in the his contributions to international coopera­ Editor. CHARLENE M. ANOERSON Soviet rover program since its inception. tion in space were crucial. Technical Editor. JAMES D. BURKE Assistant Editor, DONNA STEVENS Here he shares reminiscences of the Page 27- News & Reviews-Titan is Copy Editor. MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS Art Director. BARBARA SMITH Lunokhod programs and describes designs tantalizing us again with radar echoes that Viewpoints expressed in colu mns or editorials are those of the authors and for the Marsokhods yet to be launched. seem to contradict theories that scientists g~ ;g~i. ~;~:s~a~~9C,eg~ef~~t ~~~i~~~~ Sfo~~:t:'lanetary Society. its officers Page 12-The Family Gallery-After have been building over the past fe w In Canada, Second Class Mail Regislration Number 9567 taking humanity on an astounding journey years about this large moon of Saturn. COVER: From this early portrait of Earth and its to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, Pluto as well is posing questions we can Moon together; to thousands of images of the outer the Voyager project undertook one last answer only with spacecraft investiga­ planets, their rings and satellites; to the family challenge: to image our family of planets tions. gallery of Sun and planets that closed out its imag­ arrayed about the Sun. No other space­ Page 28 - Q & A-And what have you ing mission, Voyager has done more than any other spacecraft to show us our place in the solar system. craft now flying could have accomplished been wondering about lately? Hot spots in Voyager 1 took this image on September 18, 1977, this mission; no spacecraft now planned the solar system? Ways to die in space? 13 days after it was launched. Nearly 13 years later, will be able to do it in the future. Here are The dangers of meteorite impacts on the on February 14, 1990, it looked back toward Earth again, and returned a series of images of the plan- the images and the story behind them. moon? Find the answers in this column. ets that we feature in this issue. Image: JPUNASA Page 18-Pushing Back the Frontier: -Charlene M. Anderson, Editor NEWS BRIEFS On June 27 NASA engineers reported a As administrators of a membership organization, The Planetary Society's Directors and major flaw in the main light-gathering staff care about and are influenced by our members' opinions, suggestions and ideas about mirrors of the Hubble Space Telescope. the future of the space program and of our Society. We encourage members to write us and The flaw is likely to cripple its ability to create a dialogue on topics such as the space station, the lunar outpost, the exploration of see the depths of the universe for several Mars and the search for extraterrestrial life. years. Send your letters to: Members' Dialogue, The Planetary Society, 65 N. Catalina Avenue, The engineers stated at a news confer­ Pasadena, CA 91106. ence that there was a distortion in one of the two mirrors used to focus light. Jean Olivier, deputy project manager said, Regarding the letter by Margaret S. Hunt in the March/April Planetary Report: The only "We don't know if it's on the primary or means now available for finding extraterrestrial civilizations involves searching for artifi­ cially produced radio signals. Any society that cannot produce radio signals, however inter­ secondary mirror yet, but it looks like a esting they may be, will simply "fall through the holes in our net." Thus, the methods avail­ textbook-perfect aberration that is per­ able to us limit the kinds of societies we might contact to those that have at least minimal fectly symmetrical." The distortion, technology. This is why many people believe we will share at least some mathematics and called a spherical aberration, prevents some science with any society we contact. the telescope from finely focusing the I have co-authored a paper with Dr. R. T. Oehrle of the Department of Linguistics where light it gathers. Because of this, the in­ we constructed a language with which we might communicate with an alien society. We strument loses the ability to separate very considered many possible approaches, but we soon found that since we and our contactees close objects or to see very faint ones, share only the physical universe, our language had to be based on our respective precise they said. descriptions of this universe; i.e., our respective sciences and their associated mathematics. Some of the instruments on the space­ -CARL L. DeVITO, Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson craft will be unaffected by the problem. But the wide-field planetary camera that The caption accompanying the cover photo of the March/April 1990 Planetary Report is was to perform 40 percent of the scientif­ not entirely correct.
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