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A Publication of THEPLANE~ SOCIETV o o o o o • 0-e Board of Directors FROM THE CARL SAGAN BRUCE MURRAY EDITOR President Vice President Director, Laboratory for Planetary Professor of Planetary Studies, Cornell 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 s I write this, four members of The Page 12-Tracking Asteroids: Why We Chairman. National financial consultant Commission on Space A Planetary Society's Mars Rover team Do It-Asteroids have also been neglect Board of Advisors are on the Kamchatka Peninsula testing the ed members of the solar system, but that DIANE ACKERMAN JOHN M. LOGSDON prototype mobile robot. Their timing was is changing, in part due to the efforts of poet and author Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University impeccable: They left for Siberia on the The Planetary Society. As part of our as ISAAC ASIMOV author HANS MARK day of the attempted coup in the Soviet teroid program, we are helping to fund the Chancellor, RICHARD BERENDZEN University of Texas System Union. efforts of Jeremy Tatum at the University educator and astrophysicist JAMES MICH ENER While the Society' sstaff never really of Victoria. Here he reports to members JACOUES BLAMONT author Chief Scientist. Centre feared for their safety, we were relieved to on his work. National d 'ElUdes Spatiafes, MARVIN MINSKY France Toshiba Professor of Media Arts receive a fax from the Institute for Space Page 16-The 1991 Solar Eclipse From and Sciences, Massachusetts RAY BRADBURY Institute of Technology poet and author Research in Moscow which read: "TPS a Different Perspective-A member's PHILIP MORRISON ARTHUR C. CLARKE team is OK and comfortable. They enjoy suggestion has enabled his fellow mem Institute Professor, Massachusetts atJlhor. Institute of Technology good weather and food." bers to view the solar eclipse from an CORNELIS DE JAGER Professor of Space Research. PAUL NEWMAN We will bring you more details of this unusual perspective-,-from space. The Astronomiea/lnstitute at actor Utrecht, The Netherlands JUN NISHIMURA expedition in upcoming Planetary Reports. Page 19-International Space Year Cel FRANK ORAKE Director-General, Institute of Space With the Soviet situation changing daily, ebrates Tomorrow's Explorers-1992 Professor of Astronomy and and Astronautical Sciences, Japan Astrophysics, University of we will be keeping a close watch on our has been designated as International Space California at Santa Cruz BERNARD M. OLIVER Chief, SET! Program, LEE A. DUBRIDGE NASNAmes Research Center cooperative projects with the Soviet space Year and at The Planetary Society we are former presidential science advisor SALLY RIDE agencies. planning a series of events to celebrate it. Director, California Space Institute, JOHN GARDNER University of California at Page 3-Members' Dialogue-With the Page 20-Questions & Answers-Dating founder, Common Cause San Diego. and former astronaut Magellan radar-mapping mission discover the martian surface, why Venus rotates MARC GARNEAU ROALD Z. SAGDEEV Canadian astronaut former Director, ing new geologic features on Venus nearly "backwards," traveling to an asteroid and Institute for Space Research, GEORGIY GOLITSYN Academy of Sciences of the USSR Institute of Atmospheric Physics, every day, the naming of these features be using gravity to reach the planets are the Academy of Sciences of the USSR HARRISON H. SCHMID comes a monumental task. In this column, topics we cover here. TH EODORE M. HESBURG H former US Senator, NM, and Apollo 17 astronaut President Emeritus, Professor William Kaula of UCLA takes Page 22-World Watch-We have two University of Notre Dame S. ROSS TAYLOR issue with some of the naming practices. guest columnists for this issue to bring SH IRLEY M. HUFSTEDLER Professorial Fellow, Aus/rafian educator and jurist National University, Canberra Page 4-A Morning With Philip Mor you reports on the recent Mars Balloon GARRY E. HUNT LEWIS THOMAS space scientist, Chancel/or, Memorial Sloan rison-In The Planetary Report we do meeting in Moscow and an upcoming United Kingdom Kettering Cancer Center not often cover gedanken experiments workshop on small spacecraft. SERGEI KAPITSA JAMES VAN ALLEN Institute for Physical Problems, Professor of Physics, thought experiments conducted in the Page 23-Society Notes-As the Society Academy of Sciences of the USSR University of Iowa imagination rather than the laboratory. grows and diversifies, we have more and The Planetary Report (ISSN 0736-3680) is published six times yearly at However, such exercises can be fun. In more news, requests and offers. This col the editorial offices of The Planetary Society, 65 North Catalina Avenue, Pasadena, CA 911 06, (8 18) 793-5100. It is available to members of The this article, the director of our Project umn will keep you up to date. Planetary Society. Annual dues in the US or Canada are $25 US dollars or $30 Canadian. Dues outside the US or Canada are $35 (US) . MET A takes you up in a gedanken rocket -Charlene M. Anderson Editor, C HARLENE M . ANDERSON ship to enter the minds of those beings Technical Editor, JAMES D. BURKE Assistant Editor, DO NNA ESCANDON STEVENS if any-that might be trying to communi Copy Editor, G LORIA JOYCE cate with us across the vastness of space. The Planetary Society'S Art Director, BARBARA S. SMITH Annual Catalog Viewpoints expressed in columns or editorials are those of the authors and Page 8-A Clean, Well-Lighted Place: do not necessarily represent positions of The Planetary Society, its officers or advisors. © 1991 by The Planetary Society. Mercury-As in any large family, some Bound into the center of this issue you In Canada. Second Class Mail Registfation Number 9567 members of our solar system receive more will find our annual sales catalog. We COVER: Clouds of interstellar dust obscure the view attention than others. The planet Mercury publish this catalog once a year as a of our galaxy's central region which, viewed from has been vi sited by only one spacecraft, service to our members who might be Earth, lies in the direction of the constellation of and when lists of future mission targets are looking for distinctive holiday gifts. Sagittarius. With our solar system situated on the outskirts of the Milky Way, most of its stars appear drawn up, it is usually not ranked very If you prefer your Planetary Report within or beyond the galactiC center. If any galactic high. However, this small world does have without this sales insert, it can be easi beacon engineers are beaming a message our way, chances are it will come from that direction. Part of its partisans: Our News & Reviews colum ly removed. But we hope you first take the fun of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence nist, Clark Chapman, has contributed an a look at the many entertaining and is trying to guess how another technological civi article on Mercury to this issue instead of IizlItion might try to contact ours. educational items that we offer. Photograph: David Malin, Anglo-Australian Observatory his regular feature. NEWS BRIEFS As of late July, Magellan had col lected radar images of nearly 90 As administrators of a membership organization, The Planetary Society's Directors and staff percent of Venus' surface. The care about and are influenced by our members' opinions, suggestions and ideas about the future of the space program and of our Society. We encourage members to write us and create data set is double the amount of a dialogue on topics such as a space station, a lunar outpost, the exploration of Mars and the all other image data collected in search for extraterrestrial life. the United States planetary pro Send your letters to: Members' Dialogue, The Planetary Society, 65 N. Catalina Avenue, gram to date, said Steve Saunders, Pasadena, CA 91106. Magellan Project Scientist. -from a NASA press release While browsing over the United States Geological Survey's chart of Venus' northern quadrant, I noticed a feature named "Schumann-Heink Patera," and thought, "That's digging rather deep in a favorite category. There must also be features named Callas, Flagstad, Ponselle, Melba-all A group of frustrated space sta much more famous and influential as opera singers than Schumann-Heink." But none of them tion engineers calling itself the were there, and in the process of looking I found other oddities: obscure novelists like Prichard Center for Strategic Space Studies and Voynich and Lagerlof, but not Austen or Bronte or Woolf; rulers who were defeated, like in Reston, Virginia, has begun cir Boedicia and Cleopatra, but not those who were successful, like Elizabeth Tudor, Eleanor culating a detailed concept paper d'Aquitaine and Catherine the Great; and the only Indians were bedmates of European explor recommending that NASA slow ers-Malintzin, Pocahontas and Sacajawea. Most odd were Corday, the little assassin unknown work on the estimated $30 billion till she killed Marat, and Tituba, the black stimulator of the hysterias that led to the Salem trials. outpost in favor of refurbishing Are terrorism and witchery back in vogue? and launching the backup Skylab Names on Venus, like those on other planets, are chosen by a committee of the International orbiting workshop now sitting Astronomical Union (IAU), under a set of 13 rules, such as: "unambiguous," "prominent in any in the National Air and Space of the six main living religions are not acceptable," "dead at least three years," and no "special Museum in Washington, DC. individual or national significance." However, the interpretation is sometimes strange. Thus the The engineers behind the updat "unambiguous" seems strained when there is someone else more famous of the same name.