Hi, and welcome to another edition of Nevada Weekly. I'm Terrie Nault with my
co-host John Marschall, and John we have a fascinating show tonight. What's it about?
Marschall: It's about space, not just inner space but outer space, which is a very
mysterious and exciting thing. From the beginning of mankind there's been a lot
of speculation about what's out there. Man's imagination has been stimulated to
think about "the heavens" being somewhere out in the universe and also to
speculate the perhaps the earth was the center of the universe. All that is past
history now. And as a result of our curiosity and technology, we've been able to launch
Pioneer 11's most recent exploration around Jupiter, Saturn, the planet of
rings, and tonight we'll find out more about that particular journey and what
it means for us. Judy Drews, our reporter and assistant producer of Nevada Weekly, has more.
Drews: With me is Grayson Gibbs, who has just joined the UNR Office of
Communications in Broadcasting as Director of Special Projects. Grayson was
in charge of all the television coverage for the Saturn encounter through NASA.
Could you describe Pioneer 11's visit to Saturn for us?
Gibbs: Sure I'd be glad to but
I think I probably ought not to try and describe the whole visit because I'm not
a scientist. I would like to describe it from a television coverage standpoint
because for us, it was a pretty exciting time. I think perhaps the best way to
describe the event would be to show you a video tape that kind of condenses and
summarizes what did happen.
Larry King: Pioneer Saturn was launched in April of 1973. It was, uh, the second spacecraft to
head towards Jupiter, and earlier one the sister, uh, spacecraft Pioneer 10, uh, was en route
to Jupiter at the time of Pioneer 11's launching. Pioneer 10 was so
successful at Jupiter that, uh, uh, they decided on a higher risk mission for the Pioneer
11 spacecraft. Uh, this brought the spacecraft closer to Jupiter than any
spacecraft of course had ever, uh, come before, and allowed them to, uh, configure that
trajectory, to, to allow the spacecraft to come on to Saturn.
Speaker: Voyager, which you just saw the pictures from, is a 'one six-pack' mission. [Audience laughs.] That is...
the TOTAL COST of Voyager, to every adult citizen in the United States, was equivalent to one six-
pack of beer. The trip we're going do to Saturn now is a real cheapie. We got two fly-bys
of Jupiter by Pioneer and now one to Saturn... for two cans of beer... [Audience laughter.]
...per person. Now that's cheaper than by a long shot than the cost of going to a movie
today. And I can't help thinking that's worth it. Do you agree?
[Applause.]
Interviewer: The general public,
in terms of exploration, what is the importance of what has happened today?
Speaker: You clearly are involved in exploring a new world, and... we have a, a, it's, it's unique.
It's a, it's a, special privilege that we have, that unlike explorations that have
taken place, uh, much throughout history. They're kind of been the privileged few
that have been able to go on these exploration voyages, voyages. And that's not
true for, uh, for the exploration of the planets and what Pioneer 11 has done is
exploring Saturn. We, you, and all the people that you're showing this to have
had the opportunity to participate directly in the thrill of exploring
another world, and you, we don't have to be at the mercy of just listening to the
stories of the adventures of the, uh, explorers when they come back. We were
there, and it's only during this time that that opportunity is available. It's
a, it's a, great time to, uh, be able to participate in such things.
Hall: I think he's really interested in that. And all the people that I talk to are always
interested in my job. They asked me what I'm doing. And when I tell them about
the-these new findings they really sit there and listen for a long time. So I think
that that's what we're doing. We're providing with a lot of new interesting
information, which likely these gentlemen say here. And I think that one of the
things that confirms that... is why are we so interested in, in, uh, Star War? And all
this, this is science fiction. But this today isn't science fiction, this is
science fact. And that's a hell of a lot more interesting in my opinion than
science fiction, and I think a lot of people in the country feel the same way.
[Applause.]
Speaker: Time is 9:03 and 40 seconds right now. 20 more seconds, and, uh, we WILL be able to
confirm the spacecraft has survived. 15 seconds... ten seconds...
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
[Staff: We made it! Ohhh! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!]
This, we have a mission.
The Pioneer Saturn spacecraft has survived
the crossing other ring plane. The telemetry continues to come in, it's perfectly normal.
Hall: Would like to, uh, publicly praised the mission controllers who've
been working so hard, uh, in our mission control area during the last month. That
is both the Ames people and the Bendix people. They have done a TREMENDOUS
amount of planning, and the planning, is, is paying off. We've sent well over 11,000
commands to the spacecraft during the last month, and I think the whole
operation has been almost flawless. So I just can't praise them too highly for the
tremendous effort that they've all done. It certainly made the, uh, encounter today
the success that it is.
Speaker: And I think if we can report to Voyager 2, "The way is clear, come on through.
Uh, the Rings are great." And, uh... [Audience laughter.] ...And, uh, I'm sure that you'll enjoy it.
Uh, thank you very much.
Speaker: This is Pioneer Saturn Mission Operations. Bob Hogan has
just offic-- made the official pronouncement we're safely through the
ring plane, the telemetry looks very, very good, uh, the IPP group, uh, are
watching their data from the instrument. They're pleased. Pioneer Saturn is in
good health. Uh, we looked like, uh, we may have, uh, another many, many years of tracking this
spacecraft as it... begins a long, long voyage now away from the solar system.
This morning a spacecraft, uh, flew by the largest of the Saturn moons, Titan, uh, a moon
which has an atmosphere in which some scientists feel may be habitable for life.
Wolfe: It's no way to know whether there's life there or not. But what Pioneer's
going to try and find out is whether the environment, uh, say on the surface of Titan
is, uh, is reasonable with respect to the possibility of life.
Gibbs: You mean we won't see any little green men waving at us as, uh, we pass by?
[Wolfe: 'fraid not.] Oh... sorry to hear that.
Wolfe: Well I think if we ever put a probe into Titan to look for life we're not going
to see little green men either. What we're going to see is, uh, life in its very,
very, most primitive form and this is, uh, just a complex molecule that's able to
reproduce itself and that's probably all it's gonna be capable of doing.
Speaker: Alright here we are. Coming up, the spacecraft coming up through space in and
into your field of vision. Can you imagine flying wing to that spacecraft? There's
Saturn. Obviously that's an artist concept, but it's a good one. Spacecraft
comes up and now, stand by for boarding. We'll see the track that will be made
tomorrow morning. As the spacecraft comes closer and closer, should be up to a
velocity relative to the planet of around 77,000 miles an hour at this time
they tell me. It will come in, under,
through... hopefully. [Audience laughter.]
A gaseous ball, which doesn't look like a gaseous planet at all in this picture, but it is, they tell us.
Probably a softer surface than we see here.
And then the spacecraft will come out the other side. Look how thin
those rings are when you go by. And as it leaves the planet behind, watch what they
do with this computer simulation. I think this is one of the great scenes. We pick
up the spacecraft again. Remember now you're flying wing with the spacecraft
in this scene. Here she comes ... We're coming up on Titan. There it is, that's
Titan. How it should look. You notice we don't come too close. And awaaay we go.
Off into deep space forever more.
Drews: We're in the star theater of the Atmospherium-Planetarium on the UNR
campus and I'm talking with Art Johnson, director. Art could you explain the
relationship in distance between the Earth and Saturn?
Johnson: I'll be glad to, Judy.
Let's have a look at a chart. Judy, here's the Sun in the center of the solar
system right in the middle of these ovals and the earth is the third planet
out. You can see that we're not really too far from the Sun as planets go, about
93 million miles. And we go on out from the earth past Mars through the Asteroid
Belt, Jupiter. And here's Saturn, almost 10 times the Earth's distance at eight hundred 'n sixty-six- um, er,
886, I should say, MILLION miles about 10 times farther from the Sun than we are. Now, the
solar system goes on out quite a ways farther. Here's the planet Uranus, Neptune
and Pluto, at the edge of the solar system, some 40 times further from the
Sun and the earth is and I understand that the Pioneer spacecraft will be
crossing the orbit of Pluto as it moves out of our solar system about 1993.
[Drews: What is the comparative size of the planet?]
Well this orange thing right here is a
small portion of the edge of the Sun on a particular scale and you can see in
comparison the earth is pretty tiny, only about 8,000 miles wide. With Saturn, is
nearly ten times the Earth's diameter if you count the ball or globe of a planet
only. It's about 75,000 miles in diameter. And the ring system of Saturn is about a
hundred thousand miles wide. Perhaps the astronomers would like it better if we
spoke in terms of kilometers, but most of us feel more comfortable with miles these days.
Gibbs: I spoke earlier with Dr. John Wolfe, Pioneer Project scientist, to help
us understand some aspects of the mission. From a technological standpoint
are the things on the spacecraft, uh, that might be of interest to the taxpayer? And
again, he cares most about what can you get out of it today not in terms of next
year or a hundred years from now.
Wolfe: Well, one of the things that pointer's doing is, is,
what we call comparative planetology. And this all goes toward the general
direction of trying to understand our own earth better. You know, I think the
most aggravating thing to, uh, anybody regardless of his
their background, expertise or area of interest is, uh, is the weather for example. Um, part
of the reason i think that weatherman do so badly ... is that up until the, planet,
planetary exploration program came along, he only had one weather system to study.
That is the weather system in the earth and so you're kind of stuck with an
example of one, and it's very difficult to generalize when you only have one
example to look at. But we've looked at, uh, Venus now, and we've looked at Mars, we've
looked at Jupiter, and we're looking at Saturn. We're finding all these different
kinds of atmospheres and meteorology that's going on there, all to be
different, but they all have to obey the laws of physics. And so I think weathermen
are getting smart, simply because they now have other examples to look at.
And I think this is an immediate impact on the public, uh, but it, you know, it's a small
portion of what Pioneer's doing.
Drews: We asked Dr. Vernon Frazier, professor of physics at UNR,
to give a localized reaction to Dr. Wolfe's comments.
Frazier: Well we here in Reno
and in Nevada are very much interested in the atmosphere. In fact, uh, the state has put
a lot of money into the Desert Research Institute, which, uh, has an atmospheric
physics laboratory very much interested in that. The, uh, reason for a look at being
interested in planets, the other planets, particularly Saturn and Jupiter, is that
the atmospheres of these planets are very likely, uh, very much like ours was at
the very beginning of the earth, the primordial atmosphere. So if we can study
other planets and their atmospheres, we can gain a better insight into our own.
Of course here in Reno, we, uh, are at the east of the Sierra Nevadas. And Reno would
be to the east of that. And, uh, our weather is very much influenced by the mountains
and the air flowing over the mountains being squeezed between the stratosphere
and the, uh, mountains. Uh, our own atmosphere as we know is a solar engine. It's actually
a big solar engine. And so, how much energy we get into it is going to affect
the operation of that engine. If for instance we get too much carbon dioxide,
perhaps the engine will heat up, and we have beginning more violent storms and, uh,
certainly get much hotter. That would affect our agri-agriculture. On the other hand
if somehow that we make our atmosphere more reflective, and as sunlight doesn't
get in, then, uh, we would cool down and that certainly would have a definite effect
locally on our atmosphere, on our agriculture.
[Drews: It's, it's, not just a matter of curiosity.]
It's not just a matter of curiosity at all. We're hoping to learn
things that we have no idea about right now.
Gibbs: The pictures coming back from the
spacecraft are now giving us much better pictures of Saturn than we've ever had
from earth-based, uh, telescopes. What kind of new information are you beginning to see
about the planet, the rings and the rings?
Wolfe: Well, Pioneer is approaching Saturn in
kind of a unique direction that you don't get from Earth, uh, we're coming in on
one side of the rings, with a, with the Sun on the other. Uh, usually when you take a
look at Saturn with a telescope or even a good pair of, uh, binoculars you see the
rings lighted. You see two rings. Uh, when you come in the back side the way Pioneer is
doing, which, were, were actually saying is the way the sunlight scatters through the
rings. And what I think it's beginning to tell us then will hopefully tell us much
more precisely, uh, after we go by is something about the particle size
distribution in the ring, perhaps what the ring material, uh, what the rings are
made of and thickness, dimensions, mass that everything. And, uh, these backlighted
pictures are very important piece of information which goes into the journal
modeling of, uh, our understanding of, of, what the rings might be all about.
Drews: UNR's Art Johnson compares historical drawings of Saturn with the most recent photographs
from the spacecraft.
Johnson: For a second to what Galileo had, he was the first astronomer
ever to look at Saturn with the telescope, and his telescope was of such
poor quality that if you were to open a box of Cracker Jack and get one of
similar quality today you'd probably throw it away as a piece of junk. But
with that telescope he was able to see the globe of Saturn and a little fuzzy
blob on either side. His telescope was too poor to show the rings for what they
were. His notebooks refer to the ears that he saw on the planet Saturn. They
mystified him because a few years later when he went to
again, the rings were edge-on and so he wasn't able to see the ears any longer.
That's 19-er, that is 1610, uh, technology looking at the planet Saturn.
Well now here's one of our better earth-based photographs of the planet.
And you can certainly see we've improved over what Galileo had but here again
we'll go to the photograph that we have with us from the Pioneer 11 and it's hard to
put a number on just how much better a photograph is, uh, than another photograph
but it would seem to me we could say it's a quantum leap. We can see fine
structure, fine detail in the rings. We can see some subtle shadings on the
globe of the planet. And I haven't much doubt that when further computer
processing is completed on these images we will see and be able to discern even finer details.
[Drews: Where is Titan?] In this photograph Titan is right here the
largest moon in our solar system, bigger than the planet Mercury.
Gibbs: I understand one
of the things that you've been looking for is the magnetosphere and yet you
haven't found it. Where is it? Or and what is?
Wolfe: Well first of all, I'm, I'm talking
about the magnetic field of Saturn. The earth has a magnetic field and because
the earth has a magnetic field, and when you take your, your compass, it, it points
North, and you know where to go. Uh, Jupiter has a magnetic field also, and we
expected Saturn to have a magnetic field. And you really, you need a magnetic field,
a global magnetic field in order to have radiation belts. Of course the earth has,
has radiation belts, Jupiter has very strong radiation belts. We felt that the
interior of Saturn is such that Saturn would more than likely have a magnetic
field. And yet the solar storm that we're encountering as we, uh, are approaching
Saturn is such that that magnetic field was masked, and so we kept getting closer
and closer and closer to Saturn and no magnetic field. And, uh, early this morning we
crossed the standing bow shock wave, which results as a, uh, as a consequence of, of, that
magnetic field and the impact of the solar wind, which immediately told us, "Yes
indeed Saturn does have a magnetic field," and we were even
able to compute what the strength of that field was, at least approximated, and
yet we haven't even gotten into it yet.
Drews: Dr. Frazier, Dr. Wolfe referred to a
magnetosphere. Could you explain in detail what he meant? Uh, the planet, uh, planetsS
such as Saturn has a magnetic field and, uh, we might assume that the lines of the
magnetic force -- they go from the top and into the bottom so that we'd have the
magnetic field due to the activity of the planet -- um, uh, let's say, eh, uh, going down in this
particular direction, we have coming from the Sun, uh, something called a solar wind,
particles, mostly protons and electrons, which would be coming in to this
magnetic field. Now charged particles are deflected by a magnetic field and so
what we would have would be positive particles, say protons, coming in, being
deflected towards me in the magnetic field, electrons being deflected out that
way, and this magnetic field then acts very much as a barrier to these incoming
particles, and we have out here a bow shock wave, in a sense. The region inside
that bow shock wave is a magnetic field due to the planet -- we call at the
magnetosphere. Region outside is, uh, the end there's interplanetary magnetic field. If
the planet's magnetic field were absent, then the bow shock would be right at the
surface of the planet. If it had a very strong magnetic field, the bow shock
would be way way out. Uh, apparently the magnetic field of Saturn was not as
large as expected so the bow shock is in a little closer than was, uh, originally anticipated.
Gibbs: What happens to Pioneer 11 after it goes beyond Titan? Where does it, uh, go from there?
Wolfe: Well it leaves, uh, the Saturnian system forever and, uh, will
ultimately leave, uh, our solar system behind and never come back and, uh, be, uh, an object
which ultimately will become dead and, uh, float forever among the stars.
Gibbs: Will you continue to, uh, to monitor the spacecraft for--
Wolfe: ... for as long as we can, and I think that'll probably be at least to the mid-80s.
Gibbs: As I understand, Pioneer 11 is a spacecraft that has the plaque on the side with the man and
the woman and where it comes from in our universe. What is that all symbolic of
and why did you put it there?
Wolfe: Well I think you hit the nail right on the head
it's symbolic. ... Because Pioneer 10, which is a first base craft to leave the
solar system and Pioneer 11, the second, are sort of travelling in opposite
directions with respect to the sun. And so the thought was some day some alien
race might find the spacecraft, wouldn't it be nice if they knew where it came from?
I think the probability of that happening of course is very small, so... but it, but it's
symbolic of man's desire to to put a note in a bottle and throw it into the
ocean and not know where whether anybody ever finds it or not but not really care
uh just to let somebody someplace else know that we're here.
Gibbs: If there was an
intelligent life form that found the spacecraft and somehow with a large
butterfly net or whatever they might use to catch it could see the plaque and see
where we came from in the, in the uh universe, do you think they could figure out and track it back?
Wolfe: Yeah because the, the, the plaque tells them what we are, uh... where we
are and when we are. [Gibbs: How when?] Well there's uh the frequency of a number of
pulsars on there. These are the radio objects that put out regular pulses of
radio energy and those pulses uh slowly get slower and slower and slower with time.
They take a long time to slow down so that even hundreds of thousands of years
from now they could look at where we put those pulsars, they look at their
frequency, they know how fast these celestial objects are slowing down, and
they would be able to compute when we are.
Gibbs: So again even for them the laws of
physics would hold true and they could figure it out backwards.
Gibbs: It's absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.
Drews: Dr. Frazier, Dr. Wolfe uh mentioned the plaque that's on the
spacecraft going out into space. Could you explain the elements of that
plaque to us and what they mean I mean?
Frazier: Uh one of the most important items in the
whole universe, the most important element is hydrogen, and so the first
item here on the plaque is a representation of the hydrogen.
Apparently when the uh electron and the proton flipped from the way they're
shown here to the opposite direction you get a very uh prevalent 21-centimeter
wavelength radiation, which you can find very much throughout the universe, so
hydrogen would be something that anyone from outer -- another -- civilization would
certainly recognize. Um we have here a picture of us so that they can see what
we look like. These as I understand are computerized uh versions of sort of uh
composite composite human beings from all over the world. Uh you can see the man
is is holding his hand up in a symbol of peace. He has no weapons in his hands and uh
would would be very much like uh in Reno here the handshake or tipping uh tipping the cowboy
hat if you should meet a friend. Uh we have a solar system so that they could
recognize this would be the sun with a with a series of planets and that the
spacecraft actually came from the third planet out. You'll notice the numbers are
binary code. Presumably uh an alien uh civilization would recognize the binary
code very readily. And so you can see that that's the third planet out. Uh these
people by the way are shown in a size with respect to the spacecraft, which the uh
aliens have picked up. And so they can recognize just how large we are. Finally,
where did this all come from? We have here the sun, and these lines represent
directions out to well-known pulsars. Pulsars are are neutron stars. They're
stars which have passed through their whole cycle and are rotating very quickly
and put out frequencies. And the little binary codes on these represented
frequencies of each of these pulsars, so that the civilization could recognize
the pulsars, could home in on the sun, and not only that, know approximately
when this spacecraft was launched.
Gibbs: If the spacecraft ever does get out
there whoever there is, where it might find another life-form, how many years
from now might that be, from what you know about our universe? Are we talking hundreds? thousands?
Wolfe: Oh tens to hundreds of thousands of years uh before the
spacecraft will probably come anywhere near another star. The thing that's very
difficult is that the speed of the Pioneer 11 spacecraft is actually uh about
10 times slower than the stars themselves are moving. So on that
coordinate system, the spacecraft sitting there, and the stars are flying by, so.
Gibbs: I've kind of forgotten my algebra, but as I seem to recall, if uh the first car leaves
at a certain point and the second car leaves at a certain point, when will they
both meet? I never did understand that one but I think I kind of understand
chances are remote as you indicate,d and perhaps that's as symbolism we're talking about.
Wolfe: That's right.
Drews: Can you give us a feeling for the endlessness of space?
Johnson: I wish I could. I don't think even astronomers have a real gut level
feeling for it. We can speak in abstractions and say that it is X
light-years from here to there, but uh in terms of comprehending the distances as
we could comprehend the distance between Reno and Las Vegas I don't know if it
can really happen. The little Pioneer is beginning a journey that will go on
probably forever uh moving through the solar system out among the stars, even
going at the speed of light it's hard to understand the distances. We know
that if we had a car that would go the speed of light we could go to the moon
in a little more than a second, to the edge of the solar system, the planet
Pluto in about five and a half hours, to the nearest star in four years four
months and seven days, across the galaxy in a hundred thousand years, to the most
distant galaxy in uh several BILLION years at the speed of light. There there seems
to be no end to it. And I'm not really sure that astronomers are in any better
position than the rest of us to to really comprehend the distances. They're incredible.
Nault: We'd like to remind you that Homecoming is scheduled this year for October
19th and 20th. October 20th is the day for the parade and the big game,
and we'd like to remind you that entries are now being accepted for the parade.
Deadline for those entries is October 10, and for more information, call the UNR
alumni office at 784-6629.
Marschall: Thanks for being with us for
this edition of Nevada Weekly. Join us again next week, same time, same place,
KOLO TV Reno. Good night.
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