M5+-+6

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 * Category 6 – Voyager/Outer Planets **
 * Voyager 1 & II || JPL & NASA Currrent ||
 * Galileo || JPL Past ||
 * Cassini-Huygens || JPL & NASA Currrent ||
 * New Horizons || NASA Current ||
 * Pioneer || NASA Current ||

FIVE QUESTIONS!! 1. When did the Galileo spacecraft deliver a probe that descended into the giant planet's atmosphere?

2. Where was the Voyager 2 launched first from?

3. Where was the cassini-huygens mission to?

4. What did the New Horizons voyage provide us with?

5. What happened to pioneer series of spacecrafts zero, one, and two?

Voyager 2 was launched first from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 20, 1977; Voyager 1 was launched on a faster, shorter trajectory on September 5, 1977. Both spacecraft were delivered to space aboard Titan-Centaur expendable rockets. Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Jupiter on March 5, 1979, and Voyager 2 followed with its closest approach occurring on July 9, 1979. The first spacecraft flew within 277,500 kilometers (172,000 miles) of the planet's cloud tops, and Voyager 2 came within 650,500 kilometers (403,000 miles). The Voyager 1 and 2 Saturn flybys occurred nine months apart, with the closest approaches falling on November 12 and August 25, 1981. voyager 1 flew within 124,000 kilometers (77,000 miles) of the cloud tops, while Voyager 2 came within 100,800 kilometers (62,600 miles).

The cassini-h uygens The Cassini mission to Saturn is the most ambitious effort in planetary space exploration ever mounted. A joint endeavor of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (known as ASI for its acronym in Italian), Cassini is sending a sophisticated robotic spacecraft to orbit the ringed planet and study the Saturnian system in detail over a four-year period. Onboard Cassini is a scientific probe called Huygens that will be released from the main spacecraft to parachute through the atmosphere to the surface of Saturn's largest and most interesting moon, Titan, which is shrouded by an opaque atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere includes organic compounds leading scientists to believe that the moon may be like a frozen vault of conditions similar to those on Earth before life began. The Cassini orbiter will also use imaging radar to map Titan's surface.

Upon arrival at Jupiter in December 1995, the Galileo spacecraft delivered a probe that descended into the giant planet's atmosphere. Since then the orbiter has completed many flybys of Jupiter'Galileo plunged into Jupiter's crushing atmosphere on Sept. 21, 2003. The spacecraft was deliberately destroyed to protect one of its own discoveries - a possible ocean beneath the icy crust of the moon Europa.Galileo changed the way we look at our solar system. The spacecraft was the first to fly past an asteroid and the first to discover a moon of an asteroid. It provided the only direct observations of a comet colliding with a planet.Galileo was the first to measure Jupiter's atmosphere with a descent probe and the first to conduct long-term observations of the Jovian system from orbit.s major moons, reaping a variety of science discoveries. The mission ended in Sept. 21, 2003 when the spacecraft plunged into

New Horizons’ voyage through the Jupiter system earlier this year provided a bird’s-eye view of a dynamic planet that has changed since the last close-up looks by NASA spacecraft. A combination of trajectory, timing and technology allowed it to explore details no probe had seen before, such as lightning near the Jupiter’s poles, the life cycle of fresh ammonia clouds, boulder-size clumps speeding through the planet’s faint rings, the structure inside volcanic eruptions on its moon Io, and the path of charged particles traversing the previously unexplored length of the planet’s long magnetic tail.

The Pioneer series of spacecraft performed first-of-their-kind explorations of the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. The different missions had little in common except that they all paved the way for later in-depth investigations, and were all spin stabilized. Pioneer 0, 1, and 2 were the United States' first lunar attempts. These identical spacecraft, which all failed to meet their lunar objectives, were followed by Pioneer 3 and 4, which succeeded in becoming America's first successful lunar missions. Pioneer 5 provided the first maps of the interplanetary magnetic field. Pioneers 6,7,8, and 9 were the world's first solar monitoring network and provided warnings of increased solar activity which could affect Earth orbiting satellites and ground systems. The twin Pioneer 10 and 11 vehicles were the first spacecraft to ever visit Jupiter and Saturn. The craft performed a wide variety of scientific observations of the two planets and returned environmental data that was used during the design of the more sophisticated Voyager probes. The Pioneer Venus mission, consisting of the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (Pioneer 12) and Pioneer Venus Multiprobe (Pioneer 13), was the United States' first long-term mission to observe Venus and studied the structure and composition of the Venusian atmosphere. The mission also provided the first radar map of the planet's surface.

Voyager 1's flight path at Saturn bent it up and away from the ecliptic, the plane in which most planets orbit the Sun. Voyager 2, meanwhile, continued on for two more planetary encounters. Voyager 2 flew by Uranus on January 24, 1986, coming within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of the planet's cloud tops. Voyager 2 made a final flyby of Neptune on August 25, 1989, passing within 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles). At the time, the planet was the most distant member of the solar system from the Sun. (Pluto once again became most distant in 1999.)

JPL PAST Missions http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/past_missions.cfm JPL CURRENT Missions http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/index.cfm NASA CURRENT Missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html