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Article: Planetary perks: scientific fringe-benefits of Voyager 2's trip to Neptune.
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- September 10, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Planetary Perks
Next August, the Voyager 2 spacecraft will fly past Neptune to provide the first closeup measurements of what is now the solar system's most distant known world, the apparently incomplete arcs of its rings and its big moon Triton. But even with the encounter still a year away, preparations for it are already enhancing research having nothing to do with Neptune -- work ranging from other planets to the sun, quasars and galaxies.
NASA's principal means of communication with interplanetary spacecraft is its Deep Space Network (DSN) -- three big dish-antennas located in California, Australia and Spain. From the vast distances of Uranus and ...