Swinging by Saturn

At NASA's Ames Research Center, near San Francisco, scientists fretted in their seats. But as the pictures flashed onto the screen, the tension eased. After a journey of 6 1/2 years, the small unmanned Pioneer 11 spacecraft was fast approaching Saturn, whose image was being sent back with more clarity than could be obtained by any earth-bound telescope. One especially intriguing view, taken by the robot from a distance of 3.2 million km (2 million miles), showed both the giant ringed planet, a huge gaseous sphere 815 times larger than earth, and its major moon, Titan, where scientists have not entirely given up hope of finding evidence of primitive life forms. Pioneer also radioed data on two other Saturnian satellites (among ten known ones): lapetus, whose puzzling bright side seems to be crusted with ice, and Mimas, a similar icy moon. One surprise: there was far more debris in the wide gap between Saturn's outermost rings than could be seen from earth, but no trace of a fifth ring beyond the four known ones. At week's end the probe swept through this outer region, coming within 21,000 km (13,000 miles) of Saturn's cloud tops in the first rendezvous with that distant planet.

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