The Interstellar Age

Jim Bell - Central 919.9204 B4338i 2015

The Arizona State University scientist James F. Bell 1965, not the anarchist Jim Bell 1958.

Voyager 1 is the first functional space probe in interstellar space, crossing the heliopause at in 2012. Voyager 2 crossed in 2018. Both spacecraft are still transmitting data as I write this.

Bell was born in Rhode Island, loved the Apollo missions as a young child, and had an 8 inch Meade telescope as a teenager. Only PBS had science shows ... mostly NOVA. Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos inspired him to be a scientist. Viking was "astounding", but Voyager was "irresistible".

• p13 Voyager had 10 project managers, but only one project scientist, Edward C. Stone

  • namesake of asteroid 5841 Stone

• p20 "Don't anthropomorphize the spacecraft, they don't like it" -- attributed to project manager John Casani

• p24 Sagan and Caltech's Bruce Murray] ]'s [[ https://www.planetary.org in 1989, bimonthly newsletter $15/y .

• p27 Bell matriculates to Caltech in 1983, failed Math 1 special "Math 0.9" class, image analysis scutwork for Mark Allen, then G. Edward Danielson

• p33 1985 Danielson arranges special badge to watch Voyager Uranus encounter from inside the Science Operations Room in JPL Bldg. 264 with student Heidi Hammel .

• p42 Gary Flandro develops planetary assists and what Homer Joe Stewart dubbed "The Grand Tour".

• p49 MJS-77 mission Jupiter Saturn evolved into Voyager
• p53 8-track tape player recorder, about 100 images
• p56 Three launch struts and four booms: magnetometer on 43 foot fiberglass boom, two 33 foot plasma/radio receiver booms, eight foot science boom: Plasma Wave, Cosmic Ray, Low Energy Charged Particle instruments, steerable scan platform for imaging and spectroscopy

• p56 short boom with Radioisotope Thermal Generator - PU238

• p57 High Bay in JPL bldg. 179, Class 10,000 clean room (Intel's Hillsboro Fab D1D is Class 10, with wafers in Class 1 )

• p58 NASA IRTF InfraRed Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, 4205m

• p59 Flight to Hawaii in snow boots and parka
• p62 825 kg, 120 kg scientific instruments, launched on Titan-III Centaur
• p63 Deep Space Network Canberra 70 meter dish, Voyager 23 watt transmitter

• p71 Golden Record

• p105 miision designer Charley Kohlhase and 10 colleagues.

• p107 July 9, 1979 Jupiter flyby
• p113 Voyagers 3 axis spin stabilized, fixed orientation

• p118 Linda Morabito observed volcanos on Io

• p136 Pioneer 11 just missed Janus or Epimetheus? by 2500 km (author writes 2500 miles)

• p138 Voyager 1 passed behind Saturn (occultation) to measure atmosphere with both sunlight and radio attenuation
• p139 Ditto for Titan, also measured mass, but opaque atmosphere prevented surface observations
• p141 Voyager 1 flyby of Titan precluded gravity assist to Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2's deep dive missed Titan but got gravity assist
• p153 Voyager 2 glitched behind Saturn then recovered, cause remains mystery, perhaps overheated gear in scan platform
• p156 "face on Mars" Richard Hoagland hypothesized revolutionary physics discovery hidden by NASA
• p171 Uranus tilted sideways, only 10 hours for observation at 23 km/s, passing near Miranda only
• p174 Software redesigned, better motion compensation, compression in backup computer, Deep Space Network improved sensitivity
• p178 Uranus field 60 degrees from spin, and offset 30% from center
• p185 Observed 2 additional rings to the nine known, Hubble found 2 more later (and no more as of 2020).
• p187 Grad student Bell won small grant to study color variations of Uranus moons; null result
• p206 Voyager measured 3x more Neptune internal energy than arrving sunlight, and the 5-year-ephemeral Great Dark Spot\
• book continues for another 90 pages, but the last big event, crossing the heliopause, was rather subtle and predictable. snooze.