By the last week of February 1979, the attention of thousands of individuals was focused on the activities at JPL. Scientists had arrived from universities and laboratories around the country and from abroad, many bringing graduate students or faculty colleagues to assist them. Engineers and technicians from JPL contractors joined NASA officials as the Pasadena motels filled up. Special badges were issued and reserved parking areas set aside for the Voyager influx. Twenty-four hours a day, lights burned in the flight control rooms, the science offices, the computer areas, and the photo processing labs. In order to protect those with critical tasks to perform from the friendly distraction of the new arrivals, special computer-controlled locks were placed on doors, and security officers began to patrol the halls. By the end of the month the press had begun to arrive. Amid accelerating excitement, the Voyager 1 encounter was about to begin.
The smaller-scale clouds on Jupiter tend to be more irregular than the large ovals and plumes. At the lower right, one of the three large white ovals clearly shows internal structure, with the swirling cloud pattern indicating counterclockwise, or anticyclonic, flow. A smaller anticyclonic white feature near the center is surrounded by a dark, cloud-free band where one can see to greater depths in the atmosphere. This photo was taken March 1 from a distance of 4 million kilometers. [P-21183C]
CHAPTER 6
THE FIRST ENCOUNTER
The Giant Is Full of Surprises
The Voyager 1 encounter took place at 4:42 a.m. PST, March 5, 1979. About six hours before, while the spacecraft continued to hurtle on toward Jupiter, overflow crowds had poured out of Beckman Auditorium on the campus of the California Institute of Technology. There had been a symposium entitled Jupiter and the Mind of Man. More than one face that evening had turned to look toward the Pasadena night, for there, glittering against the fabric of the sky, was the “star” of the show—a planet so huge that the Earth would be but a blemish on its Great Red Spot. One might have tried to imagine Voyager 1, large by spacecraft standards, rapidly closing in on Jupiter—a pesky, investigative “mosquito” buzzing around the Jovian system.
Meanwhile, at JPL, pictures taken by Voyager 1 were flashing back every 48 seconds, pictures that were already revealing more and more of Jupiter’s atmosphere and would soon disclose four new worlds—the Galilean satellites. The encounter was almost at hand.
4:42 a.m.—Voyager 1 had made its closest approach to Jupiter 37 minutes earlier. Only now were the signals that had been sent out from the spacecraft at 4:05 a.m. reaching the Earth.
But the moment of closest encounter did not have the same impact a landing would have had. Although the champagne would flow later for those who had worked so long and hard on this successful mission, there was none now. In the press room there were just four coffeepots working overtime to help keep the press alert. In the science areas, focus had shifted to the satellite encounters, which would stretch over the next 24 hours; meanwhile, a few persons tried to catch a little sleep at their desks before the first closeups of Io came in. The instant of encounter came ... and went ... with no screams, no New Year’s noisemakers. All the excitement of the mission lay both behind ... and ahead.