The Voyager-2 Neptune Encounter

Abstract

Mankind's first in situ exploration of the planet Neptune and its moons, rings, and magnetosphere will occur during the summer of 1989. The Voyager system was designed to explore Jupiter and Saturn. However, Neptune is three times farther away than Saturn. The major science objectives and telecom link distance generate unique telecommunications requirements. Among these are conversion of the Deep Space Network's (DSN) 64 meter antennae to 70 meter antennae, arraying of the Very Large Array (VLA) with the DSN antennae at Goldstone CA, use of the 64 meter radio-telescope at Usuda, Japan, and new on-board spacecraft data control software. In addition, telecom improvements first made for the Uranus encounter, including parallel operation of the spacecrafts redundant data control processors, on-board spacecraft data compression software, and on-board data encoding hardware and software, will also be used for the Neptune encounter.