Voyager 2 Spacecraft

Like a beat-up, high-mileage car, the solar system has a dent in it. Scientists revealed Monday that data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft showed that the shell of solar gases that encircles our star system has been dinged up by passing through the rubble of stars that exploded millions of years ago. Voyager 2, launched in 1977, just passed through what's known as the termination shock, the boundary of the bubble of energy carried by the solar wind to the far edge of the solar system.

At the far reaches of our solar system, amid the emptiness of solar wind and cosmic rays, are two tiny markers of humanity's dream to reach to the stars. Voyagers 1 and 2, the intrepid spacecraft originally launched in 1977, have traveled more than 14 billion miles, visited four planets and surveyed dozens of moons. And they are still flying. In the next few weeks, the twin Voyagers will celebrate their 25th year in space.

Little about the low-slung, red brick building at 460 Sierra Madre Villa Ave. suggests its purpose. The structure fronts a block of 1950s-vintage, ranch-style homes, with RVs parked in driveways and magnolias planted along the sidewalk. Down the street, there's a Christian preschool; up the street, a branch library. The front door opens to a maze of cubicles--the ubiquitous "work stations" of the modern American office. It is hardly a beehive.

A third moon of Neptune, about one-fifth the size of Earth's moon, has been discovered in photographs taken by the Voyager 2 space probe, JPL researchers said Friday. Only two moons, Nereid and Triton, were previously known. The newly found moon, temporarily designated 1989 N1, is an estimated 125 to 400 miles in diameter and orbits Neptune's Equator at an altitude of about 57,000 miles. It was discovered by JPL astronomer Stephen P.

The Voyager 2 spacecraft has discovered three more moons orbiting Neptune although the small craft is still 21 million miles and three weeks away from its close encounter with the distant planet, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Thursday. That brings to six the total number of moons known to be circling Neptune, including one discovered by Voyager last month. All of the newly discovered moons are small and in orbits close to the giant, gaseous planet.

The Grand Tour is almost over. The venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft is sailing through the back yard of the solar system at more than 42,000 m.p.h., closing in on the last encounter of the most incredible journey of all. The automated craft is plunging through an area nearly 3 billion miles away where no visitor from Earth has ever been before, aiming toward a spectacular flight over the cloud tops of Neptune at 9 p.m. on Aug. 24.

There will be something for everybody in the nighttime sky during the next few weeks, including a meteor shower this weekend and a total eclipse of the moon next week. August will also bring the astronomical highlight of the year when the aging Voyager 2 spacecraft zips over the cloud tops of Neptune on the evening of Aug. 24.

The Voyager space probe, continuing to make new discoveries two weeks before its planned close encounter with Neptune, on Friday sent back the first pictures of partial rings called "ring arcs" around the solar system's fourth-largest planet. Researchers have long suspected the rings' existence, but had never seen them from Earth-based telescopes.

Who says scientists are cautious folk? A couple of years ago Prof. Alexander Dessler of Rice University suggested that his fellow planetologists lay it on the line and predict what the spacecraft Voyager would find when it offered them their first close look at Neptune. That encounter is coming next week. Dessler, then editor of Geophysical Review Letters and normally a congenial fellow not given to mischievousness, thought it would be "fun" to put his colleagues on the spot.

For the first time, the spacecraft Voyager has detected intense radio signals coming from Neptune, revealing that the planet has a magnetic field and indicating that next week's close encounter will be as intriguing as scientists had hoped. The discovery suggests that the spacecraft will find a wide range of interesting phenomena as it passes close to the distant planet Thursday night, including the kind of auroral activity that produces the northern and southern lights on Earth.