Jun 1 1981
From The Space Library
NASA said that the principal investigators for the plasma-wave instruments on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-managed Voyager 2, heading for rendezvous with Saturn in August 1981, discovered that the spacecraft had encountered the magnetic tail of Jupiter almost two years after leaving that planet, confirming a theory that the huge magnetosphere might extend all the way to Saturn.
Dr. Frederick L. Scarf, scientist at TRW Inc., and his colleagues, Dr. Donald Gurnett and Dr. William Kurth of the University of Iowa, found plasma-wave phenomena from February 1981 identical to those of July and August 1979, when Voyager 2 had left Jupiter but was still in that planet's magnetosphere. Scarf had published in 1979 in the Journal of Geophysical Research his idea that Jupiter's magnetotail might reach as far as Saturn and that the rare alignment of outer planets that permitted the successive Jupiter Saturn encounters might put Voyager 2 and Saturn simultaneously into Jupiter's far-flung influence.
Inside the Jovian tail, Saturn could experience unusual conditions observable by the Voyager when it arrived in August. The next Saturn encounter might differ widely from the two previous. (NASA Release 8173)
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