Results of Voyager-2 Neptune/Triton Encounter Radio Science Experiment at Usuda

Abstract

The Voyager 2 encountered with the giant planet Neptune and its moon Triton on October 25, 1989. Plenty of brand new discoveries were made using two TV cameras and a radio science system onboard the spacecraft. At the time of the closest approach to Neptune, the US ground stations could not track the Voyager 2 because of the phase of rotation of the earth. So the Usuda Deep Space Center with 64m diameter antenna which belongs to the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan, was used as one of the ground stations to support the radio science experiment. In this paper we report the quick results of the Voyager 2 Neptune/Triton encounter radio science experiment at Usuda.