by John Macco
15th of August 2009

The first planetary probe to encounter Saturn was  Pioneer-11. After encountering Jupiter in 1974, the trajectory allowed Jupiter to gravity assist Pionbeer-11 to allow encounter with Saturn on September 1, 1979 and acted as a pathfinder for the later Voyager encounters with Saturn. Ames Research Center was mission operations center for Pioneer-11. The illustrated cover was autographed by Ames Pioneer-11 Project Scientist, Dr. John Wolfe.