Jupiter to several seconds, and short bursts (or S-bursts) that had a duration of less than a hundredth of a second. Scientists discovered that there were three forms of radio signals transmitted from Jupiter. Since 1973 a number of automated spacecraft have visited Jupiter, most notably the "Pioneer 10" space probe, the first spacecraft to get close enough to Jupiter to send back revelations about the properties and phenomena of the Solar System's largest planet. Flights to other planets within the Solar System are accomplished at a cost in energy, which is described by the net change in velocity of the
Space Shuttle Atlantis after its previous mission, STS-51-J in October 1985. "Atlantis" was then used for ten flights between 1988 and 1992. Two of these, both flown in 1989, deployed the planetary probes "Magellan" to Venus (on STS-30) and "Galileo" to Jupiter (on STS-34). With STS-30 "Atlantis" became the first shuttle to launch an interplanetary probe. During another mission, STS-37 flown in 1991, "Atlantis" deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Beginning in 1995 with STS-71, "Atlantis" made seven straight flights to the former Russian space station Mir as part of the Shuttle-Mir Program. STS-71 marked a number of firsts in human spaceflight: 100th