The venerable NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a milestone, but what is it about? The Voyager 1 probe was launched 45 years ago, on September 5, 1977a few weeks after its twin Voyager 2, but soon overtook it, with the two spacecraft being designed to fly over Jupiter and Saturn, taking advantage of a favorable alignment of the solar system.
At the time, no one expected the spacecraft to work even more than four decades later, but now, Voyagers are stretching to about 50 years in space, with Voyager 1 currently being more than 23.5 billion kilometers (14.6 billion miles) from the earthwhich is more than 157 times the distance from our planet to the Sun, and travels outward at a speed of 60,000 km / h (38,000 mph).
“Today, as both Voyagers explore interstellar space, they are providing humanity with observations of uncharted territory”
he has declared Linda Spilker, deputy scientist of the Voyager project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, in a declaration.
Voyager 1 in particular has something to celebrate with this anniversary, as NASA recently managed to correct a glitch that had caused the spacecraft to rely on a deceased computer, which resulted in the spacecraft sending incomprehensible data. home on Earth, and although mission personnel brought the spacecraft back on track, they are still looking into what triggered the problem, according to a NASA statement.
A little history of the Voyager 1 probe
After launching in 1977, mission milestones came quickly. The Voyager 1 spacecraft got its first glimpse of Jupiter in April 1978 and came closest to the huge planet in March 1979. The spacecraft also glimpsed Jupiter’s moons, including Io, the strange volcanic surface of which Voyager 1 has unveiled.
Then, the spacecraft headed for Saturn and its largest moon, Titan, making its flyby in November 1979, just over two years after launch. Voyager 1’s detour to take a closer look at Titan meant it no longer flew over; its twin Voyager 2 has instead continued to sail towards Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 1 became the most distant man-made object in 1998, according to NASA, and marked 100 times the distance from Earth to the Sun in 2006.
In 2012, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space, the region beyond the heliosphere, which is the bubble made up of charged particles that constantly flow from the sun and recede into space. Beyond the heliosphere, the spacecraft records far more cosmic rays – fragments of atoms whizzing through space – than solar particles.
“This is the first time we have been able to directly study how a star, our sun, interacts with particles and magnetic fields outside our heliosphere, helping scientists understand the local neighborhood between stars, by flipping some of the theories about this region and providing key information for future missions. “
Spilker added
Although four instruments on the Voyager 1 probe are still collecting data to send to Earth, mission personnel expect to have to shut down additional instruments as time passes and the probe’s nuclear power source weakens.
Eventually, the twin probes will be silent, even as they continue to whiz through space for billions of years.
“The Voyagers have continued to make surprising discoveries, inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers. We don’t know how long the mission will continue, but we can be sure that the spacecraft will provide even more scientific surprises as they move away from Earth. “
said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at JPL, in the same statement.
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