The Voyager mission is one of the longest-running space missions maintained by NASA!
In the 40 plus years that the two spacecraft have been hurtling through deep space, they
have performed fly-bys of several planets, sending back stunning pictures and other information
that has expanded our knowledge of the Universe.
Now, at billions of miles away from us, the Voyager has made more shocking discoveries
of the Cosmos!
What is the Voyager 2 see?
And what do we learn from them?
Join us in this video as today we are going to explore the final images sent by the Voyager
from space!
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets
and interstellar space beyond the Sun’s heliosphere.
A part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory
that took longer to reach gas giants Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters
with ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
It remains the only spacecraft to have visited a combination of either of the gas giants
and both ice giant planets.
Voyager 2 was the fourth of five spacecraft to achieve the Solar escape velocity, which
allowed it to leave the Solar System.
Fun fact: The voyager 1 and voyager 2 were initially known as mariner 11 and mariner
12.
Did you know this?
It was during the 70’s that NASA gained interest in studying the far out planets with
a view of discovering things unknown and unimaginable by humans.
Voyager 1, one of the oldest space probes and the most distant human-made object from
Earth, is still doing science.
The probe is well into the fourth decade of its mission, and it hasn’t come near a planet
since it flew past Saturn in 1980.
But even as it drifts farther and farther from a dimming sun, it’s still sending information
back to Earth, as scientists recently reported in The Astrophysical Journal.
For decades, Voyager has been sailing away at around 11 miles which is about 17 kilometers,
every second.
Each year, it travels another 3.5 AU (the distance between Earth and the sun) away from
us.
Now, it’s sending messages home even as it prepares to leave this solar system behind.
In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft turned its camera toward Earth and took a famous photo
called “The Pale Blue Dot” from 3.75 billion miles away.
That image has held the record for the farthest ever taken away from Earth—until now.
When Voyager 1 left Earth in 1977, nobody was certain where the heliopause was, according
to Bill Kurth, an astrophysicist at the University of Iowa who has been working with Voyager
1 since before it launched.
Some scientists then even thought the heliopause was as close as 10 or even 5 AU—around the
orbits of Jupiter, which Voyager 1 passed in 1979, or Saturn.
In reality, the heliopause is around 120 AU away.
We know this partly because Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause in August 2012, a whole three
and a half decades after it departed Earth.
That puts the probe well and truly in interstellar space.
The region that Voyager 1 is traversing is sparser still.
And for the most part, it’s quiet.
But every few years, as Voyager 1 records more data about the plasma and dust out here,
it finds something.
For instance, in 2012 and again in 2014, Voyager 1 felt a shock.
According to Kurth, what Voyager 1 recorded was a magnetic spike, accompanied by a burst
of energetic electrons that caused intense, oscillating electric fields.
These shocks are the most distant effects of the sun, rippling outwards even past the
heliopause.
What Voyager 1 encountered in 2020 was another jump in magnetic field strength, but without
those intense electrical oscillations.
Scientists instead think it’s a pressure front, a much more subtle disturbance moving
out into the interstellar medium.
Voyager 1 previously encountered something like it in 2017.
Voyager 1 is still within the sun’s gravitational influence.
In about 300 years, scientists expect, Voyager 1 will start to enter the inner edge of the
Oort cloud, that shroud of comets that stretches as far as several light-years away.
According to some researchers from MIT, voyager 1 is still capable of surprising scientists
through its various unthinkable discoveries.
Meanwhile, On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched
from Earth in 1977.
The craft is now traveling more than 11.6 billion miles that are about 18.8 billion
km away from earth
It is beyond the heliopause, or boundary region, where the sun’s influence ends and the interstellar
medium begins.
The 43-year-old space probe was left flying solo for 7 months while repairs were made
to the radio antenna that commands it.
The only radio antenna that can command the space probe is the Deep Space Station 43 antenna
in Canberra, Australia which supposedly has been offline since March.
Voyager 2 has been traveling through space since its launch in 1977, and is now more
than 11.6 billion miles ( 18.8 billion km) from Earth.
Voyager 2 entered interstellar space two years ago, in November 2018, when the spacecraft
exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created
by the sun that surrounds the planets and the Kuiper Belt.
Since DSS43 went offline in mid-March for repairs, mission operators have been able
to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but they haven’t been able
to send commands to the probe.
The recent call to Voyager 2 was a test of new hardware installed on DSS43, which is
part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, a collection of radio antenna facilities spaced equally
around the globe in Canberra; Goldstone, California; and Madrid, Spain.
Among the upgrades to DSS43 are two new radio transmitters.
One of them, which is used to talk with Voyager 2, hasn’t been replaced in over 47 years.
Engineers have also upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supply equipment, and other
electronics needed to run the new transmitters.
NASA said that the successful call to Voyager 2 is just one indication that the dish will
be fully back online as planned in February 2021.
Although both of the Voyager probes – Voyager 1, launched September 5, 1977, and Voyager
2, launched 16 days before its twin – have left the heliosphere, neither spacecraft has
yet left the solar system, and won’t be leaving anytime soon.
Both Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 have traveled well beyond their original destinations.
The spacecraft were built to last five years and conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and
Saturn.
However, as the mission continued, Voyager 2 was able to accomplish additional flybys
of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune.
As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming was used to give
the Voyagers greater capabilities than they possessed when they left Earth.
Their two-planet mission became a four-planet mission.
Their five-year lifespans have stretched to 43 years, making Voyager 2 NASA’s longest-running
mission.
As of reports on October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The probe had been flying solo since March 2020 while repairs were made to the radio
antenna in Australia used to control it.
Of all the contact problems between the scientists and the two probes, Voyager 2 and its twin,
Voyager 1, performed an unprecedented “grand tour” of the solar system’s giant planets
like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
The duo aced this task and then kept on flying, all the way out to interstellar space.
Voyager 1 reached this exploration frontier in August 2012, becoming the first human-made
object ever to leave the heliosphere, the big bubble of magnetic fields and charged
particles that the sun blows around itself.
Voyager 2 followed about six years later.
The two craft are running low on power, and mission team members have turned off a few
science instruments to maximize the remaining juice and extend the probes’ lifetimes.
Both spacecraft probably have enough power left to keep gathering data through 2024,
mission team members have said.
Also let’s keep an eye on the images that the James Webb Telescope will throw, hopefully
will help scientists a lot, let’s see if it can help to Prove Stephen Hawking's Multiverse
Theory.
Hopefully, the duo would discover something new before they run out of time and shock
the researchers and scientists further!