﻿Voyager's Terrifying New Discovery SHOCKS Scientists!
Intro Four and a half decades
after launch and over 14 billion miles from Earth, The Voyager spacecraft still make discoveries.
This record-breaking mission continues to pioneer human space exploration as the 2 crafts make their
endless journey into deep space. While the craft may eventually be unable to contact Earth, they
still send back valuable data which has helped scientists understand the mysteries of deep space.
Let's take a closer look at these legendary crafts and the terrifying discovery they have just made.
The Voyager Mission The Voyager program is an American scientific
program developed by NASA that launched in 1977. The mission consists of two robotic space probes:
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. The scope of the mission was to study the outer part of the Solar system
and gain knowledge about the outer planets and their moons.
At first, the mission was quite simple: Voyager 1 had to study the planetary systems of Jupiter
and Saturn and Voyager 2 had to study Uranus and Neptune. Currently, the Voyager space probes are
exploring the outer boundary of the heliosphere in interstellar space. As a result of their success,
the mission has been extended three times as they continue to transmit useful scientific data.
It was confirmed that on August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 had become the first man-made
object to exit the Solar system and enter interstellar space. A few years later it was
also confirmed that Voyager 2 also indicated it would enter interstellar space in 2018.
The Voyager space probes are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, a
type of nuclear battery. This is a type of battery that is perfect for missions needing energy over a
long period of time – which would be too long for fuel cells or batteries – and that can't rely on
solar energy. It allows us to organize very long missions to happen. As such it's predicted that
the batteries will no longer be functional from 2032 on, about 55 years after the launch of the
space probes, which is quite remarkable. However, as time passed by, various functions and systems
of the probes had to be switched off to keep the main system in working order. Consequently,
they'll be able to keep their current set of scientific instruments on until 2025.
The space probes were initially conceived as part of the Mariner program whose purpose
was to launch various robotic interplanetary probes from 1962 to 1973 to investigate Mars,
Venus, and Mercury. But as their mission has been changed to go study Jupiter and Saturn,
they were removed from the Mariner program. At first, they kept their original name and were
called the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn space probes. However, due to their evolution from the Mariner
space probes, their name was quickly changed to Voyager. This new program took over many elements
of the Grand Tour program. As indicated by his name, the Grand Tour program, developed by NASA,
aimed to send two groups of robotic probes to all the planets part of the outer Solar system:
Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune. Yet this program was deemed too expensive,
around 1 billion dollars. Consequently, it was canceled and replaced with the Voyager program.
For this reason, the Grand Tour program had a major influence on the Voyager program,
as it fulfilled a lot of the planned objectives for the Grand tour, except for a visit to Pluto.
Mission Objectives The Voyager program used the
favorable alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune which occurs only once every 175
years and was set to happen in the late 1970s. The space probes used gravitational assists,
namely the use of the relative movements and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object
to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft and thus saving propellant and reducing
expense. Through gravity assistance, it's possible to either accelerate a spacecraft,
decrease its speed or redirect its path. While Voyager 2 was launched first, on August 20, 1977,
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, on a faster and shorter trajectory. Originally,
the Voyager space probes were to conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn and their larger
moons. As this mission was a real success and as the probes were in good condition, scientists
decided to go and explore Uranus and Neptune. The Voyager space probes made it possible to recover
a lot of data and photographs of the most distant planets, thus allowing scientists to have precise
details, which were until then still unknown, about the four giant planets and their Moon.
For instance, we were able to observe Jupiter's cloud forms, and its wind and storm systems,
as well as to discover the volcanic activity on its moon Io. It was the first time that
active volcanoes had been seen on another body in the Solar system. It was also discovered that
seven percent of the upper atmosphere of Saturn is helium and the rest is hydrogen.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, was also studied in depth. Among the major discoveries was the
discovery of a magnetic field around Uranus and ten of its moons, but also the discovery of
three rings and six unknown moons of Neptune. Furthermore, Voyager 1 and 2 sent us a lot of
close-up photos of the giant planets. Among them is the Pale Blue Dot, taken in 1990 by Voyager 1.
This famous photograph pictures planet Earth from a distance of about 6 billion kilometers.
Planet Earth appears as a very small blue dot, lost in the vastness and greatness of space.
As the main mission of the Voyager program was achieved in 1989 when Voyager 2 flew by Neptune,
it was decided to extend their mission through the Voyager Interstellar Mission. The goal was
to extend the exploration of the Solar system beyond the outer planets, and if possible, beyond
the "limits" of the Solar system, beyond what we call the heliopause boundary. It can be defined
as the limit where the solar wind from the Sun is stopped by the interstellar medium. Reaching
after the heliopause will allow the space probes to make measurements of the interstellar fields,
particles, and waves that are unaffected by the solar wind and thus providing scientists with
invaluable data. As of today, the probes continue to send important data back to Earth. Currently,
they mainly study ultraviolet sources among the stars and they explore the boundary between the
Sun's influence and interstellar space. New Discovery
Voyager 1 has made a discovery that has left scientists baffled. The spacecraft has picked
up the signature of interstellar space itself, a faint plasma "hum" which experts have compared to
gentle rain. Plasma has been part of Voyager 1's mission from its launch — the spacecraft
discovered lightning strikes in Jupiter's atmosphere and studied how the solar wind
tapered off in the outer solar system. And since 2012, scientists have turned the spacecraft's
instruments upon a completely unexplored part of distant space. That's when Voyager 1 crossed the
heliopause, where the solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles that flows off the
sun — is no longer strong enough to hold back the interstellar medium that surrounds our
little neighborhood. Since 2012, as Voyager 1 has drifted ever farther from the sun,
the spacecraft has measured the plasma around it. This part of the interstellar medium is,
mostly, quiet. It's very faint and monotone, because it is in the narrow frequency bandwidth.
But every few years, the solar wind pushes back. Voyager 1 picks up those events as shockwaves.
For a time, scientists thought those shocks were the only way that Voyager 1 could measure the
density of plasma out there. But now that scientists have heard this unexpected hum,
they can track the interstellar medium between shocks, which can help them understand much more
about a largely undiscovered expanse of space. Scientists believe there's much more low-level
activity in the interstellar medium than they previously thought. This discovery means that
now we know we don't need a fortuitous event related to the sun to measure interstellar plasma.
Regardless of what the sun is doing, Voyager is sending back invaluable data about this plasma. It
is detailing the density it is traveling through and records the changes in the space around it.
It won't be easy to say goodbye to these trailblazing vehicles. Voyager 2 now has
five remaining functioning instruments, and Voyager 1 has four. All are powered by a device
that converts heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity. But with the power
output decreasing by about four watts a year, NASA has been forced into triage mode. Even after the
Voyagers are completely muted, their journeys will continue. In another 16,700 years, Voyager
1 will pass our nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, followed 3,600 years later by Voyager
2. Then they will continue to circle the galaxy for millions of years. They will still be out
there, more or less intact, eons after our sun has collapsed and the heliosphere is no more,
not to mention the Earth itself. Outro
If you liked this video, please also take a look at this one which looks into NASA’s new Helical
engine that breaks the laws of physics. Do you think NASA should launch a new
Voyager mission? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.