The year was 1977 and in the premise of nasa humanity was gearing itself to test not only
its limitations but also the boundaries of the solar system it was preparation for the
paramount adventure to go boldly where no man has gone before with the launch of an
unmanned mission voyager 1 and 2 humanity began its greatest journey ever the uncrewed probes
were not only about visiting all the planets of our system that were beyond our reach till
then but they would also travel past all the outer planets and venture into the great beyond
outside our solar system the voyager mission fundamentally transformed our grasp of the solar
system and how it came into being but now after so many years that journey is coming to an end
with the two probes pretty much running on fumes we're witnessing the end of an
era of space exploration centuries from now if humans make it out of our solar system
they will look back at these probes as the early precursor of their achievement
welcome to Factnomenal and today on the eve of voyager 1 and 2's lifetime coming to an end
we're going to look back at their incredible journey and what they've achieved for us
it's almost impossible to emphasize enough the impact of the voyage emissions on our progress
in space exploration they are the precursors and the principle that changed everything for all
following missions and helped us chart what shape and direction all future human space exploration
would take at least for several decades if not for centuries these space probes will definitely
hold the record for being the farthest traveling human-made objects out there but the interstellar
journey of the iconic probes is coming to a close after an exceptional and unexpected run of 45
years even as we're watching this video nasa is continuing its slow shutdown of the two spacecraft
systems to try to extend the probe's lifespans for a few more years with a soft cut-off deadline
set for 2030 seven more years despite almost surviving ten times their expected life spans
and venturing into vast uncharted territories of our solar system these bad boys are as hungry for
knowledge as they were on their respective launch days physicist ralph mcnutt at the johns hopkins
university applied physics laboratory joked we've done 10 times the warranty on the darn things
he was a member of the plasma science team from before the launch and today he's co-investigator
on both the voyager low energy charged particle and plasma science teams but there's no doubt
that the remarkable odyssey of these exceptional probes is finally winding down in the past three
years nasa's had to shut down heaters and other non-essential components conserving
the spacecraft's remaining energy stores so they can extend their unprecedented journeys
to about 2030. for the voyager scientists many of whom have worked on a mission since its inception
like ralph mcnutt himself it's a bittersweet time the biggest challenge is to counter the
decay of onboard power supplies which is causing a reduction of their output by 4 watts per year
this has been the case since launch however now the power budget has reached a critical state
and the team has had to turn off whatever they can to keep the two spacecraft running and completing
tasks both probes are powered with radioactive plutonium reactors which have maintained a warm
supply of power to the tiny on-board computers that have run for decades without a break but
every good thing must come to an end and sadly now the time has come for the voyagers
let's go back in time to the year 1965 the chilling rivalry between the soviet union and the
united states of america could now be experienced from outer space as the two nations had begun the
space race gary flandreau a part-timer at nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena california
was tasked with an intriguing duty finding the most efficient way to send a space probe to
jupiter or perhaps even out to saturn uranus or neptune america wanted to reach the gas giants
before the communists could gary flandreau had no calculator or computer at his disposal but
with only a pencil he made a discovery that would change the course of human history forever while
charting the orbital paths of those giant planets he saw something extraordinary happening during
the late 70s and early 80s jupiter saturn uranus and neptune all four behemoths of our planetary
system would line up like pearls strung up on a celestial necklace in a long arc with earth
for us common people it may not mean something more than just a cool once in a lifetime spectacle
but for astronomers and nasa this was a once in a lifetime opportunity a space vehicle could use
the synchronization of these planets to get a speed boost from the gravitational pull of each
giant planet as it passed like being flung by a rubber band snapping at the last second or what
astronomers called gravity assist this is the same technique that was used in the movie the martian
to bring matt damon's character home according to flandre's calculation with the help of gravity
assist the flight time between earth and neptune could be reduced from 30 years to 12 there was
only one teensy bit of a problem this sort of golden hour opportunity would not happen again in
the next 176 years if nasa wanted to get the best out of such an opportunity they had to launch the
space mission by the mid 70s of course with such a thread needle sort of opportunity and challenge
nasa took no chance and would go on to prepare not one but two space vehicles to cash in on such
a rare occasion that wouldn't be available again until the mid 23rd century the two space probes
voyager 1 and voyager 2 were built identical in every detail and in the summer of 77 nasa launched
them within a gap of 15 days from cape canaveral florida the voyagers were originally designed
only to conduct close-up studies of jupiter and saturn saturn's rings and the larger moons of the
two planets yep it was supposed to be only a two planet mission in fact nobody back then could have
imagined these probes would spend nearly half a century in space and still keep sending data
back home the spacecraft were in fact built to last only five years but both voyagers surprised
their makers with early success by accomplishing everything they were meant to do and still showing
signs that they were hungry to keep pushing striving for more knowledge the additional
flybys of the two outermost giant planets uranus and neptune seemed possible and tempting the
mission scientists and engineers at the voyager's home could not resist the team that pulled off the
unthinkable back then was the brainchild of bud shermeyer project manager of the mariner jupiter
saturn 1977 mission the precursor mission to the voyager it was a great team of dedicated people
and one of them was charlie cole hayes who was responsible for mission design during pre-launch
and mission planning after the launch a fan of science fiction adventure charlie was tasked with
redesigning the entire mission as the pioneer 1011 missions had discovered that jupiter's radiation
levels were much higher than previously thought also bud wanted charlie to calculate trajectories
for voyager 2 to make a second pass at saturn's moon titan separately in case voyager 1 failed and
if not then make sure that voyager 2 continued to uranus and neptune according to charlie we
winnowed roughly 10 000 different launch date arrival date possibilities down to 98 to cover
the launch period finally launching voyager 2 on august 20th and voyager 1 september 5th of 1977
that was the goldilocks year for the launches allowing us to have great encounters with
jupiter's galilean moons while also preserving the option to fly the grand tour onto uranus and
neptune such a unique opportunity occurs every 176 years so there won't be another chance until 2153
however like any noble endeavor voyager had to confront many obstacles hurdles and challenges
to reach the stars as well the planets may have been aligning but the government wasn't
at least at first based on flandreau's report nasa's original plan was to send as many as up to
five probes to the four giant planets and pluto which has since then lost its status of being
a planet obviously this was a large request a risky adventurous ambitious and expensive task so
naturally congress turned it down but it seems nasa knew what they were doing
because by demanding so much they managed to settle for at least a two spacecraft version of
the endeavor that was then to be sent to just two planets congress approved it and a phase two began
where nasa's engineers surreptitiously designed the spacecraft to withstand a longer journey is if
they knew they would be able to keep this mission alive as long as it were physically possible
they must have been hoping that if both spacecraft proved themselves as highly successful in yielding
results they might be able to convince nasa to extend the probe's itinerary to uranus
neptune and probably beyond according to the current project manager voyager suzanne dodd
who joined the team as sequence science designer for uranus and sequence integration engineer for
neptune if an engineer had a choice to put in a part that was ten percent more expensive but
wasn't something that was needed for a four-year mission they just went ahead and did that and
they wouldn't necessarily tell management the job was to work with the science teams and help
them design the observations they wanted to take during the encounter four of us were hired at the
same time and we shared a cubicle in a converted conference room on the fourth floor of building
264 at the jet propulsion lab it wasn't the best office arrangement but we didn't care the work was
very exciting the veterans on the team had worked the jupiter and saturn encounters and told us
stories of how exciting the encounter would be it was a lot of work and long hours as we got closer
to the flyby day but no one minded it it would be the first planetary encounter of uranus and
we were making it happen we were making history this was a first of its kind mission and entirely
new territory for the engineers and scientists working on the project in the early 1960s nasa
had attempted to send a series of spacecraft to the moon to survey future landing sites for crude
missions after 12 failures one such effort finally succeeded so no one was highly optimistic but
they wanted to give their best before voyagers only one spacecraft had used a gravity assist
to reach another planet the mariner 10 probe got one from venus while on route to mercury
voyagers on the other hand were expected to do the same at least twice or four times the calculation
of gravity assist was the next challenge and they couldn't afford margins of error larger than those
measured in tens of minutes the first stop for voyagers jupiter was about 10 times farther from
earth than mercury another major challenge in front of the voyager team was to help probes
wade their way through the asteroid belt that lies in the large valley between mars and jupiter
this was a whole new challenge and experts were wondering whether a spacecraft could
get through the asteroid belt without being torn to pieces interestingly this turned out
to be a baseless fear very early in the project as pioneer 10 11 flew through the belt unscathed
the belt turned out to be mostly empty space so voyager could easily steer through it however
the two spacecraft needed onboard intelligence to make sure nothing wrong would happen to these
volkswagen beetle-sized vehicles so nasa's engineers equipped the vehicle's computers with
69 kilobytes of memory this is less than 100 000 the capacity of a typical modern smartphone
in fact this is less memory than the key fob that opens a car door but back then it was a huge deal
and look how far these probes traveled with so little well you're ogling at fake pictures on
instagram tisktisktisk the next challenge for voyager was to send and receive data
from a distance that was never tried before the spacecraft would collect all the data and store
it on eight track tape recorders before sending it back to earth by a 23 watt transmitter and
they're doing the same process even now the power level of this transmitter is roughly close to a
refrigerator light bulb to compensate for the weak transmitter both voyagers carry 12 foot wide dish
antennas to send and receive signals alan cummings a physicist at caltech and one of the original
members of the team voyager proudly exclaims that back then they felt as if they were right on top
of the technology he gleefully and excitingly remembers how proud the whole team was about how
quickly they managed to build up the three spacecraft including a full-scale functioning
test model although many scientists have worked on the voyagers over the decades cummings can make a
unique claim he said i was the last person to touch the spacecraft before they launch
my next memorable moment was when voyager 1 encountered jupiter the first planetary
encounter for either voyager since ed was the project scientist i sometimes got to occupy
the crs chair at the table where the scientists gathered to discuss what discoveries were going
to be presented at the press conference the next morning i remember seeing the image of the moon
io for the first time and thinking that cal tech students had engineered a brilliant stunt they
must have substituted a picture of a poorly made pizza for the picture of io all that orange and
black on io changed our thinking about the moons in the solar system i think most of us thought
they would all look more or less like our own moan but wow how wrong was that the discussion at the
table about whether we were looking at an old or a new surface was fascinating and was put to rest
a few days later with the stunning discovery of the volcanoes erupting in real time on io
serving human curiosity for 45 years we have a lot of knowledge gathered to thank voyager for the two
spacecraft not only helped us to understand the giant planets of our planetary system but
also discovered multiple moons over the years that include three new moons of jupiter four of saturn
a whopping 11 orbiting uranus and six revolving around neptune the voyager mission was also the
first to spot rings around jupiter uranus and neptune the spacecraft discovered volcanoes away
from earth lightning on jupiter and found evidence suggesting the presence of an extraterrestrial
ocean at europa jupiter's moon it also found a nitrogen-rich atmosphere like ours on saturn's
moon titan but that's not even half of what they've accomplished after voyager 1 departed
from saturn in november 1980 it began a journey to where no human-made object had ever gone before by
2012 voyager 1 had left the enormous magnetic bubble encompassing our sun planets and solar
wind called the heliosphere and entered entirely new territory the infinite space voyager 2 changed
its course after departing from neptune in august 1989 and also crossed the interstellar boundary
in 2018. in their fading years the two spacecraft are continuing to characterize the outer solar
system environment and search for the heliopause boundary the outer limits of the sun's magnetic
field and the outward flow of the solar wind penetration of the heliopause boundary between
the solar wind and the interstellar medium will allow measurements to be made of the interstellar
fields particles and waves unaffected by the solar wind and truly understand where the influence of
our sun ends by 2025 voyager 1 will be about 13.8 billion miles that's 22.1 billion kilometers from
the sun and voyager 2 will be 11.4 billion miles or 18.4 billion kilometers away eventually the
voyagers will reach other stars 40 000 years from now voyager 1 will perhaps drift within 1.6 light
years or 9.3 trillion miles of ac 793888 a star in the constellation of cameloportalis which is
heading towards the constellation ophiuchus around that time voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light years or
9.7 trillion miles from the star ross 248 around 300 000 years from now voyager 2 will pass 4.3
light years or 25 trillion miles from the brightest star in the sky today
serious so even after they shut down voyagers are faded to wander the milky way galaxy as a remnant
of our civilization long after we might be gone interestingly in 1990 on a special request from
astronomer carl sagan voyager 1 sensors were flipped to take images of the sun and as he said
our pale blue dot he remarked looking at the image how small and fragile our entire existence really
is from the wars of ancient civilization our petty political grandstanding the exploitation of the
planet's ecosystem and our entire evolutionary journey to the present day it was all there in a
tiny blue speck in a seemingly infinite black and indifferent universe tell us in the comments if
you have a special fact about voyager to share and as always thanks for watching Factnomenal
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