A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but what do we do after we
reach that thousandth mile?
We answer this question today as we explore the fantastic and one of a kind journey of
Voyagers 1 and 2!
In the Greek epic the Odyssey, the lead character Odysseus took 10 gruesome years to finally
make it home to Ithaca.
And to make that more severe, he even had to endure a few more challenges once he and
his crew got home.
But we guarantee you, that story will be trumped by the stars of our show today: The Voyager
mission probes.
Ever since their launch in 1977, the two spacecraft have accomplished an amazing job of taking
pictures of several points of interest in the Solar System, especially of the gas giants.
And now, with all the strength and capability that these two bad boys have left, they continue
their journey where no spacecraft have ever gone before: towards interstellar space.
And just like all senior employees in a company, we honor these two outstanding testaments
to human ingenuity by highlighting the greatest moments of their career.
To adapt to the current trend in YouTube, why don’t we do it in a countdown fashion
too?
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an amazing idea!
So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the top five biggest accomplishments of the
Voyager mission!
Number 5: The Farthest Selfie of All of Humanity
In the current age, everybody is getting crazy about taking selfies.
Everyone tries to get creative by doing different kinds of poses, adding a lot of color and
edits to the pictures, adding filters, just to make ourselves look at the very least presentable,
and get approval from our social media friends through likes and hearts.
No matter how beautiful our selfies get, I’m willing to bet that we could beat that with
the picture that includes you, us and the rest of humanity.
We know what you’re thinking: “I’ve never even met you, how can we have already
had a selfie?”
How about I let you find out yourself with a little mental jog?
Say I have a lot of friends with me, like around 10.
If we want to take a selfie with all of us, we have to take the camera phone farther so
that the lens could capture all of us, right?
Well, using that logic, we can capture all of humanity in one picture if we move our
camera far enough.
And that’s what exactly we have accomplished with Voyager 1 on Valentine’s Day in 1990.
As the probe accomplishes its mission on Saturn -- which of course we will talk about more
in gruesome detail later, don’t worry -- NASA sent a command to flip over the camera towards
the side where the Earth is, and take the glorious photograph.
Now, I know you may think “Aren’t you cheating?
Yeah, technically everyone is in that photograph but it’s just a dot.
Why is it so meaningful?”
If you haven’t heard yet, Carl Sagan already answered that question in an astonishingly
eloquent statement.
One excerpt from that statement goes:
“Look again at that dot.
That's here.
That's home.
That's us.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being
who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic
doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer
of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father,
hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician,
every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our
species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
I know you think that it’s not even an HD picture of Earth.
It’s not even the first photo of the Blue Planet from space.
Heck, you can’t even make out where Earth is in the Pale Blue Dot photo.
But more than its features, what makes it extremely special, and worthy of counting
as an accomplishment for our retiring Voyager 1, is the message it carries: we are nothing
but a spec in this vast universe.
Let the gravity of how profound that knowledge is slowly sink in.
Ain’t all of that grand?
Number 4: Carrying Mankind’s “Hello!” to the Universe
Being millennials, I think a fact we can all agree with is how difficult introductions
are, right?
I mean, how do you even pick the proper words to say?
How can people just make it seem so simple?
But okay, say we’re completely okay about all of that introduction thing, what do we
say first usually?
Well, the usual approach is to say something about ourselves: what movies we like watching,
what music we listen to, our favorite food, favorite book...You know, the usual.
With the expectation that the Voyager spacecraft will go beyond what it’s expected to accomplish,
the scientists at NASA’s JPL attached two discs that would serve as mankind’s sort
of curriculum vitae to any extraterrestrial friend we may meet along the way.
Aptly named, The Golden Record, this material contains a massive sampler of human experience,
such as: over a hundred samples of sounds of nature; hello from children all over the
world spoken in 55 different languages, both active and ancient; a message from then US
President Jimmy Carter; several images from different scenarios on Earth, to name a few.
Moreover, inscribed on the cover of the two 12-inch discs are instructions on how to play
the records, and a description of where our lovely planet is in a pulsar map.
Let’s pray that someday, a civilization intelligent enough finds these records and
finally drop by to say: “Hey!
We got your message from the Voyager probes!
Neat stuff!”
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On to the next item!
Number 3: Engineering and Computational Firsts
The original mission of the Voyager expeditions was to take advantage of the alignment of
the jovian planets to be able to make a first time observation of them.
This is not a very simple task, so with these in mind, our engineers can’t just simply
send these probes away unprepared.
NASA packed them up with a lot of upgrades that were never before used in previous missions.
Now, astronomers back then expected the two probes to be in space for a considerably huge
amount of time.
They were about to be exposed to the harsh environment of space, so they did their best
to set up layers of protection.
For instance, both of the Voyagers were the first to have an extensive protection against
radiation.
This design was so sophisticated that it became the benchmark for setting up all the future
radiation protection mechanisms.
It is also the first to be protected against external electrostatic discharge.
Astronomers have to do this since outer space is practically a gigantic ocean of danger
for the instruments aboard any spacecraft.
And, the Voyagers pioneering this feature certainly lead to numerous improvements in
building space probes.
Engineers have also prepared the Voyagers for a lot of data transmission activity!
They were the first to employ the Reed-Solomon algorithm to reduce errors when sending back
data to Earth.
Subsequently, the ground control team have also set up communication antennas in an array-like
fashion to anticipate the large amounts of data the probes will be transmitting.
Another first!
And if you’re not amazed enough, I think the highlight of the astronomers’ engineering
prowess on the Voyager missions was making it the first to have the ability to detect
whatever problems it experiences and fix it on its own.
This is important since, as we have been saying in this video multiple times already, it was
expected that the two probes will be away for a very long time, so it just makes sense
to have it fix itself whenever it’s necessary.
Number 2: Exploration Records in the Solar System!
I think this list wouldn’t be complete or even make its point without us discussing
the exploration accomplishments of the Voyager mission within the Solar System.
I mean, this is exactly what they were sent out to do after all.
Who would’ve known that from a bold mathematical theory that we could possibly take advantage
of the alignment of the gas giants, we are now recalling the greatest accomplishments
of these two amazing adventurers?
Let’s start off the list with the feats both the two probes have successfully done.
Both of the Voyagers have discovered multiple moons from the outer planets!
Precisely, 3 new moons in Jupiter, 4 in Saturn, 11 in Uranus, and then 6 in Neptune.
Besides adding to the catalogue of new moons, the two space probes also give a better insight
about the weather patterns in Jupiter, including the popular Great Red Spot.
Before the Voyagers came, the title of being a ringed planet in the Solar System family
was held exclusively by Saturn.
However, because of the observation done by the two heroes, we now understand that this
is not entirely the case.
The probes sent back information about a thin ring system in Jupiter, and a couple more
around Uranus and Neptune.
Whoever liked the Solar System must have loved these three planets so much that he or she
put a ring on them.
They’ve also discovered that one of Saturn’s moons, Titan, has a much denser atmosphere
than Earth, and that
Individually, the two Voyagers have accomplished a lot of exploration records too.
For instance, Voyager 1 found active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon, Io.
This is huge news since this implies that the natural satellite experiences the same
tug due to gravity as what the Earth’s seas experience due to the gravity caused by the
Moon.
Voyager 2, on the other hand studied in detail the strange magnetic field around Uranus.
And, if you’re a huge fan of planetary trivia, you already know that the planet has its magnetic
field aligned along its equator.
Which is strange because most of the planets in the Solar System have theirs along the
poles.
Moreover, this probe successfully flew by all of the four gas giants, becoming the first
spacecraft to be able to do so!
This is a graceful achievement is one of a kind, since a decade before the Voyager, the
space missions were focused on the Moon.
Both the Voyagers went beyond that trope, and set out new records.
It was even said that the amount of information the two space probes sent to us was enough
to repeatedly fill Encyclopedia Britannica 6,000 times!
Imagine having that much material in your very own library!
Man, what an amazing journey it has been.
But I think all of these are nothing compared to the number 1 highlight of the Voyagers’
careers.
Number 1: Going beyond the Solar System
Now, we have come to the most important accomplishment of the Voyagers’ missions: being the first
manmade objects to enter interstellar space.
Voyager 1, after successfully accomplishing its visit on the two giants, Jupiter and Saturn,
was slingshot to infinity and beyond, and just this September 2013, the probe finally
crossed the heliopause, the boundary where the effects of the solar wind and interstellar
wind are in equilibrium.
As of writing, the spacecraft is currently at 148 astronomical units away from Earth
and is continuously moving away.
On the other hand, Voyager 2 took a bit of detour before following its older brother.
Actually, it wasn’t supposed to, and it could’ve followed Voyager 1 immediately.
However, scientists at the JPL saw that 2’s trajectory can still be utilized to make it
flyby Uranus and Neptune as well.
The congress around that time was convinced easily seeing the wealth of data that we received
just from the Jupiter and Saturn missions.
So, the astronauts geared up Voyager 2 for two more flyby’s before finally letting
it fly on its own towards the stars.
And in November 2018, the probe joined its brother on the journey to the great beyond.
As I speak right now, the two Voyagers are still recording and transmitting data on whatever
they could on wherever they are.
I know this will be a sad thing to talk about, but I guess you and I both know that the two
missions won’t be able to keep doing its task forever.
Both the space probes use hydrazine for fuel, but they don’t use a lot since they only
need to use it for corrective action, like setting the trajectory for a gravitational
assist from another planet, for reorienting the probe for transmitting data..stuff like
that.
But since the probes are now going in interstellar space, a lot of reorienting has to be done
to be able to make useful observations.
The more we observe, the more we burn gas.
The Plutonium batteries that are used to power the instruments on board are bound to lose
their power too soon.
In fact, as of early this year Voyager 1 only has 4 remaining instruments, while Voyager
2 has five.
Seems like at some point, we won’t hear from these boys anymore.
But, regardless of that, what the Voyager accomplished through its lifetime is already
breathtaking!
We can even dare say that without the help of these probes, we might be several years
behind understanding our very own Solar System!
And without the features that these spacecraft have tried first, we may never have a benchmark
to improve our current space probes on.
I don’t know about you, but I think that is truly a wonderfully accomplished life!
I’d like to hear from you guys.
What do you think is the greatest accomplishment of either of the two Voyager missions?
Do you think they are as important as we hold them up to be?
Let us know in the comment section down below!
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