Know 11 Important things about NASA's Voyager Mission NASA Voyager I Space Craft reached at the Edge of our Solar System
Know 11 Important things about NASA's Voyager Mission
NASA Voyager I Space Craft reached at the Edge of our Solar System
1.
The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
2.
The Voyagers were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both spacecraft.
3.
Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath.
4.
Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 17.4 billion kilometers (10.8 billion miles) from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.
5.
The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1's passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, and the spacecraft's upcoming departure from our solar system.
6.
Launched on Sept. 5, 1977, Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 into the heliosheath. Scientists have used data from Voyager 1's Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument to deduce the solar wind's velocity. When the speed of the charged particles hitting the outward face of Voyager 1 matched the spacecraft's speed, researchers knew that the net outward speed of the solar wind was zero. This occurred in June, when Voyager 1 was about 17 billion kilometers (10.6 billion miles) from the sun.
7.
Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through NASA's Deep Space Network. A signal from the ground, traveling at the speed of light, takes about 13 hours one way to reach Voyager 2, and 16 hours one way to reach Voyager 1.
8.
The primary five-year mission of the Voyagers included the close-up exploration of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings and the larger moons of the two planets. The mission was extended after a succession of discoveries, and between them, the two spacecraft have explored all the giant outer planets of our solar system -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, 49 moons, and the systems of rings and magnetic fields those planets possess.
9.
The Golden Record - Both Voyager spacecraft carry recorded messages from Earth on golden phonograph records – 12-inch, gold-plated copper disks. A committee chaired by the late astronomer Carl Sagan selected the contents of the records for NASA. The records are cultural time capsules that the Voyagers carry with them to other star systems. They contain images and natural sounds, spoken greetings in 55 languages and musical selections from different cultures and eras.
10.
The current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission, was planned to explore the outermost edge of our solar system and eventually leave our sun's sphere of influence and enter interstellar space – the space between the stars.
11.
Where No Spacecraft Has Gone Before - Voyager 1 has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system, where the outward motion of solar wind ceases. The event is the latest milestone in Voyager 1's passage through the heliosheath, the outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, before entering interstellar space. Interstellar space begins at the heliopause, and scientists estimate Voyager 1 will cross this frontier around 2015.
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Sunday, May 01, 2011
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Source - http://www.nasa.gov
