NASA’s Longest-Lived Mission: Voyager Probes Log 45 Years in Space

Scitech Daily ^ | AUGUST 19, 2022 | By JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

[Red Badger]

Voyager Illustration

This artist’s rendering shows NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. On the boom to the right, the Cosmic Ray Science instrument, Low Energy Charged Particle detector, the Infrared Spectrometer and Radiometer, Ultraviolet Spectrometer, Photopolarimeter and Wide and Narrow Angle Cameras are visible. The bright gray square is an optical calibration plate for the instruments. The Golden Record, containing images and sounds from Earth, is the yellow circle on the main spacecraft body. The dish is the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna for communications with Earth. The magnetometer boom stretches out to the upper left. The radio isotope thermoelectric generators, Voyager’s power source, are visible to the lower left. The two long thin rods extending out to the left are antennas used by the Plasma Wave instrument. The Planetary Radio instrument also used these antennas when it was turned on. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager probes are NASA’s longest-operating mission and the only spacecraft ever to explore interstellar space.

Launched in 1977, NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft inspired the world with pioneering visits to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Their journey continues 45 years later as both probes explore interstellar space, the region outside the protective heliosphere created by our Sun. Researchers – some younger than the spacecraft – are now using Voyager data to solve mysteries of our solar system and beyond.

NASA’s twin Voyager probes have become, in many ways, time capsules of their era: They each carry an eight-track tape player for recording data, they transmit data about 38,000 times slower than a 5G internet connection, and they have about 3 million times less memory than modern cellphones.

Despite this, the Voyagers remain on the cutting edge of space exploration. Managed and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, they are the only probes to ever explore interstellar space – the galactic ocean that our Sun and its planets travel through.

Voyager 2 Spacecraft JPL

This archival image taken at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on March 23, 1977, shows engineers preparing the Voyager 2 spacecraft ahead of its launch later that year. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Sun and the planets reside in the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun’s magnetic field and the outward flow of solar wind (charged particles from the Sun). Scientists – some of them younger than the two distant spacecraft – are combining Voyager’s observations with data from newer missions to get a more complete picture of our Sun and how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space.

Voyager Testing

This archival photo shows engineers working on vibration acoustics and pyro shock testing of NASA’s Voyager on November 18, 1976. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“The heliophysics mission fleet provides invaluable insights into our Sun, from understanding the corona or the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, to examining the Sun’s impacts throughout the solar system, including here on Earth, in our atmosphere, and on into interstellar space,” said Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Over the last 45 years, the Voyager missions have been integral in providing this knowledge and have helped change our understanding of the Sun and its influence in ways no other spacecraft can.”

Voyager's Special Cargo The Golden Record

This image highlights the special cargo onboard NASA’s Voyager spacecraft: the Golden Record. Each of the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 carry a 12-inch gold-plated phonograph record with images and sounds from Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Voyagers are also ambassadors for humanity, each carrying a golden record containing images of life on Earth, diagrams of basic scientific principles, and audio that includes sounds from nature, greetings in multiple languages, and music. The gold-coated records serve as a cosmic “message in a bottle” for anyone who might encounter the space probes. At the rate gold decays in space and is eroded by cosmic radiation, the records will last more than a billion years.

Jupiter Voyager 2

This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager image captured in 1979. Zones of light-colored, ascending clouds alternate with bands of dark, descending clouds. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

Beyond Expectations

Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, quickly followed by Voyager 1 on September 5. Both probes traveled to Jupiter and Saturn, with Voyager 1 moving faster and reaching them first. Together, the probes unveiled much about the solar system’s two largest planets and their moons. Voyager 2 also became the first and only spacecraft to fly close to Uranus (in 1986) and Neptune (in 1989), offering humanity remarkable views of – and insights into – these distant worlds.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot and White Ovals Voyager 1

This photo of Jupiter was taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 on the evening of March 1, 1979, from a distance of 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers). The photo shows Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (top) and one of the white ovals. Credit: NASA/JPL

While Voyager 2 was conducting these flybys, Voyager 1 headed toward the boundary of the heliosphere. Upon exiting it in 2012, Voyager 1 discovered that the heliosphere blocks 70% of cosmic rays, or energetic particles created by exploding stars. Voyager 2, after completing its planetary explorations, continued to the heliosphere boundary, exiting in 2018. The twin spacecraft’s combined data from this region has challenged previous theories about the exact shape of the heliosphere.

Volcanic Explosion on Io Voyager 1

NASA’s Voyager 1 acquired this image of a volcanic explosion on Io on March 4, 1979, about 11 hours before the spacecraft’s closest approach to the moon of Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL

“Today, as both Voyagers explore interstellar space, they are providing humanity with observations of uncharted territory,” said Linda Spilker, Voyager’s deputy project scientist at JPL. “This is the first time we’ve been able to directly study how a star, our Sun, interacts with the particles and magnetic fields outside our heliosphere, helping scientists understand the local neighborhood between the stars, upending some of the theories about this region, and providing key information for future missions.”

Saturn and 4 Icy Moons Voyager 2

This approximate natural-color image from NASA’s Voyager 2 shows Saturn, its rings, and four of its icy satellites. Three satellites Tethys, Dione, and Rhea are visible against the darkness of space. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

The Long Journey

Over the years, the Voyager team has grown accustomed to surmounting challenges that come with operating such mature spacecraft, sometimes calling upon retired colleagues for their expertise or digging through documents written decades ago.

Neptune Voyager 2

Neptune’s green-blue atmosphere was shown in greater detail than ever before in this image from NASA’s Voyager 2 as the spacecraft rapidly approached its encounter with the giant planet in August 1989. Credit: NASA/JPL

Uranus Voyager 2

This is an image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Triton Voyager 2

This image, taken by NASA’s Voyager 2 early in the morning of August 23, 1989, is a false color image of Triton, Neptune’s largest satellite; mottling in the bright southern hemisphere is present. Credit: NASA/JPL

Pale Blue Dot

This updated version of the iconic “Pale Blue Dot” image taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft uses modern image-processing software and techniques to revisit the well-known Voyager view while attempting to respect the original data and intent of those who planned the images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Each Voyager is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator containing plutonium, which gives off heat that is converted to electricity. As the plutonium decays, the heat output decreases and the Voyagers lose electricity. To compensate, the team turned off all nonessential systems and some once considered essential, including heaters that protect the still-operating instruments from the frigid temperatures of space. All five of the instruments that have had their heaters turned off since 2019 are still working, despite being well below the lowest temperatures they were ever tested at.

Voyager Goes Interstellar

This illustrated graphic was made to mark Voyager 1’s entry into interstellar space in 2012. It puts solar system distances in perspective, with the scale bar in astronomical units and each set distance beyond 1 AU (the average distance between the Sun and Earth) representing 10 times the previous distance. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Recently, Voyager 1 began experiencing an issue that caused status information about one of its onboard systems to become garbled. Despite this, the system and spacecraft otherwise continue to operate normally, suggesting the problem is with the production of the status data, not the system itself. The probe is still sending back science observations while the engineering team tries to fix the problem or find a way to work around it.

Voyager Mission Timeline

This graphic highlights some of the Voyager mission’s key accomplishments. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“The Voyagers have continued to make amazing discoveries, inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers,” said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at JPL. “We don’t know how long the mission will continue, but we can be sure that the spacecraft will provide even more scientific surprises as they travel farther away from the Earth.”

Voyager 2 By the Numbers

This graphic provides some of the mission’s key statistics from 2018, when NASA’s Voyager 2 probe exited the heliosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

More About the Mission

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL built and operates the Voyager spacecraft. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

LAUNCH VIDEO AT LINK................

Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, quickly followed by Voyager 1 on September 5. Both probes traveled to Jupiter and Saturn, with Voyager 1 moving faster and reaching them first. Together, the probes unveiled much about the solar system’s two largest planets and their moons. Voyager 2 also became the first and only spacecraft to fly close to Uranus (in 1986) and Neptune (in 1989), offering humanity remarkable views of – and insights into – these distant worlds.

[Red Badger]

V-GER Ping!..................

[V_TWIN]

Cool......I’m surprised obama didn’t order it to be destroyed

[EEGator]

I remember when NASA did amazing stuff…

[Pollard]

[rktman]

😎✌

[fwdude]

I remember when NASA did amazing stuff…

All without woke and "gay" ideology ruling the day. How did we ever do it?

[NWFree]

V’ger 🛰

[NorthMountain]

We did it by not worrying about all the "woke", "gay", "diversity", "inclusion", "equity", first-woman-this, first-personofcolor-that, etc...

Congress started wrecking NASA even before the end of Apollo, by forcing "woke" etc. crap.

[MtnClimber]

Thanks for the ping. Interesting article. When it was launched I was a ham radio operator in high school, in Florida. Luckily my radio did not interfere with Voyager like it did with my neighbor’s garage door when my transmissions made the garage door open and let their dogs out!

[V_TWIN]

“I remember when NASA did amazing stuff”

Me as well but that was before obamas edict for muslim outreach........and we’re supposed to believe he WASN’T a muslim......bullshit.

[Organic Panic]

AND YET NASA accomplished this before their number one mission was to make Muslims feel good about themselves.

[Organic Panic]

I remember the project engineer for the Rosetta project crying on camera begging for forgiveness for wearing a gaudy bikini girl shirt. The guy just landed a probe on a comet billions of miles away and all the woke idiots can say is “BUT BUT BUT HIS SHIRT!!!”

[NorthMountain]

muslim outreach

I know the groupthink here demands throwing that particular brick at 0bama, but it's bogus. NASA's decline began in the early 1970s, long before anybody gave a shiite about mohammedans. It was all about race, sex, and "welfare".

1) Blacks and women were 'underrepresented' in the aerospace industry in general and NASA in particular, and that had to be changed at all cost. Including at the cost of NASA doing great things.

2) The democRATs were bound and determined, at all cost, to create a stultifying welfare state, and buy for themselves the votes of the "black community". Starving the (almost all) White NASA in favor or the largely black welfare state sure looked good when they were campaigning in urban areas.

[M Kehoe]

Cool.

Or, probably very cold.

5.56mm

[Reily]

Also, NASA started buying into, adopting and dropping the latest management trends.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/nasas-new-mission-and-the-cult-of-management-155873900/#:~:text=They%20may%20believe%20they%E2%80%99re%20immune%20to%20the%20Cult,guaranteed%20institutional%20lifetime%2C%20paid%20for%20by%20the%20public.

[dragnet2]

And some folks are not happy because there are not more manned missions...But these unmanned mission are going to where man cannot and possibly never will.

These unmanned missions have collected enough data to keep scientist busy for the next 50+ years. I see them as reconnaissance missions for humans, if humans can survive long enough and don't kill each other off over their petty squabbles.

I'm not overly confident we'll make it because of all the controlling power hungry tyrants, dictators and religions fanatics.

[Reily]

Also, NASA started buying into, adopting and dropping the latest management trends.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/nasas-new-mission-and-the-cult-of-management-155873900/#:~:text=They%20may%20believe%20they%E2%80%99re%20immune%20to%20the%20Cult,guaranteed%20institutional%20lifetime%2C%20paid%20for%20by%20the%20public.

[EEGator]

Just look at his name…

[ifinnegan]

Great stuff.

And yes, I remember V-Ger from the first Star Trek movie.