In 1977, Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, Elvis died, Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning a record seventh time, and two NASA space probes destined to turn planetary science on its head launched from Cape Canaveral. The identical spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched in the summer and programmed to pass by Jupiter and Saturn on different paths. Voyager 2 went on to visit Uranus and Neptune, completing the "Grand Tour of the Solar System," perhaps the most exciting interplanetary mission ever flown. Now NASA has announced that Voyager 1 - about 11 billion miles from Earth - has now sailed to the edge of the solar system and is expected to punch its way into interstellar space in the coming months or years. Voyager 2 is not far behind, but on a different trajectory.
In 1977, Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, Elvis died, Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning a record seventh time, and two NASA space probes destined to turn planetary science on its head launched from Cape Canaveral. The identical spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched in the summer and programmed to pass by Jupiter and Saturn on different paths. Voyager 2 went on to visit Uranus and Neptune, completing the "Grand Tour of the Solar System," perhaps the most exciting interplanetary mission ever flown. Now NASA has announced that Voyager 1 - about 11 billion miles from Earth - has now sailed to the edge of the solar system and is expected to punch its way into interstellar space in the coming months or years. Voyager 2 is not far behind, but on a different trajectory.
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University of Colorado Boulder scientists, who designed and built identical instruments for Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were as stunned as anyone when the spacecraft began sending back data to Earth.
The discoveries by Voyager started piling up: Twenty-three new planetary moons at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon, Io; Jupiter's ring system; organic smog shrouding Saturn's moon, Titan; the braided, intertwined structure of Saturn's rings; the solar system's fastest winds (on Neptune, about 1,200 miles per hour); and nitrogen geysers spewing from Neptune's moon, Triton.
Charlie Hord, a former planetary scientist at CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, remembers the salad days of the Voyager program, which was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Hord, the principal investigator for a time on the LASP instrument known as a photopolarimeter built for Voyager, still shakes his head in wonder as he recalls some of the discoveries.
For further information: http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/data/122945-11-billion-miles-from-earth%2C-grand-tour-of-the-solar-system-coming-to-an-end.html
Photo: NASA
