NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 interstellar probes celebrate 45 years in space – World Energy Trade – worldenergytrade

NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 missions are the longest in the history of the iconic space agency. They have remained in space for 45 years, offering us close-up images of Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 was responsible for the “pale blue dot” image, taken at the suggestion of famed astrophysicist and science popularizer Carl Sagan. That image, and Sagan’s words (in the video below), brilliantly encapsulate the legacy of the Voyager missions. They altered our perspective on our place in the universe and paved the way for subsequent missions, such as Cassini’s mission to Jupiter and even this year’s James Webb telescope observations. Something impressive for two space probes that, as NASA says, have about 3 million times less memory than modern smartphones. Voyager 1 and 2: humanity’s two interstellar probes Voyager 2 was the first of two probes launched by NASA to investigate the outer planets of our Solar System. It was launched on August 20, 1977 aboard a Titan IIIE-Centaur from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. Voyager 1 was launched approximately two weeks later, on September 5. The Voyager launches were timed to take advantage of an alignment of the outer planets that only occurs once every 176 years. This alignment would allow the probes to jump from one planet to another with the help of a gravitational pull. Voyager 1 was tasked with imaging and analyzing Jupiter and Saturn. In 1990, having flown past Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyager team prepared to shut down the spacecraft’s imaging equipment. Just before doing so, Carl Sagan suggested that they lead the team to Earth. The results can be seen in the video above. Voyager 2 also took pictures of Saturn and Jupiter, but then headed toward Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 is currently about 12 billion miles (19 billion km) from Earth. For its part, Voyager 1 crossed the boundary into interstellar space in 2012, while Voyager 2 crossed the outer edge of our solar system in 2018. Using instruments from the probes’ Plasma Science Subsystem, the spacecraft team Voyager planned the interstellar phase of the mission and was able to measure the decay of the solar wind as each of the spacecraft left the outer edges of the Solar System. News taken from: Interesting Engineering / Free translation from English by World Energy Trade Sign up for our free weekly newsletter here. Do not hesitate to contact us to give us suggestions and news. It is enough to send a message to This email address is being protected from spam bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to let us know. More space science news: