Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. Space Travel News .




SPACE TRAVEL
Mankind's messenger at the final frontier
by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Sept 5, 2012


It looks like a dustbin lid strapped to a cluster of fishing rods. Its computer is so puny it could not even start up your iPhone. And if E.T. wants to listen to the message it brings, he'll need a gramophone to play it on.

But in the history of space exploration, there is not a probe that can touch the glittering career of Voyager 1, mankind's first messenger to the cosmos.

Thirty-five years after it was launched, the doughty explorer is on the brink of leaving the Solar System and heading into the deep chill of interstellar space.

More than 18 billion kilometres (11.25 billion miles) from home, Voyager is still yielding terrific science as it battles through the last fringes of our star system.

"It is providing us with extraordinary data, with precious information" about the structure of the Solar System, said Rosine Lallement of the Paris Observatory.

Voyager was launched on September 5, 1977, a few weeks after its sister scout Voyager 2, and the pair carried out a magnificent tour of all the giant planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Afterwards their missions were reconfigured so they would fly to the edge of the Solar System, and then beyond, into the utter unknown.

Speeding outwards at more than 17 kilometres per second (38,000 miles per hour), at a distance from where the Sun appears the size of a dot, they bear messages for any passing extraterrestrial.

They are "the two most distant active representatives of humanity and its desire to explore", says NASA.

They carry printed messages from then US president Jimmy Carter and former UN chief Kurt Waldheim.

There is also a 30-centimetre (12-inch), gold-plated copper record (http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html), along with a cartridge and a needle to play it with.

The record holds 115 images of life on Earth, recorded in analogue form, and a variety of sounds and snatches of music, from singing pygmy girls, Mozart and Bach to Javanese gamelan and Chuck Berry playing "Johnny B. Goode".

And there are spoken greetings from Earthlings in 55 languages, beginning with Akkadian -- a language spoken in Mesopotomia about 6,000 years ago -- and ending with the Chinese dialect of Wu, also including Hittite, Latin and Welsh in between.

In 2004, Voyager 1 crossed a point known as the "termination shock", where the solar wind -- the particles blasted out by the Sun -- start to collide with particles that come from beyond the Solar System.

This is the start of a turbulent zone called the heliosheath, which cedes to the last region of all, the heliopause, where the solar wind eventually peters out and interstellar space begins.

Right now, Voyager 1 is in a transition zone, says Robert Decker of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, in a study published in Nature on Wednesday of charged particles called plasma, monitored by an on-board instrument.

"The spacecraft may be making short excursions across the heliopause into the interstellar medium and back again due to, say, small fluctuations in the position of the heliopause," Decker told AFP in an email.

Other scientists agree that the fringes of the Solar System could be somewhat elastic, varying according to energy output from the Sun.

When will Voyager 1 cross the great boundary?

"It's hard to imagine that it's going to be too much longer, but I can't tell you if it's days, months or years," Ed Stone, in charge of a Voyager instrument that measures cosmic rays, said at a conference in Pasadena, California, on Tuesday.

But what a milestone it will be.

"Crossing into interstellar space -- that will be a historic moment when the first object launched from Earth finally leaves the bubble," said Stone.

Voyager 2, launched on August 20, 1977, is 14.8 billion kms (9.25 billion miles) from the Sun, heading through the heliosheath in a different direction, according to NASA.

In the absence of solar energy in deep space, the two Voyagers are powered by long-life nuclear batteries.

In 2025, the batteries will die and their voices will be stilled forever.

But the two probes will carry on their mission, to whatever strange fate awaits them.

.


Related Links
Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








SPACE TRAVEL
35 years on, Voyager 'dancing on edge' of outer space
Los Angeles (AFP) Sept 5, 2012
NASA's Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is nearing the outer boundary of the solar system and may already be "dancing on the edge" of outer space, the experts behind the pioneering craft said. In a lecture marking the 35th anniversary Wednesday of the space craft's launch, Ed Stone said it could be "days, months or years" before it finally breaks into interstellar space. Earlier this year a ... read more


SPACE TRAVEL
First-Stage Fuel Loaded; Launch Weather Forecast Improves

NASA launches mission to explore radiation belts

ISRO to score 100 with a cooperative mission Sep 9

NASA Administrator Announces New Commercial Crew And Cargo Milestones

SPACE TRAVEL
Northrop Grumman Aids Navigation of NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover

Mars's dramatic climate variations are driven by the Sun

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Arm-Work Phase

NASA's Mars rover parked to test robotic arm

SPACE TRAVEL
NASA's GRAIL Moon Twins Begin Extended Mission Science

Flags at half mast across US for Armstrong funeral

Walls of Lunar Crater May Hold Patchy Ice, LRO Radar Finds

Russia's moonshot hope 'not a dream'

SPACE TRAVEL
The Kuiper Belt at 20: Paradigm Changes in Our Knowledge of the Solar System

e2v To Supply Large CMOS Imaging Sensors For Imaging Kuiper Belt Objects

Fly New Horizons through the Kuiper Belt

Hubble Discovers a Fifth Moon Orbiting Pluto

SPACE TRAVEL
Birth of a planet

A Hot Potential Habitable Exoplanet around Gliese 163

NASA's Kepler Discovers Multiple Planets Orbiting a Pair of Stars

How Old are the First Planets?

SPACE TRAVEL
Russian Companies Design Space Tour Plane

Dream Chaser Team Completes Milestone

Space Launch System Giving Marshall, Langley Wind Tunnels a Workout

Space Launch System Giving Marshall, Langley Wind Tunnels a Workout

SPACE TRAVEL
Tiangong Orbit Change Signals Likely Date for Shenzhou 10

China Focus: Timeline for China's space research revealed

China eyes next lunar landing as US scales back

China unveils ambitious space projects

SPACE TRAVEL
Dawn has Departed the Giant Asteroid Vesta

US space probe leaves asteroid's orbit, NASA says

Dawn Of A New Mission To Proto Planet Ceres

NASA Announces Asteroid Naming Contest for Students




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement