----------------------- # 1569 - Voyager Spacecraft tour the Solar System
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- Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977, 5 years after we moved to Santa Rosa and my youngest daughter turned 1 year old. Today the spacecraft are still operating after 35 years and are about to exit the Sun’s gravity and visit outer space. Voyager is traveling 37,000 miles per hour on this incredible journey.
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- The voyager mission was an idea hatched by two young mathematicians. They were doing the math to determine if a spacecraft could save fuel by using the gravity push of the outer planets. In 1965 the calculations demonstrated that a single launch of two spacecraft could pass by the four giant gas planets, Jupiter to Saturn to Uranus to Neptune.
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- In order to take advantage of this planet alignment the launch had to occur in 1976 to 1979. If we missed this window the next opportunity would wait until 2153.
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- March 1979 Voyager passed by Jupiter. Its most amazing discovery was the moon Io. Io was not the cold rock moon expected but a dynamic, volcanic moon covered in resurfaced orange lava. The heat is generated by the tidal forces of Jupiter’s immense gravity.
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- Later discoveries by other missions have found Jupiter’s moon Europa covered in a thick sheet of ice hiding a massive ocean that may even harbor life.
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- November 12, 1980, Voyager passed by Saturn and detailed pictures of not 4 rings but 10,000 very narrow rings circling the planet. The rings consisted of chunks of ice and ice-covered rocks. The rings closer to Saturn were traveling faster than the rings further from the planet. Saturn’s moon Titan was found to have a dense atmosphere. The Cassini mission that followed obtained the first images of Titan’s surface below this dense atmosphere.
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- August 1981 the rotating platforms holding cameras on the spacecraft seized up due to depleted lubrications. After that the spacecraft had to be pointed where images were to be taken.
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- January 24, 1986 Voyager discovered 10 new moons orbiting Uranus. The most interesting moon was Miranda that had a surface of strange new geology.
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- August 1989 Voyager flew by Neptune’s north pole at only 3,045 miles altitude. The clouds covering the pole were composed of frozen methane gas. When Voyager passed by the moon Triton nitrogen geysers were discovered shooting out of the surface.
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- When voyager was 3,500,000,000 miles away it turned and took a picture of Earth, a pale blue dot.
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- 2004 Voyager exited the Sun’s solar wind where the wind slowed to below the speed of sound. In April 2010 the spacecraft left the solar wind altogether and is crossing the outer boundary of the Solar System venturing into interstellar space.
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- The intensity of cosmic radiation is increasing as the spacecraft enters outer space and leaves the protective shield of the Sun’s magnetic field. Voyager is now 11,500,000,000 miles from Earth. We say goodbye after 36 years of an exciting voyage. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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