Monday, January 9, 2023

3815 - VOYAGER SPACECRAFT

 

          -  3815  -   VOYAGER  SPACECRAFT  -   Since the 1972 launch of   Pioneer 10 we now have five spacecraft that have      either reached the edges   of our solar system or are fast approaching it: Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons.


------------------------------  3815  -  VOYAGER  SPACECRAFT 

          -      Most of these probes have defied their expected deaths and are still operating long beyond their original mission plans. These spacecraft were originally planned to explore our neighboring planets, but now they're out of the solar system, providing astronomers with unique vantage points in space.

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          -  The Voyager missions celebrated a very special anniversary this year: 45    years of operations. From close fly-bys of the outer planets to exploring humans' furthest reach in space, these two spacecraft have contributed           immensely to astronomers' understanding of the solar system.

          -  Their main project now is exploring where the sun's influence ends, and     other stars' influences begin. Voyager 1 crossed the “heliopause”, the          boundary where the sun's flow of particles ceases to be the most important     influence, in 2012 with Voyager 2 following close after, in 2018.
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          -The mission team hit one major hiccup this year, when the spacecraft began sending home garbled information about its location. The engineers        found the cause, the spacecraft was using a bad piece of computer hardware    when it shouldn't have, and restored operations.

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          -  The team is also actively managing the power supply onboard each spacecraft, which is dwindling each year as the probes' radioactive     generators grow increasingly inefficient. This year, mission personnel turned    off heaters keeping a number of scientific instruments on board warm in the       harsh, cold environment of space  and, much to everyone's surprise, those instruments are still working perfectly well.

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          -The cameras may have been turned off decades ago, but the spacecrafts'       other instruments are collecting data on the plasma and magnetic fields from          the sun at a great distance away from the star itself. Because particles of the         solar wind , the constant stream of charged particles flowing off the sun,      take time to travel such a long way, distant observations allow scientists to see how changes from the sun propagate throughout our neighborhood.

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          -  The edges of the solar system have been full of surprises. It would make    sense that plasma from the sun becomes more sparse and spread out as you         move away from the center of the solar system, but in fact, the Voyagers          have encountered much denser plasma after crossing the heliopause.   Astronomers are still puzzled about that one.

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          -   Pioneer 10 lost communications back in 2003, and Pioneer 11 has been     silent since its last contact in 1995. But both these spacecraft are marks of   humanity's presence in the solar system, and they are still continuing on their journeys, even if we're not sending them commands or firing their rockets         anymore. Once a spacecraft is set on a trajectory out of the solar system,             according to the laws of physics, it won't stop unless something changes its   course.

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          -  New Horizons  launched in 2006. After completing its famous flyby of      dwarf planet Pluto in 2015, this probe has been zooming out of the solar       system at record speed, set to reach the heliopause around 2040.

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          -  Not only has it completed its primary mission, but it successfully     completed a flyby of the smaller Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, in 2019 as its first mission extension.-  Earlier this year, the spacecraft was put into hibernation mode because an     extended mission hadn't yet been approved.          But now it moving into New              Horizons' 2nd Kuiper Belt Extended       Mission, or KEM2 for short. KEM2    began on Oct. 1, although the           spacecraft will hibernate until March 1, 2023.

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          -   We may get new views of Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), the chunks of ice   and rock beyond Neptune. New Horizons' unique position in the outer solar       system provides new angles of looking at these KBOs. Different views can       tell astronomers about how rough the objects' surfaces are, among other things, based on how light scatters and creates shadows on them.

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          -  This next extended mission will even venture beyond New Horizons'         original domain of planetary science. Now, the spacecraft will provide    better-than-ever measurements of the background of light and cosmic rays in      space, trace the distributions of dust throughout our solar system, and obtain      crucial information on the sun's influence, complimentary to the Voyagers.          Since the three functional far out spacecraft are heading in separate   directions, they allow astronomers to map out irregularities in the solar           system's structure.

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          -  The spacecraft will have enough power to last through the 2040s and         possibly beyond each year, moving 300 million miles, farther into uncharted     territory.

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-  January 7, 2023                 VOYAGER  SPACECRAFT                   3815                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

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            --------------------- ---  Monday, January 9, 2023  ---------------------------

             

             

             

             

                     

             

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