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In the Stars: Onward, Voyager!



 
 
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Old May 28th 05, 05:18 AM
Steve Dufour
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Default In the Stars: Onward, Voyager!

In the Stars: Onward, Voyager!


By Phil Berardelli
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL


Washington, DC, May. 27 (UPI) -- Somewhere, up in the night sky, two
dots of extremely dim illumination move ever so slowly across the fixed
background of stars. Both are so faint even the most powerful
telescopes cannot detect them. Both also are unique, because of all the
billions and billions of objects shining through the deep black of
space, these two were built by human hands.


They are Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, probes sent by NASA on a tour of the
outer planets beginning in 1977, now passing 10,000 days of continuous
operation. Long since breaching the orbit of Pluto, the twin spacecraft
are hurtling on separate trajectories out toward the last reaches of
the solar system and into the gap between the stars -- going literally
where no one has gone before.

"Voyager 1 has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of
interstellar space," said Edward Stone, a Voyager project scientist at
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built and continues to operate
both probes, these many years after launch.

During the first 12 years of their missions, the Voyagers brought
humanity its first close-up look at the gas giants of the solar system,
with each discovery leaving ground observers breathless. In 1979, the
Voyagers provided the first detailed images of Jupiter's bands,
including a time-lapse movie of both the bands and the planet's famous
Great Red Spot in motion during the approach.

Voyager 1 discovered the first active volcanoes on another world, on
Jupiter's red moon, Io, and even snapped a photo of one in mid-eruption
-- something dazzling enough to be featured simultaneously on the
covers of National Geographic, Smithsonian, and a host of other
publications.

The following year, when the spacecraft reached Saturn, they startled
the planetary science community by discovering that the planet's rings
were both braided and spoked -- and managed by a pair of "shepherd"
moons.

Voyager 1 actually plunged through the Cassini Gap in Saturn's rings
and headed out of the solar system from there, while Voyager 2 headed
toward a 1986 rendezvous with Uranus. There, it passed by the giant's
cloudtops and discovered 10 new moons. In 1989, Voyager 2 sailed past
Neptune, passing by it and its large moon, Triton, then down and away
out of the solar system.

Two years later, Voyager 1 took one of the most amazing photographs in
history. From a billion miles away, the spacecraft located and captured
an image of Earth, looking tiny and fragile against the cosmos -- a
"Pale Blue Dot," as the late Carl Sagan termed it.

Now, some 8.7 billion miles out, Voyager 1 has passed through the last
limits of the solar system, a zone astronomers call the termination
shock region, where the solar wind -- a rapidly moving stream of
electrically charged particles -- is met and slowed by the pressure of
gas that sits between the stars.

Mission scientists were not sure where the termination shock ended and
interstellar space began. Computing the location was difficult because
changes in the speed and pressure of the solar wind cause the
termination shock to expand, contract and ripple.

In December 2004, however, the Voyager 1 instrument package observed
sudden increases in the strength of the magnetic field surrounding the
spacecraft. Ever since, the field strength has remained high, although
the instruments show fluctuations in measurements of electrically
charged particles.

"Voyager's observations over the past few years show the termination
shock is far more complicated than anyone thought," said Dr. Eric
Christian, discipline scientist for the Sun-Solar System Connection
research program at NASA headquarters in Washington.

For the next 15 years, both Voyagers are expected to continue probe the
unexplored reaches of interstellar space, and mission scientists will
continue to receive signals from both spacecraft -- assuming their
funding holds out.

By then, scientists will have collected nearly half a century of data.
Not bad for spacecraft with onboard computers boasting maybe 10k bytes
each of memory.

James T. Kirk would be proud.

--

In the Stars is a series examining new discoveries about the cosmos, by
Phil Berardelli, UPI's Science & Technology Editor. E-mail:


 




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