Page 2 - Spec Tech Vol 1 Issue 04

NASA's iconic Voyager 1 marks 45 years in space

NASA's venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a
key milestone.

The Voyager 1 probe launched 45 years ago, on Sept. 5,
1977, just weeks after its twin Voyager 2 but soon
overtaking it. The two spacecraft were designed to fly
past Jupiter and Saturn, taking advantage of a
favorable solar system alignment. At the time, no one
expected the spacecraft to still be working more than
four decades later. But now, the Voyagers are stretching
(Image credit: NASA / JPL) toward a round 50 years in space. Voyager 1 is currently
more than 14.6 billion miles (23.5 billion kilometers) from Earth — that's more than 157 times the distance
from our planet to the sun — and is traveling outward at a speed of 38,000 mph (60,000 kph).
"Today, as both Voyagers explore interstellar space, they are providing humanity with observations of
uncharted territory," Linda Spilker, Voyager's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) in California, said in a statement.

Voyager 1 in particular has something to celebrate with this anniversary, since NASA recently managed
to fix a glitch that had caused the spacecraft to rely on a defunct computer, which led to the probe sending
gibberish data home to Earth.

Although mission personnel have gotten the spacecraft back on track, they're still looking into what
triggered the switch, according to a NASA statement.

After the 1977 launch, the mission's milestones came fast. Voyager 1 got its first look at Jupiter in April
1978 and made its closest approach to the massive planet in March 1979. The spacecraft also caught
glimpses of Jupiter's moons, including Io, the strange volcanic surface of which Voyager 1 unveiled.
Then, the probe headed out to Saturn and its largest moon, Titan, making its flyby in November 1979, just
over two years after launch. Voyager 1's detour to catch a closer look at Titan meant it didn't make any
more flybys; its twin Voyager 2 instead continued sailing out to Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 1 became the most distant human-made object in 1998, according to NASA, and marked 100
times the distance from Earth to the sun in 2006.

In 2012, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space, the region beyond the heliosphere, which is the bubble
formed by charged particles constantly streaming off the sun and out into space. Beyond the heliosphere,
the spacecraft registers far more cosmic rays — fragments of atoms that zip through space — than solar
particles.
"This is the first time we've been able to directly study how a star, our sun, interacts with the particles
and magnetic fields outside our heliosphere," Spilker added, "helping scientists understand the local
neighborhood between the stars, upending some of the theories about this region and providing key
information for future missions."
Although four instruments on the Voyager 1 probe are still gathering data to send to Earth, mission
personnel expect they will need to turn off additional instruments as time passes and the probe's nuclear
power source weakens.
Eventually, the twin probes will fall silent — although they will continue to zip through space for billions of
years.

"The Voyagers have continued to make amazing discoveries, inspiring a new generation of scientists and
engineers," Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at JPL, said in the same statement. "We don't
know how long the mission will continue, but we can be sure that the spacecraft will provide even more
scientific surprises as they travel farther away from the Earth."

Space Explorer 2022 2