Posted on 08/30/2002 9:19:00 PM PDT by petuniasevan
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Explanation: Launched twenty-five years ago, NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are now over 10 billion kilometers from the Sun. Still operational, the Voyagers are being tracked and commanded through the Deep Space Network. Having traveled beyond the outer planets, these remarkable spacecraft are only the third and fourth human built artifacts to escape our solar system, following in the footsteps of Pioneer 10 and 11. A 12-inch gold plated copper disk containing recorded sounds and images representing human cultures and life on Earth, is affixed to each Voyager - a message in a bottle cast into the cosmic sea. The recorded material was selected by a committee chaired by the late Carl Sagan. Simple diagrams on the cover (visible above) represent symbolically the spacecraft's origin and give instructions for playing the disk. The exotic construction of the disks should provide them with a long lifetime as they coast through interstellar space. The two spacecraft will not make a close approach to another planetary system for at least 40,000 years.
Each Voyager has a signal strength of about 300 watts. "One" is 8 billion miles away; "Two" is almost 6 1/2 billion miles out. Picking up the faint signals requires a network of radio antennas.
25 years - makes me feel old. In 1977 I was in high school and Mom had just had my baby sister.
Voyager - now those were missions worth my tax dollars!
Get on the list!
Not so. Way back in the beginning a rocket was placed in outer space with a gun. It fired three ball bearings, possibly copper or bronze, at a speed sufficient to escape the sun's gravity. Why they did this is a mystery to science, but aesthetically it was an achievement of the spirit.
Ferris makes his case about life ... somewhere out there![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Photo by The Associated Press Timothy Ferris poses beside the Porsche he drives across the Utah desert on a road sectioned to represent the 5 billion years of the Earth's life in "Life Beyond Earth." |
It makes you wonder how quickly we'll get ahead of the "technology curve", so to speak re: space travel, and find ourselves waving to the gallant Voyagers on our way into the Galaxy (hopefully before they're used for Klingon target practice ;^).
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