Posted on 05/27/2005 9:16:42 PM PDT by Arkie2
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.
V'Ger requests the information....
I still like the first Star Trek movie even though it wasn't a big box office hit. And of course, it had v'ger! The little probe that could. I don't remember though if it was voyager 1 or 2.
V'Ger I think was 'Voyager 6.'
Star Trek TMP is much maligned and unfairly so. It's among my favorite of the Trek films (I especially like Trek 1, 2, 6, and TNG First Contact). ST:TMP has a grand scope, with a genuine global (maybe Federation-wide) threat that reunites the crew. It's a very thoughtful film, with a great sense of urgency. I like it a lot.
It probably suffers most from a long run-time and a very slow pace. If it was 100 minutes long, rather than the 2:10 or so, it probably would have been better recieved.
The film was sucessful, but not a huge hit, but enough to warrant the production of Star Trek 2 (which had a lower budget and they really pulled every trick in the book to get that made and looking professional).
The DVD presentation adds a few minutes and also adds some special effects that were not completed when the film was released. Nice DVD!
ST:TMP also has a smoking hot bald chick. You can't go wrong with that. ;-)
V'Ger
A sentient, massive entity which threatened Earth in 2271 en route to find its "Creator," in effect destroying anything it had digitized for its memory chamber along its considerable path.
Generating a power field "cloud" about itself of over 22 AUs in diameter, the entity had gained sentience after unknown aliens repaired the old Earth space probe forming its core — Voyager 6, whose name in corrupted English gave the sentience its name.
The entity, which viewed organic lifeforms as carbon-based units "infesting" starships, later joined with Starfleet's Lt. Ilia and Cmdr. Will Decker and evolved to a higher, yet unknown lifeform.
PS - ST:TMP has my fave soundtrack of any Trek film - Jerry Goldsmith knocks it out of the park! ;-)
What's really remarkable is that they may continue to perform for another 15 years! What's truly amazing is that they may be just now contributing their most important scientific work as mentioned in the article. Also, Pioneer 10 may be causing scientists to rethink gravity as it leaves the solar system. Check the post.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1400907/posts
Seems like these probes become more valuable and achieve more basic scientific discovery the further from earth they get. Here's hoping NASA will continue to fund them.
That was Persis Khambata and she was hot. I googled her up and found out she's passed on.
WASHINGTON, June 9 (PTI) — Reminiscent of the late Indian actress Persis Khambata’s bald look in sci-fi blockbuster “Star Trek”, more and more of America’s young women have begun to have shaven heads as a matter of choice — to show their independence, a media report has said.
“As her hair was falling to the floor, she was liberated. She no longer cares whether you like it or not. Cutting off her hair is like pulling back a curtain. Now you can see her. But you don’t,” the Washington Post said yesterday of the attitude of one girl who asked her barber to “take it all off”.
“Women with shiny heads — some bald, some nearly bald, and some with an after-five shadow — are revelling in their own bareness without those so-called crowns,” the newspaper said in its “style” section.
Thanks for the pic. When I was reading the article I was wishing I could see that photo!
A shame she passed away, she must have still been a young woman.
As far as bald women go, I think the gal has to have exactly the right kind of head shape to make it work. Not much margin for error. she had it. I think the overwhelming majority of women don't. No biggie - hair is cool! :-)
LOL! Gravy warmers! Must be getting late.
Pioneer 10 has them both beat.
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html
PIONEER 10 SPACECRAFT SENDS LAST SIGNAL After more than 30 years, it appears the venerable Pioneer 10 spacecraft has sent its last signal to Earth. Pioneer's last, very weak signal was received on 23 January 2003. NASA engineers report that Pioneer 10's radioisotope power source has decayed, and it may not have enough power to send additional transmissions to Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) did not detect a signal during the last contact attempt on 7 February 2003. The previous three contacts, including the 23 January signal, were very faint, with no telemetry received. The last time a Pioneer 10 contact returned telemetry data was 27 April 2002. NASA has no additional contact attempts planned for Pioneer 10.
Launched on 2 March 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the Asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter. Famed as the most remote object ever made by man through most of its mission, Pioneer 10 is now 8 billion miles away. (On 17 February 1998, Voyager 1's heliocentric radial distance equaled Pioneer 10 at 69.4 AU and thereafter exceeded Pioneer 10 at the rate of 1.02 AU per year.)
Pioneer 10 made its closest encounter to Jupiter some thirty years ago on 3 December 1973, passing within 81,000 miles of the cloudtops. This historic event marked humans' first approach to Jupiter and opened the way for exploration of the outer solar system - for Voyager to tour the outer planets, for Ulysses to break out of the ecliptic, for Galileo to investigate Jupiter and its satellites, and for Cassini to go to Saturn and probe Titan. During its Jupiter encounter, Pioneer 10 imaged the planet and its moons, and took measurements of Jupiter's magnetosphere, radiation belts, magnetic field, atmosphere, and interior. These measurements of the intense radiation environment near Jupiter were crucial in designing the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft.
Pioneer 10 made valuable scientific investigations in the outer regions of our solar system until the end of its science mission on 31 March 1997. The Pioneer 10 weak signal continued to be tracked by the DSN as part of an advanced concept study of communication technology in support of NASA's future interstellar probe mission. The power source on Pioneer 10 finally degraded to the point where the signal to Earth dropped below the threshold for detection in its latest contact attempt on 7 February, 2003. Pioneer 10 will continue to coast silently as a ghost ship through deep space into interstellar space, heading generally for the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull). Aldebaran is about 68 light years away and it will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach it.
Pioneer 10 was featured on the Star Date radio broadcast by the University of Texas McDonald Observatory on 2 March 2002 - the 30th anniversary of its launch.
Check post # 7 and link to the earlier thread for a fascinating Pioneer 10 article.
PING - for your space ping list
Ping for your enjoyment
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