Historical Overview of the Voyager Spacecraft
The Voyager Space Probes were originally designed as part of a multi-craft program known as the Grand Tour. The basic goal of The Grand Tour was to send multiple probes to throughout the solar system in a grand spirit of exploration. Despite the large dreams of its NASA designers, the Grand Tours soon became a victim of its own grand price tag. Budget cuts forced NASA to eliminate all but two of the planned Grand Tours spacecraft. Once the dust had cleared, what was left of the Grand Tour found itself reorganized as the Voyager Mission.
Voyager 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 20, 1977. Voyager 1 was launched a few weeks later on September 5, 1977. The basic idea of the Voyager mission that a rare alignment of the outer planets occurring in the late 70s and 80s would allow spacecraft to
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Dr. Carl Sagan and his associates were faced with the herculean task of describing mankind and our planet to beings without even basic ideas about us. Their solution was quite ingenious, and hopefully, will pay off one day.
Where Are They Now?
After Voyager 2 completed its scan of Neptune and Voyager 1 took the first pictures of Solar System from “outside” the Solar System, the Voyager Program quickly receded from the public view. With this mission apparently complete, NASA had seemed content to let the Voyagers drift away across the stars.
And drift they did. Voyager 1 and 2 are among the fastest machines ever created by man. Voyager 1 is currently traveling at approximately 17 km/s. Voyager 2 is clipping along at the slightly slower speed of about 15 km/s. In February of 1998, Voyager 1 surpassed Pioneer 10 to become the most distant man-made object in space. Currently, Voyager 1 is about 88 times farther away from the Sun that the Earth is (see
Space travel began in the 1960s with sending humans on single missions into space. Rockets launched into the air and just the tip would land in the ocean after parachuting back to Earth ("Space Shuttle Program," par. 4). The focus of space exploration changed during the 1980s; shifting from the desire for human space flight to the desire to create a reusable spacecraft. Originally called Space Transportation System (STS), NASA created the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) (Heiney, par. 1-2). It wanted a shuttle that was more economical because it could be launched, landed and relaunched and could gather better information. The 1980s began a new era in space exploration and had one the biggest tragedies in the history of space travel.
The research area of detecting exoplanets, planets outside our own solar system, is a huge area of interest and funding. The importance of being able to detect these planets is they can give us information and an insight into planetary formation, to help the search for ”Earth- like” planets in the habitable zone, and of course the ever-present question of extraterrestrial life. So on order to attempt to gather information about these things we must be have solid detection techniques in place for exoplanets. A few of the important methods shall be discussed here, including the radial velocity method, transit method, direct imaging and gravitational microlensing among others .
The second and final suborbital mission of the Mercury Project was launched on July 21, 1961. Gus Grissom navigated his ship, Liberty Bell 7, through flight for just 15 seconds longer than the previous mission. The next Mercury flight was accomplished using an Atlas booster. On February 20, 1962 it fired up and launched John Glenn, Jr., inside Friendship 7, into orbit. Glenn orbited Earth three times and when he returned the country celebrated.
Neptune was discovered through a discrepancy in Uranus’s orbit. Uranus’s orbit was not moving how astronomers predicted it would. They could not find an elliptical orbit that fit Uranus’s trajectory. They therefore assumed that there had to be another planet that’s gravitational pull was effecting Uranus. Johann Galle was the first to find Neptune in 1846, even though many before him had mathematically predicted where this new planet would be. The planet was named Neptune and two astronomers who had predicted mathematically where it would be are credited with finding it not Galle.
Although Pluto was discovered in 1930, limited information on the distant planet delayed a realistic understanding of its characteristics. Today Pluto remains the only planet that has not been visited by a spacecraft, yet an increasing amount of information is unfolding about this peculiar planet. The uniqueness of Pluto's orbit, rotational relationship with its satellite, spin axis, and light variations all give the planet a certain appeal.
"Our Solar System: Galileo's Observations of the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and the Sun." Solar System Exploration: Science & Technology: Science Features: Our Solar System: Galileo's Observations of the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and the Sun. NASA, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. .
The Space Race began in or around the late-1950s, during the Cold War. The United States and Russia were both anxious to become the country to explore space. Unfortunately for the US, Russia launched the first artificial satellite and man-made object to orbit Earth, Sputnik. The launch of Sputnik surprised the United States, and we rushed to get our own space craft into space, and to beat Russia to anything else space related.
Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, has yet to be discovered as in depth as Juno will. NASA New Frontiers recently established the Juno Mission to observe Jupiter (Ionescu 1). The spacecraft is currently on route to Jupiter and it is set to arrive in 2016. Juno will orbit Jupiter thirty-three times total before shutting down (Ionescu 1). Juno will observe Jupiter with deeper observation than can be seen by a telescope. The Juno Spacecraft is a project made to discover Jupiter’s high winds, a possible water source, and the planetary structure.
Dyson, Marianne J. Space and Astronomy: Decade by Decade. New York: Facts on File, 2007. 14+. Print.
Research News Planetary Scientists are Seeing the Unseeable Richard A. Kerr Science, New Series, Vol. 235, No. 2 -. 4784. The. Jan. 2, 1987, pp. 113-117. 29-31. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Stable URL:
TheSpaceRace.com - Timeline of Space Exploration. (n.d.). TheSpaceRace.com - Timeline of Space Exploration. Retrieved April 27, 2014, from http://www.thespacerace.com/timeline/
Perhaps one of the most interesting features of our fathomless universe are the planets that are classified as gas giants. Huge, turbulent, and distant, the gas giants are some of the most enigmatic features in our Solar System. I have a personal interest to the gas giants and celestial bodies in general. When I was a child, I was fascinated by our Solar System. I read innumerable books about space, and my interests of outer space had been piqued further by other forms of media. Although I held this interest of space, growing up left me with little time to learn about space, and I lost interest for a while. Taking Earth Science in Milpitas High re-invigorated my interests in the celestial bodies. Using this class, I’m now able to focus on learning more about our colossal universe, in particular, the outer planets.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were both spacecrafts that were launched to Jupiter. Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 was launched 2 weeks later on September 5, 1977.
Uranus is so far away that scientists knew comparatively little about it before NASA's Voyager 2 undertook its historic first encounter with the planet. The spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, and came within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of Uranus's cloudtops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and mass amounts of other scientific data about Uranus, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and magnetic environment. However, while Voyager has revealed much about the gas giant, many questions remain to be answered.
...s take more than twelve hours to reach Earth” (Folger 3). Voyager 2 is the further of both of the spacecrafts and will be the first craft to ever enter interstellar space (3). Since their launch, both of these space robots have been sending back data 37 years later (2). All of these robots prove more than a human ever could about the progress we can make when given the right guidance and technology.