Voyager in Space

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

THE FARTHEST VOYAGER IN SPACE TANGLEDBANKSTUDIOS.ORG PBS.ORG/FARTHEST “You can only explore the solar system for the first time once. Voyager did that.” – LARRY SODERBLOM, IMAGING SCIENCE, VOYAGER MISSION Launched in the summer of 1977, In addition to making discoveries, TITLE THE FARTHEST— VOYAGER IN SPACE Voyager was the audacious first mission Voyager carried a Golden Record, a disk that would visit all the outermost planets. containing music and spoken greetings DURATION 1X97 from around the world. Renowned An adventure with heart and humor, astronomer Carl Sagan was a driving WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY THE FARTHEST EMER REYNOLDS is the story of Voyager force behind this message for any as told firsthand by the indelible intelligent alien who might someday PRODUCED BY JOHN MURRAY characters who made the mission happen. stumble across the spacecraft. AND CLARE STRONGE They are a small band of resourceful, PRODUCTION HHMI TANGLED ambitious, and passionate men and After the final planetary encounter, BANK STUDIOS AND CROSSING women who reached for the stars … and Sagan turned Voyager’s cameras back THE LINE FILMS succeeded. As they reckon with their toward Earth. The resulting image of our astonishing accomplishments, they take home as a pale blue dot, no bigger than YEAR 2017 the viewer on a journey both epic and a dust mote, stirred conflicting emotions intimate that will stand alongside the of humility and pride. achievements of Magellan, Columbus, Gagarin, and Armstrong. In 2012, 11 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 left our solar system, popping Nothing about the mission was easy. The out of the bubble-like magnetic field twin spacecraft defied the odds to survive surrounding our sun. It is the farthest series of perils: a fuel leak, a jammed human-made object from Earth and the camera platform, and Jupiter’s sizzling first to enter interstellar space. radiation belts, shielded by a last-minute MacGyver-like wrapping of aluminum Forty years after launch, Voyager has foil purchased at a supermarket. earned its place in the pantheon of human achievements. Billions of years With less computing power than a from now, long after our sun has flamed modern hearing aid, Voyager beamed out and burned Earth to a cinder, the back spectacular images of Jupiter, Voyagers are likely to be sailing on, they Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But their and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” moons offered features never before seen perhaps the only tangible evidence that beyond Earth: geysers, erupting volcanoes, we ever existed. and a liquid water ocean..

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey (2014) Episode Scripts Based On
Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (2014) Episode Scripts Based on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan & Steven Soter Directed by Brannon Braga, Bill Pope & Ann Druyan Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson Composer(s) Alan Silvestri Country of origin United States Original language(s) English No. of episodes 13 (List of episodes) 1 - Standing Up in the Milky Way 2 - Some of the Things That Molecules Do 3 - When Knowledge Conquered Fear 4 - A Sky Full of Ghosts 5 - Hiding In The Light 6 - Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still 7 - The Clean Room 8 - Sisters of the Sun 9 - The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth 10 - The Electric Boy 11 - The Immortals 12 - The World Set Free 13 - Unafraid Of The Dark 1 - Standing Up in the Milky Way The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be. Come with me. A generation ago, the astronomer Carl Sagan stood here and launched hundreds of millions of us on a great adventure: the exploration of the universe revealed by science. It's time to get going again. We're about to begin a journey that will take us from the infinitesimal to the infinite, from the dawn of time to the distant future. We'll explore galaxies and suns and worlds, surf the gravity waves of space-time, encounter beings that live in fire and ice, explore the planets of stars that never die, discover atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms. Cosmos is also a story about us. It's the saga of how wandering bands of hunters and gatherers found their way to the stars, one adventure with many heroes.
[Show full text]
Interstellar Spaceflight
SPACEFLIGHT TOMORROW Interstellar Can We Travel to Other Stars? Small self-replicating probes could be launched on interstellar journeys. Creating a galactic Internet may yield even greater benefits by Timothy Ferris iving as we do in technologically triumphant times, we are inclined to NEAREST STARS to the solar system view interstellar spaceflight as a technical challenge, like breaking the are depicted in this view of the Milky Way galaxy as seen from 500 light- Lsound barrier or climbing Mount Everest—something that will no years above the galactic plane. The doubt be difficult but feasible, given the right resources and resourcefulness. green lines between the stars (inset) represent high-bandwidth radio This view has much to recommend it. Unmanned interstellar travel has, in a sense, beams in a hypothetical communi- already been achieved, by the Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 probes, which cations network linking alien civiliza- were accelerated by their close encounters with Jupiter to speeds in excess of the sun’s tions. Such an interstellar network escape velocity and are outward-bound forever. By interstellar standards, these space- would allow intelligent species to craft are slow: Voyager 1, the speediest of the four at 62,000 kilometers per hour share knowledge without incurring (39,000 miles per hour), will wander for several tens of thousands of years before it the tremendous expense of traveling encounters another star. But the Wright brothers’ ﬁrst airplane wasn’t particularly to other stars. speedy either. A manned interstellar spacecraft that improved on Voyager’s velocity by the same 1,000-fold increment by which Voyager improved on the Kitty Hawk ﬂights could reach nearby stars in a matter of decades, if a way could be found to pay its exorbitant fuel bill.
[Show full text]
Discovery of Volcanic Activity on Io a Historical Review
Discovery of Volcanic Activity on Io A Historical Review Linda A. Morabito1 1Department of Astronomy, Victor Valley College, Victorville, CA 92395 [email protected] Borrowing from the words of William Herschel about his discovery of Uranus: ‘It has generally been supposed it was a lucky accident that brought the volcanic plume to my view. This is an evident mistake. In the regular manner I examined every Voyager 1 optical navigation frame. It was that day the volcanic plume’s turn to be discovered.” – Linda Morabito Abstract In the 2 March 1979 issue of Science 203 S. J. Peale, P. Cassen and R. T. Reynolds published their paper “Melting of Io by tidal dissipation” indicating “the dissipation of tidal energy in Jupiter’s moon Io is likely to have melted a major fraction of the mass.” The conclusion of their paper was that “consequences of a largely molten interior may be evident in pictures of Io’s surface returned by Voyager 1.” Just three days after that, the Voyager 1 spacecraft would pass within 0.3 Jupiter radii of Io. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory navigation team’s orbit estimation program as well as the team members themselves performed flawlessly. In regards to the optical navigation component image extraction of satellite centers in Voyager pictures taken for optical navigation at Jupiter rms post fit residuals were less than 0.25 pixels. The cognizant engineer of the Optical Navigation Image Processing system was astronomer Linda Morabito. Four days after the Voyager 1 encounter with Jupiter, after performing image processing on a picture of Io taken by the spacecraft the day before, something anomalous emerged off the limb of Io.
[Show full text]
NASA Celebrates Voyager and NASA IBEX Study Reveals New Dynamics of the Heliospheric Boundary
NASA Celebrates Voyager and NASA IBEX Study Reveals New Dynamics of the Heliospheric Boundary September 5, 2017 marked the 40th anniversary of the 1977 Voyager 1 spacecraft launch. Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Although Voyager 1 was launched a few weeks after Voyager 2, it quickly sped ahead of Voyager 2 in space and today is the farthest spacecraft from Earth at 13 billion miles. Voyager 2 is the second farthest, with both spacecraft venturing where no human-made object has ever gone: into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is already outside the heliosphere. Voyager 2 is not far behind, approaching the heliopause, the critical boundary separating the solar wind from interstellar space. The NASA Heliophysics Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, launched in 2008, is the first spacecraft designed to collect data across the entire sky about the heliosphere and the solar system’s boundary with interstellar space. A recent analysis of IBEX data has shown how the heliosphere “reacts” to the changes in polar coronal holes, which change in size with the 11-year solar cycle. A study by a team of scientists led by Dr. Eric Zirnstein of Princeton University analyzed IBEX observations of Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENAs) collected between 2009 and 2015 over a range of energies (speeds of ~350 to 900 km/s). The team was able to track the Sun’s polar winds as they traveled out to the outer heliosphere, where they interacted with hydrogen atoms, creating ENA’s speeding back into the heliosphere towards the Sun. Analysis of IBEX data reveals it takes the solar wind near the Sun around two to three years to travel out to the heliosphere and then back toward the Sun to be seen in the data as ENAs.
[Show full text]
Voyage to Jupiter. INSTITUTION National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 312 131 SE 050 900 AUTHOR Morrison, David; Samz, Jane TITLE Voyage to Jupiter. INSTITUTION National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC. Scientific and Technical Information Branch. REPORT NO NASA-SP-439 PUB DATE 80 NOTE 208p.; Colored photographs and drawings may not reproduce well. AVAILABLE FROMSuperintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402 ($9.00). PUB TYPE Reports - Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC09 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Aerospace Technology; *Astronomy; Satellites (Aerospace); Science Materials; *Science Programs; *Scientific Research; Scientists; *Space Exploration; *Space Sciences IDENTIFIERS *Jupiter; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; *Voyager Mission ABSTRACT This publication illustrates the features of Jupiter and its family of satellites pictured by the Pioneer and the Voyager missions. Chapters included are:(1) "The Jovian System" (describing the history of astronomy);(2) "Pioneers to Jupiter" (outlining the Pioneer Mission); (3) "The Voyager Mission"; (4) "Science and Scientsts" (listing 11 science investigations and the scientists in the Voyager Mission);.(5) "The Voyage to Jupiter--Cetting There" (describing the launch and encounter phase);(6) 'The First Encounter" (showing pictures of Io and Callisto); (7) "The Second Encounter: More Surprises from the 'Land' of the Giant" (including pictures of Ganymede and Europa); (8) "Jupiter--King of the Planets" (describing the weather, magnetosphere, and rings of Jupiter); (9) "Four New Worlds" (discussing the nature of the four satellites); and (10) "Return to Jupiter" (providing future plans for Jupiter exploration). Pictorial maps of the Galilean satellites, a list of Voyager science teams, and a list of the Voyager management team are appended. Eight technical and 12 non-technical references are provided as additional readings.
[Show full text]
The Farthest — Voyager in Space
Q2 3 Program Guide KENW-TV/FM Eastern New Mexico University August 2017 The Farthest — Voyager in Space 1 When to watch from Channel 3-2 – August 2017 A to Z listings for 3-1 are on pages 18 & 19 American Woodshop – Saturdays, 6:30 a.m.; Thursdays, 11:00 a.m. Nova (continued) – America’s Heartland – Saturdays, 6:30 p.m. “Emperor’s Ghost Army” – Wednesday, 16th, 8:00 p.m.; America’s Test Kitchen – Saturdays, 7:30 a.m.; Saturday, 19th, 10:00 p.m.; Sunday, 20th, 12:30 a.m. Mondays, 11:30 a.m. (ends 14th) “Eclipse Over America” – Monday, 21st, 8:00 p.m.; Antiques Roadshow – Wednesday, 23rd, 7:00 p.m.; Saturday, 26th, 10:00 p.m.; Mondays, 7:00 p.m. (except 7th)/8:00 p.m. (except 7th, 21st)/11:00 p.m.; Sunday, 28th, 12:00 midnight Sundays, 7:00 a.m. “Zeppelin Terror Attack” – Wednesday, 20th, 8:00 p.m. Are You Being Served? Again! – Saturdays, 8:00 p.m. (19th, 26th only) P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home – Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. (except 12th) Ask This Old House – Saturdays, 4:00 p.m. (except 5th) Painting and Travel – Sundays, 6:00 a.m. (begins 13th) Austin City Limits – Paint This with Jerry Yarnell – Saturdays, 11:00 a.m. (except 12th) Saturdays, 9:00 p.m. (except 5th, 12th)/12:00 midnight PBS NewsHour – Weekdays, 6:00 p.m./12:00 midnight BBC World News – Weekdays, 6:30 a.m./4:30 p.m.; Fridays, 5:00 p.m.
[Show full text]
Voyager at 40 by Planetary Scientist Carl Sagan, These Discs Were Packaged with Their Own Stylus and Dia- Grams Showing How to Play Them
COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS temporarily stopped moving at the end of its Saturn encounter. We meet characters such as Ed Stone, Voyager’s legendary project sci- entist, who grows greyer at each press confer- ence, but never loses his clear articulation of the wonders the spacecraft have seen. And they’re wonders indeed. Scientific discoveries come fast and furious each time one of the probes flies past a planet. Every CROSSING THE LINE PRODUCTIONS image taken as the spacecraft approaches its target becomes the best ever made of it. Jupi- ter’s Great Red Spot pops into focus, glaring balefully in a swirl of tempestuous clouds. Volcanoes on its moon Io hove unexpectedly into view. Saturn’s extraordinary ring system appears, along with its haze-encrusted moon Titan. Even poor Uranus, that boring aqua- marine blob, turns out to have an unusual magnetic field, torqued as the planet orbits on its side. And lurking in the cold, gassy clouds of Neptune was a vast dark spot. Reynolds wisely avoids fetishizing the oft- lionized JPL team, opting instead for moody The Farthest depicts the cosmic journey of the Voyager probes. mission-control shots and thoughtful inter- views. She interweaves the chronological SPACE SCIENCE account of Voyager’s explorations with the philosophical implications of the famous golden records that the craft carry, as a mes- sage to the stars. In a programme spearheaded Voyager at 40 by planetary scientist Carl Sagan, these discs were packaged with their own stylus and dia- grams showing how to play them. They carry Alexandra Witze applauds a documentary on the twin sounds including spoken greetings in 55 lan- NASA probes as they sail out of the Solar System.
[Show full text]
Lunar Base: Power Generation and Thermal Control System Design
POLITECNICO DI TORINO Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Ingegneria Energetica e Nucleare Tesi di Laurea Magistrale Lunar Base: power generation and thermal control system design Relatore Prof. Marco Carlo Masoero Secondo Relatore Ing. Giuseppe Gervasio Co-relatori Ing. Marco Cimino Ing. Gabriele Cecchini Candidato Angelica Peressotti Politecnico di Torino 6 Dicembre 2018 Abstract This thesis is a preliminary study for a future human return to the Moon and a construction of a lunar base. The reasons are multiple, but the most important one is a scientific objective. This can lead to a deeper knowledge of our natural satellite, how it was created, what is evolution of Earth-Moon system and the origin of rocky planets. The lunar surface also contains information of inner Solar system process, linked for example to the water analysis. Water was in fact deposited on the Moon about 4 billion years ago from the impact of comets and asteroids and this happens also for Earth. Some of these objectives can be achieved robotically with in situ measurements and experiments, but the perspective is also a human contribution. Obviously, there will be different construction phases that will bring to the operative and autonomous lunar base. The scope of this work is the analysis of a power generation and thermal control system for a fully operative Moon base. First of all, it was done a data collection of power and thermal system for different space mission in order to understand what the most used ones are. Then it was performed the system power budget, based on International Space Station to have a better feeling of how much power is necessary to sustain life and perform scientific objectives, that is about 54 kWe for the day and 17 kWe for the night.
[Show full text]
The Pluto-New Horizons RTG and Power System Early Mission Performance
The Pluto-New Horizons RTG and Power System Early Mission Performance Geffrey K. Ottman* and Christopher B. Hersman† Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, Maryland, 20723, USA On January 19, 2006, the Pluto-New Horizons spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) with a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) as the power source and a 30V power regulation and distribution system designed and built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Pluto-New Horizons is the flagship spacecraft of NASA’s New Frontiers program of medium-class interplanetary missions and targets the first reconnaissance of Pluto and its moon, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt. Arrival at Pluto is scheduled for July, 2015 at which time the spacecraft will have traveled 3 billion miles and be almost 32 AU from the sun. Due to the extended mission duration and extreme distance from the sun, a RTG was chosen as the spacecraft’s power source. RTG missions place complexity on the spacecraft power system design due to their unique power characteristics and limited opportunities for test prior to pre-launch field operations. The RTG integration and test with the spacecraft results are presented along with the spacecraft power system performance during launch and in the early mission phase. These in-flight operational results demonstrate a fully functioning power system that will supply the spacecraft with safe and reliable power during the exploration of the farthest reaches of the solar system. I. Mission Description HE Pluto-New Horizons spacecraft is currently en route to Pluto and its moons to perform scientific T reconnaissance of the last unexplored planet in the solar system.
[Show full text]
Article 4; Voyager Telecommunications
DESCANSO Design and Performance Summary Series Article 4 Voyager Telecommunications Roger Ludwig and Jim Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California March 2002 This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Voyager: The Interstellar Mission After exploring the outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—the Voyager spacecraft are seeking the edge of the solar system and heading toward their final destination: interstellar space. These words acknowledge the Voyager mission’s proud planetary past and introduce the interstellar challenge ahead. We chose “Leaving Home” as the cover image for the Voyager Interstellar Mission because it portrays the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it leaves the solar system and embarks on its exploration of the dark and mysterious environment of interstellar space. The Voyagers returned science data from Jupiter in 1979 and from Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in the 1980s. The Interstellar Mission began in January 1990 and is planned to continue through 2020. The spacecraft on the cover looks very much like the full-scale model displayed in von Kármán Auditorium at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Not farewell, But fare forward, voyagers T.S. Eliot1 This article was originally published on the website, DESCANSO: Deep Space Communica- tions and Systems Navigation, http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/index_ext.html 1 From The Dry Salvages (1941), excerpted in [5]. Also referenced in http://president.ua.edu/talks/looking.html and http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/lambeth/lc117.html DESCANSO DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE SUMMARY SERIES Issued by the Deep-Space Communications and Navigation Systems Center of Excellence Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Joseph H.
[Show full text]
LPIB Issue #125
Visions and Voyages: Decadal Survey Report at LPSC On March 7, 2011, the much-anticipated report of the Planetary Science Decadal Survey for the years 2013–2022 was released. As the Decadal Survey was being fi nalized in 2010, Dr. Steven Squyres (chair of the Decadal Survey Steering Committeer) Lexpressed his wish for an early release of the Decadal Survey and identifi ed the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas, as the optimal forum. He and Dr. Jim Green (Director The Waterway Ballroom fi lled to capacity as Steve Squyres prepared to release of NASA’s Planetary the results of the recent Decadal Survey to the planetary science community during the 42nd LPSC. Science Division) prepared materials for the special evening session at LPSC that described the mandate, the survey process, the recommendations, and NASA’s Presponse to the survey. The Decadal Survey committee, which consisted of a broad spectrum of experts in the planetary community, was guided by 199 white papers on an array of exploration and scientifi c topics submitted by the planetary science community itself. The report, entitled Vision and Voyages for Planetary Sciences in the Decade 2013–2022, is the second such planetary Decadal Survey, and refl ects the consensus of the committee and the community. It is intended to provide guidance for both NASA and the National Science Foundation as they develop exploration and research strategies for the coming decade. Squyres spoke for approximately an hour, followed by comments from Green on the potential outlook from NASA Headquarters in the decade ahead and the impact of the report.
[Show full text]
The Next Way to Land by Mark Whalen
Jet OCTOBER Propulsion 2013 Laboratory VOLUME 43 NUMBER 10 The next way to land By Mark Whalen Rocket sled test fixture above replicated the forces a supersonic spacecraft would experience prior to landing. New tests are assessing the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project. If you thought that Mars Curiosity’s landing system was out of the box, wait until then verify that the test system works and that the chute deploys and behaves as you see what’s coming next. expected. Testing continues at China Lake for new technologies that can help Mars missions On Oct. 17, a different parachute will undergo critical full-qualification testing, this of the 2020s decade safely land larger payloads than ever before. The Low-Density time up to 125,000 pounds, which Adler said would test the parachute to qualify it Supersonic Decelerator is a demonstration mission of three new entry, descent and for supersonic flights. landing technologies: two different supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerators Adler added that the previous tests of the new technology evaluated design verifica- and a 30-meter-diameter parachute. tion for supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerators. Future tests on supersonic Future planetary landers will require much larger drag devices than any now in use flight dynamics, including parachute deployment, are set to begin in June 2014. to slow them down, and those next-generation drag devices will need to be deployed “This project is delivering to future projects not just the parachute and the super- at higher supersonic speeds to safely land vehicle, crew and cargo. LDSD will con- sonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerators; we’re also delivering this test infrastruc- duct full-scale, stratospheric tests to prove their value for future missions to Mars.
[Show full text]