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Voyager Mission Magazine Article STAR STRUCK The CHP The Voyager Missions: Taking Us on a drand Tour of the Planets - Written by Phil Konstantin and Robyn Mellon Photos courtesy of NASA O',n May 5, 1989, the United flew by Jupiter and Saturn before States resumed its interplanetary heading out of our galaxy. Voyager missions with the launch of the II also approached those two plan- space shuttle Atlantis, whose crew ets, but at a different angle, as well then set free the $550 million as Uranus before heading for its Magellan spacecraft for its voyage rendezvous with Neptune this to Venus. Magellan will reach summer. Earth's nearest planetary neighbor California facilities have been m --. on August 10, 1990, for an eight- the backbone of the Voyager mis- m • month orbital picture-taking ses- sions, with the Jet Propulsion La- son and sophisticated radar "look" boratory (JPL) in Pasadena control- at Venus. ling each mission, and the Gold- But Americans won't have to stone Radiotelescope in the Mo- wait until next year to learn more jave Desert transmitting instruc- about another of our planetary sis- tions and receiving the gathered ters. This August 5, NASA's Voy- observations and data. Both space- This montage of the Saturnian ager II, which was launched in craft contain 11 sophisticated in- system shows Saturn in the 1977, has a date with Neptune and strument packages that allow them middle surrounded by her will pass within 2,700 miles of to carry out investigative experi- moons: Dione in front, Tethys, that planet. At that time, Neptune ments in many diverse fields of Mimas at right, Enceladus, will be approximately 2.8 billion study such as plasma waves, ultra- Rhea at left and Titan top right. miles from Earth, but the photo- violet spectroscopy and photo- Titan is the only moon with graphs are expected to be dramati- polarimetry. an appreciable atmosphere. Its cally revealing. It took over seven years and the methane-based environment Back in 1977, Voyagers I and II combined efforts of hundreds of seems to have many of the were launched on unmanned rock- scientists and technicians to de- same chemical components ets and on different trajectories so velop the sophisticated and com- that experts feel were present that each could maximize its grand plex on-board systems. The com- on Earth when life began. tour of our solar system. Voyager I puter system (actually two in- June 1989 dependent computers) that con- trols and guides the spacecraft is so well designed that it is capable of making its own decisions when Earth-based instructions would take too long to cross the vast dis- tances involved. Each Voyager has two video cam- eras which have been transmitting the images that have captivated the public's imagination. In fact, it was Voyager I that took the famous (and first!) photo of the moon and the Earth together from outer Two Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977 from Kennedy Space space. Center in Florida. They are expected to exit the heliosphere (the outer edges of the solar wind) in the 1990s. Through the two spacecraft, numerous discoveries have been made. Jupiter alone provided a ver- itable treasure trove of new in- formation in 1979. It was found to have a previously unknown ring system over 3,600 miles wide! Before Voyager's trip, only Saturn's and Uranus' rings were discerna- ble to astronomers. Also, by piec- ing together a series of photos of the mysterious Red Spot of Jup- iter, scientists were able to make a movie of it, thus revealing the Spot's motion. This 300-year-old storm, which is as large as several Earths, now viewed "in motion" has helped experts understand more about the violent storms in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Also, enormous magnetic and radiation fields have been discovered by the Voyagers' sensitive instruments, some of which are active in the audio ranges — Jupiter is actually making its own "music"! The two spacecraft provided numerous close-ups of the major moons of Jupiter, which has 16 (although there is evidence sug- gesting there are more). Gany- meade, the largest of Jupiter's moons and larger than the planet Mercury, was dotted with vast mountain ranges and valleys deep- er than our Grand Canyon. Europa looked like a billiard ball with painted-on cracks. lo proved to be loaded with active volcanos — the 10 The CHP only body in the solar system, other than Earth, discovered so far to have volcanic activity. lo, also the nearest of the major moons to Jupiter, was found to be losing about a ton of its surface every day due to the strength of the elec- tromagnetic and radiation fields of its "parent" planet. Almost two years later, both Voy- agers visited Saturn as they moved farther away from Earth. Saturn, with its rings visible to even the ancient astronomers, has fasci- nated mankind for centuries. And they were no disappointment to the scientists involved in the Voy- ager missions. Previously, it was thought that Saturn's rings were several separ- ate bands possibly comprised of Jupiter, above, is pictured with moons lo, Europa, Ganymede planetary debris. As the cameras and Callisto. Below are close-ups of Ganymede (left) and sent back closer and closer images Europa. of the rings, however, and as other instrument packages probed their energy spectrums, the "rings" dis- solved into one enormous layer of fist-sized particles. Scientists now believe that Saturn's moons are continually reshaping the "rings" by their gravitational fields, which cause different density levels that give the "rings" their separated ap- ^ pearance. Saturn's largest moon is Titan and is the only moon with an _ appreciable atmosphere. This methane-based environment seems angle at which the planet rotates stolen from throughout the solar to have many of the same chemi- is almost horizontal (compared to system and assembled in one ob- cal components that experts feel Earth's nearly verticle rotation), ject." Miranda has mountains with were present on Earth when life and its magnetic field was found cliffs 16 miles high! If you were to began developing here. However, to be 60° different than its rota- drop a rock off the top of one of due to both the extreme cold and tion and offset from the center as these cliffs, it would take nine weak sunlight reaching Titan, the well, making it the most unusual minutes for it to hit the ground. chance of life as we know it devel- planet in the solar system so far. Viewing the photos of Miranda, oping there (a photosynthetic- While much smaller than Jupiter, you can see it is truly an extraor- based organism) is highly unlikely. it seems to be much denser, and it dinary satellite. Early in 1986, Voyager II flew by has a thin atmosphere which The Voyager II has traveled tre- Uranus, revealing even more in- shines with an ultraviolet glow. mendously vast distances, and very formation. Several new rings were Larry Soderblom, a member of large numbers are needed to repre- discovered (nine were known pre- the Voyager Imaging Science team, sent them. And yet, some parts of viously) as well as 10 new smaller describes Uranus' innermost major the Voyager mission will be ac- moons, bringing the total to 15. moon, Miranda, as "... the most complished on an almost micro- Uranus has proved to be highly exotic body in the solar system. scopic scale. unusual in other ways, too. The It's as if geological terrains were Voyager broadcasts its signal June 1989 11 - broadcast capabilities. Because the available sunlight on Neptune is only one-fourth that of Uranus (which wasn't that much), new pro- gramming had to be designed with instructions for longer exposures. This additional exposure time would normally mean fewer photos could be taken, so engineers and programmers also redesigned the storage/retrieval/broadcast sys- tems in such a way that, while less The Space Flight Operations Facility in California is the center of a world- data is sent to Earth, we will see wide communications network known as the Deep Space Network, which the same results as the earlier communicates 24 hours a day with several unmanned spacecraft traveling on photos. This will allow Voyager to journeys through our solar system. Data is received from and transmitted to take and transmit more photos three tracking stations in Madrid, Spain; Tidbinbilla, Australia; and Gold- than it would have with the pre- stone, California. There are three antennas at each station, such as the one vious programming. So, in many below located in Australia. ways, it is a better spacecraft now back to Earth at 22 watts of power, than it was when it was launched compared to a normal AM radio over a decade ago. There have been station which broadcasts at 5,000 some mechanical failures, but the watts. But, due to the enormous craft has survived the extreme cold distance that the radio wave will and innumerable hazards of deep have to travel from Neptune, it space remarkably well. will reach us here on Earth as a As Voyager II swoops down to- faint signal of less than one bil- ward Neptune's surface, some lionth of a millionth of a watt scientists expect to find frozen (.000,000,000,000,001). water at -300°F, which would make JPL scientists have had to rede- it as hard as steel. Others specu- sign Voyager II's programming late Voyager will discover an at- (from Earth) to take full advantage mosphere of methane and other of its limited computer data-stor- gases, but only time will tell.
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