Voyager 1 and 2 Space Craft journey timeline

Discussion in 'The Lounge Bar' started by CL1, Aug 20, 2010.

  1. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Last edited: Jul 31, 2017
  2. marcus69x

    marcus69x I love WW2 meah!!!

    I love stuff to do with the cosmos. I love to get my head all muddled trying to understand the size of it all.

    Cheers for the link mate.
     
  3. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Whom are you calling a prick? :glare:
     
  4. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  5. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  6. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Very Senior Member

    Voyager has been active for 12,000 days? o_O

    Cmdr. Janeway and the gang should be nearly back in Federation space by now...
     
  7. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

    It is indeed a sobering thought. Our entire galaxy of 200 billion stars, roughly 100,000 light years across and 12,000 light years thick at the centre, is itself a minute speck in the cosmos. There are some 350 billion similar galaxies in the visible universe and an estimated 7 trillion dwarf galaxies. Nice to know the Big Man in the sky built all this just for us. :)
     
  8. jacksun

    jacksun Senior Member

    Pretty cool stuff, remember the launches of these which at the time was relatively boring compared to watching the first steps on the moon.

    Remember them saying they would be sending back data and pictures from deep space that we had never seen before. At the time is was, sure whatever, now the stuff we've seen is unbelievable, just boggles the imagination.

    Love the 12" gold phonograph records, though I can't believe they put a bagpipe song on it :mellow:

    Voyager - The Interstellar Mission

    W
     
  9. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

    Equally fascinating is how we are conquering the extremely small as well as probing outer space. Intel has just launched 22 nanometre chips. That at first glance doesn't sound like a bid deal, but a nanometre (nm) is a billionth of a metre. To put some scale to this, the average human hair is 100,000 nm wide; you could fit well over 4,500 of these 22 nm transistors across one, or 14,280 around a hair's circumference.

    BBC News - Intel's Ivy Bridge chips launch using '3D transistors'
     
  10. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  11. brickmaker

    brickmaker Senior Member

    This is like the "fly on a giant's kneecap"question! Is all our universe etc just the equivalent of an atom forming part of a fly sitting on a giant's kneecap, with Earth being just one of the sub atomic particles making up that atom. If the universe has an end (a wall, fence etc) what is beyond it?????
     
  12. LCplCombat

    LCplCombat Member

    Just think about it.
    We first managed powered flight in 1903.
    First manned supersonic flight in 1947.
    First man in space in 1961.
    First man on the moon in 1969.
    Voyager 1 crossed the Termination Shock in 2007 (the inner edge of the edge Solar System)

    104 years to leave the solar system after the first powered flight!
     
  13. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Voyager probe 'leaves Solar System'
    [SIZE=1.231em]By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News[/SIZE]
    [​IMG]Voyager will live out its days circling the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy
    Continue reading the main story

    Related Stories

    The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System.
    Scientists say the probe's instruments indicate it has moved beyond the bubble of hot gas from our Sun and is now moving in the space between the stars.
    Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.
    Today, the veteran Nasa mission is almost 19 billion km (12 billion miles) from home.
    This distance is so vast that it takes 17 hours now for a radio signal sent from Voyager to reach receivers here on Earth.
    Continue reading the main story

    Voyager's epic journey
    [​IMG]

    "This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago - that we would get a spacecraft into interstellar space," said Prof Ed Stone, the chief scientist on the venture.
    "Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.
    Sensors on Voyager had been indicating for some time that its local environment had changed.
    The data that finally convinced the mission team to call the jump to interstellar space came from the probe's Plasma Wave Science (PWS) instrument. This can measure the density of charged particles in Voyager's vicinity.
    Readings taken in April/May this year and October/November last year revealed a near-100-fold jump in the number of protons occupying every cubic metre of space.

    [​IMG]

    Project scientist Prof Ed Stone: "We got there!"

    Scientists have long theorised such a spike would eventually be observed if Voyager could get beyond the influence of the magnetic fields and particle wind that billow from the surface of the Sun.
    When the Voyager team put the new data together with information from the other instruments onboard, they calculated the moment of escape to have occurred on or about 25 August, 2012. This conclusion is contained in a report published by the journal Science.
    "This is big; it's really impressive - the first human-made object to make it out into interstellar space," said Prof Don Gurnett from the University of Iowa and the principal investigator on the PWS.
    On 25 August, 2012, Voyager-1 was some 121 Astronomical Units away. That is, 121 times the separation between the Earth and the Sun.
    Breaching the boundary, known technically as the heliopause, was, said the English Astronomer Royal, Prof Sir Martin Rees, a remarkable achievement: "It's utterly astonishing that this fragile artefact, based on 1970s technology, can signal its presence from this immense distance."
    Although now embedded in the gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars, Voyager still feels a gravitational tug from the Sun, just as some comets do that lie even further out in space. But to all intents and purposes, it has left what most people would define as the Solar System. It is now in a completely new domain.
    Continue reading the main story

    Nasa's Voyager probes
    • Voyager 2 launched on 20 August 1977; Voyager 1 lifted off on 5 September the same year
    • Their official missions were to study Jupiter and Saturn, but the probes were able to continue on
    • The Voyager 1 probe is now the furthest human-built object from Earth
    • Both probes carry discs with recordings designed to portray the diversity of culture on Earth

    Voyager-1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977, a few days after its sister spacecraft, Voyager-2.
    The pair's primary objective was to survey the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - a task they completed in 1989.
    They were then steered towards deep space. It is expected that their plutonium power sources will stop supplying electricity in about 10 years, at which point their instruments and their 20W transmitters will die.
    Voyager-1 will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years, even though it is moving at 45km/s (100,000mph).
    "Voyager-1 will be in orbit around the centre of our galaxy with all its stars for billions of years," said Prof Stone.
    [​IMG]In 1990, Voyager-1 looked back and took a picture of Earth - a "pale blue dot"
    The probe's work is not quite done, however. For as long as they have working instruments, scientists will want to sample the new environment.
    The new region through which Voyager is now flying was generated and sculpted by big stars that exploded millions of years ago.
    There is indirect evidence and models to describe the conditions in this medium, but Voyager can now measure them for real and report back.
    The renowned British planetary scientist Prof Fred Taylor commented: "As a young post-doc, I went to [Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] and worked for a while with the team that was doing the science definition study for the Outer Planets Grand Tour, which later became Voyager.
    "It seemed so incredible and exciting to think we would see and explore Jupiter and Saturn close up, let alone Uranus and Neptune.
    "The idea that the spacecraft would then exit the Solar System altogether was so way out, figuratively as well as literally, that we didn't even discuss it then, although I suppose we knew it would happen someday. Forty-three years later, that day has arrived, and Voyager is still finding new frontiers."
    [​IMG]The Sun sits in an extensive bubble of hot gas called the heliosphere
    • Solar wind: The stream of charged particles blown off the Sun and travelling at "supersonic" speeds (white arrows)
    • Termination shock: Area where particles from the Sun begin to slow and clash with matter from deep space
    • Heliosheath: A vast, turbulent expanse where the solar wind piles up as it presses outward against interstellar matter
    • Heliopause: The boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar wind, where the pressure of both are in balance
     
  14. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Blimey still some way to go

    Both Voyagers are headed towards the outer boundary of the solar system in search of the heliopause, the region where the Sun's influence wanes and the beginning of interstellar space can be sensed. The heliopause has never been reached by any spacecraft; the Voyagers may be the first to pass through this region, which is thought to exist somewhere from 8 to 14 billion miles from the Sun. This is where the million-mile-per-hour solar winds slows to about 250,000 miles per hour—the first indication that the wind is nearing the heliopause. The Voyagers should cross the heliopause 10 to 20 years after reaching the termination shock. The Voyagers have enough electrical power and thruster fuel to operate at least until 2020. By that time, Voyager 1 will be 13.8 billion miles (22.1 billion KM) from the Sun and Voyager 2 will be 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion KM) away. Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248 and in about 296,000 years, it will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky . The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.

    http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html
     
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  15. DavidW

    DavidW Well-Known Member

    Call me ignorant if you like, but I don't understand why both probes distances from earth are decreasing. At least according to the monitors on the links given earlier in the thread.
     
  16. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/
    The chart above is a real-time odometer of Voyager 1's distance from the Earth and the Sun in astronomical units (AU) and kilometers (km). Note: Because Earth moves around the sun faster than Voyager 1 is traveling from Earth, the distance between Earth and the spacecraft actually decreases at certain times of the year.

    The chart above is a real-time odometer of Voyager 2's distance from the Earth and the Sun in astronomical units (AU) and kilometers (km). Note: Because Earth moves around the sun faster than Voyager 2 is traveling from Earth, the distance between Earth and the spacecraft actually decreases at certain times of the year.
     
  17. DavidW

    DavidW Well-Known Member

    That makes sense now.

    I would never have imagined us moving so fast/a spacecraft moving so slowly.
     
  18. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Just in case you are thinking the year is whizzing by.........
    In about 296,000 years Voyager 2 will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky . The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.


    Voyager - The Interstellar Mission
     
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  19. DavidW

    DavidW Well-Known Member

    I can't wait for it!
     
    CL1 likes this.
  20. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    are we there yet?Voyager - The Interstellar Mission

    VOYAGER 1
    • DISTANCE
    • FROM EARTH
    • 20,604,083,923 KM
    • 137.72979406 AU
    • DISTANCE
    • FROM THE SUN
    • 20,692,153,464 KM
    • 138.31850258 AU
    • ROUNDTRIP LIGHT
    • TIME FROM THE EARTH
    • 38:10:55
    • (hh:mm:ss)
    VOYAGER 2
    • DISTANCE
    • FROM EARTH
    • 17,051,505,295 KM
    • 113.98227271 AU
    • DISTANCE
    • FROM THE SUN
    • 17,075,368,662 KM
    • 114.14178947 AU
    • ROUNDTRIP LIGHT
    • TIME FROM THE EARTH
    • 31:35:55
    • (hh:mm:ss)
    Where are the Voyagers - NASA Voyager live data


    [​IMG]

    In about 30,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248 and in about 296,000 years, it will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky . The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.
    Voyager - The Interstellar Mission
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2017

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