Voyager

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Voyager

• Ian Foley

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Table of Contents

• Preliminary Information
• Voyagers Objectives
• Equipment
• Planetary Tour
• Interstellar Mission
• Interesting Facts

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Preliminary Information

• Voyager 2 launched on August 20th, 1977
• Voyager 1 launched on September 5th, 1977
• Both were launched in Titan-Centaur expendable
  rockets
  
• Designed to use the gravity of the planets it
  visited to accelerate to minimize the amount of
  fuel consumed and trip time.
  
• After a proposed 10,000 trajectories, scientists
  chose trajectories that allowed fly-bys of
  Jupiter and its moon Io and Saturn and its moon
  Titan
• Initially built to last for five years.

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Voyagers Objectives

• Initial Mission To explore Jupiter and Saturn
• Extended Mission To explore Uranus and Neptune
• Current Mission the Voyage Interstellar mission,
  which will explore the outermost edge of the
  suns domain
  

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Equipment

• 3 axis stabilizing systems
• Ultraviolet spectrometer
• Radiometer
• Infared spectrometer
• Flight data subsystem and an 8 track digital tape
  recorder.
  
• Command computer subsystem
• Altitude and articulation control system
• S-band and x-band communicators
• Three radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
• Magnometer
• Wide and narrow angle cameras

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Jupiter

• Voyager 1s closest approach March 5th, 1979
• Voyager 2s closest approach July 9th, 1979
• Voyager 1 took 19,000 photographs of Jupiter, all
  of which exceeded the best pictures taken from
  Earth
  
• Voyager 2 took over 33,000 pictures of Jupiter
  and its five major satellites
  
• Voyager discovered an additional three
  satellites
  
• Voyager 1 observed 9 erupting volcanoes on Io
• Voyager 1 obtained the first image of Jupiters
  rings
  
• Voyager 2 discovered the rings were about 4000
  miles wide.
  

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Saturn

• Voyager 1 encountered Saturn in November 1980
• Voyager 2 encountered Saturn in August 1981
• Voyager 1 and 2 both measured a day on Saturn to
  be 10 hours, 39 minutes long.
  
• Discovered that Saturn was 75 Hydrogen and 25
  Helium
  
• Learned that Saturn has an equatorial jet stream
  blowing up to 1,100 MPH
  
• Main objective was to study Titan, but Titans
  haze prevented Voyager to take pictures of its
  surface.
  
• Discovered Titans atmosphere consisted of mainly
  Nitrogen, and that its atmosphere is 1.6 times as
  dense as the Earths
  
• Scientists theorize that Titans atmosphere
  resembles a pre-evolutionary Earth

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Uranus

• Voyager 2 flew within 50,600 miles of Uranus on
  January 14th, 1986.
  
• Measured a day on Uranus to be 17 hours, 14
  minutes.
  
• Discovered Uranus has a strong magnetic field
  that is tilted so that the magnetic poles are
  close to the equator.
  
• Discovered a new ring and dust system that is
  only visible when backlit by the sun.
  
• Discovered ten new moons surrounding Uranus.

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Neptune

• Closest flyby on August 25, 1989.
• Discovered that Neptune was the densest planet
  out of the giant planets.
  
• Has westward wind gusts of up to 1,500 MPH, the
  fastest in the solar system.
  
• Detected periodic radio emissions indicating a
  strong magnetic field.
  
• Determined a day to be 16 hours, 7 minutes.
• Detected three rings circling Neptune.
• Discovered six new satellites Proteus, Larissa,
  Despina, Galetea, Thalassa, and Naiad.
  

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Interstellar Mission

• Both Voyagers are headed toward the heliopause,
  an area where the suns influence wanes and the
  beginnings of interstellar space can be felt.
  
• In the next five years they will reach the
  termination shock, an area where solar winds
  drastically reduce.
  
• Voyager should cross the heliopause ten to
  fifteen years after reaching the termination
  shock.
  
• Voyagers have enough electrical power and
  thruster fuel to last until the year 2020
  

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Interesting Facts

• A golden record is on board the spacecraft
  including greetings, music, and images from
  Earth.
  
• 11,000 work years have been dedicated to Voyager
  through the Neptune encounter
  
• Total cost 865,000,000
• Voyagers cameras are sharp enough to read a
  newspaper one kilometer away.
  
• The accuracy of sending a radio signal from
  Neptune to Earth is the equivalent of 2260 mile
  golf put.
  

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Sources

• http//voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
• http//spacephysics.ucr.edu/index.php