Voyager 1

Space Shuttle ' Template:Infobox spaceflight Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System, Voyager 1 launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. Having operated for Template:Age in years, months and days, the spacecraft still communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of 135 AU (Template:Convert/sround km) from the Sun as of June 2016, it is the furthest spacecraft from Earth and the only one in interstellar space.

The probe's primary mission objectives included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's large moon, Titan. While the spacecraft's course could have been altered to include a Pluto encounter by forgoing the Titan flyby, exploration of the moon, which was known to have a substantial atmosphere, took priority. It studied the weather, magnetic fields, and rings of the two planets and was the first probe to provide detailed images of their moons.

After completing its primary mission with the flyby of Saturn on November 20, 1980, Voyager 1 began an extended mission to explore the regions and boundaries of the outer heliosphere. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause to become the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space and study the interstellar medium. Voyager 1's extended mission is expected to continue until around 2025, when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough electric power to operate any of its scientific instruments.

Mission background

History

In the 1960s, a Grand Tour to study the outer planets was proposed which prompted NASA to begin work on a mission in the early 1970s. Information gathered by the Pioneer 10 spacecraft helped Voyager's engineers design Voyager to cope more effectively with the intense radiation environment around Jupiter.

Initially, Voyager 1 was planned as "Mariner 11" of the Mariner program. Due to budget cuts, the mission was scaled back to be a flyby of Jupiter and Saturn and renamed the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn probes. As the program progressed, the name was later changed to Voyager, since the probe designs began to differ greatly from previous Mariner missions.

Spacecraft components

Main article: Voyager program#Spacecraft design

The 3.7 m (Template:Convert/round ft) diameter high gain dish antenna used on the Voyager craft

Voyager 1 was constructed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It has 16 hydrazine thrusters, three-axis stabilization gyroscopes, and referencing instruments to keep the probe's radio antenna pointed toward Earth. Collectively, these instruments are part of the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS), along with redundant units of most instruments and 8 backup thrusters. The spacecraft also included 11 scientific instruments to study celestial objects such as planets as it travels through space.

Communication system

The radio communication system of Voyager 1 was designed to be used up to and beyond the limits of the Solar System. The communication system includes a 3.7-meter (Template:Convert/LoffAonSon) diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna to send and receive radio waves via the three Deep Space Network stations on the Earth. The craft normally transmits data to Earth over Deep Space Network Channel 18, using a frequency of either 2.3 GHz or 8.4 GHz, while signals from Earth to Voyager are broadcast at 2.1 GHz.

When Voyager 1 is unable to communicate directly with the Earth, its digital tape recorder (DTR) can record about 64 kilobytes of data for transmission at another time. As of October 2014, signals from Voyager 1 take over 18 hours to reach Earth.

Power

Voyager 1 has three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) mounted on a boom. Each MHW-RTG contains 24 pressed plutonium-238 oxide spheres. The RTGs generated about 470 watts of electric power at the time of launch, with the remainder being dissipated as waste heat. The power output of the RTGs declines over time (due to the 87.7-year half-life of the fuel and degradation of the thermocouples), but the craft's RTGs will continue to support some of its operations until 2025.

Diagram of RTG fuel container, showing the plutonium-238 oxide spheres

Diagram of RTG shell, showing the power-producing silicon-germanium thermocouples

Model of an RTG unit

As of 2024-04-19, Voyager 1 only has % of the plutonium-238 that it had at launch. By 2025, it will have only % left.

Computers

Unlike the other onboard instruments, the operation of the cameras for visible light is not autonomous, but rather it is controlled by an imaging parameter table contained in one of the on-board digital computers, the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS). Since the 1990s, space probes usually have completely autonomous cameras.

The computer command subsystem (CCS) controls the cameras. The CCS contains fixed computer programs such as command decoding, fault detection and correction routines, antenna pointing routines, and spacecraft sequencing routines. This computer is an improved version of the one that was used in the 1970s Viking orbiters. The hardware in both custom-built CCS subsystems in the Voyagers is identical. There is only a minor software modification for one of them that has a scientific subsystem that the other lacks.^{[citation needed]}

The Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) controls the spacecraft orientation (its attitude). It keeps the high-gain antenna pointing towards the Earth, controls attitude changes, and points the scan platform. The custom-built AACS systems on both Voyagers are the same.

Scientific instruments

Main article: Voyager program

Instrument Name	Abr.	Description
Imaging Science System (disabled)	(ISS)	Utilized a two-camera system (narrow-angle/wide-angle) to provide imagery of Jupiter, Saturn and other objects along the trajectory. More Filters Narrow Angle Camera Filters Name Wavelength Spectrum Sensitivity Clear 280–640 nm UV 280–370 nm Violet 350–450 nm Blue 430–530 nm ' ' ' Green 530–640 nm ' ' ' Orange 590–640 nm ' ' ' Wide Angle Camera Filters Name Wavelength Spectrum Sensitivity Clear 280–640 nm ' ' ' Violet 350–450 nm Blue 430–530 nm CH4-U 536–546 nm Green 530–640 nm Na-D 588–590 nm Orange 590–640 nm CH4-JST 614–624 nm Principal investigator: Bradford Smith / University of Arizona (PDS/PRN website) Data: PDS/PDI data catalog, PDS/PRN data catalog
Radio Science System (disabled)	(RSS)	Utilized the telecommunications system of the Voyager spacecraft to determine the physical properties of planets and satellites (ionospheres, atmospheres, masses, gravity fields, densities) and the amount and size distribution of material in Saturn's rings and the ring dimensions. More Principal investigator: G. Tyler / Stanford University PDS/PRN overview Data: PDS/PPI data catalog, PDS/PRN data catalog (VG_2803), NSSDC data archive
Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer (disabled)	(IRIS)	Investigates both global and local energy balance and atmospheric composition. Vertical temperature profiles are also obtained from the planets and satellites as well as the composition, thermal properties, and size of particles in Saturn's rings. More Principal investigator: Rudolf Hanel / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (PDS/PRN website) Data: PDS/PRN data catalog, PDS/PRN expanded data catalog (VGIRIS_0001, VGIRIS_002), NSSDC Jupiter data archive
Ultraviolet Spectrometer (active)	(UVS)	Designed to measure atmospheric properties, and to measure radiation. More Principal investigator: A. Broadfoot / University of Southern California (PDS/PRN website) Data: PDS/PRN data catalog
Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer (active)	(MAG)	Designed to investigate the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Saturn, the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetospheres of these planets, and the magnetic field of interplanetary space out to the boundary between the solar wind and the magnetic field of interstellar space. More Principal investigator: Norman F. Ness / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (website) Data: PDS/PPI data catalog, NSSDC data archive
Plasma Spectrometer (defective)	(PLS)	Investigates the microscopic properties of the plasma ions and measures electrons in the energy range from 5 eV to 1 keV. More Principal investigator: John Richardson / MIT (website) Data: PDS/PPI data catalog, NSSDC data archive
Low Energy Charged Particle Instrument (active)	(LECP)	Measures the differential in energy fluxes and angular distributions of ions, electrons and the differential in energy ion composition. More Principal investigator: Stamatios Krimigis / JHU / APL / University of Maryland (JHU/APL website / UMD website / KU website) Data: UMD data plotting, PDS/PPI data catalog, NSSDC data archive
Cosmic Ray System (active)	(CRS)	Determines the origin and acceleration process, life history, and dynamic contribution of interstellar cosmic rays, the nucleosynthesis of elements in cosmic-ray sources, the behavior of cosmic rays in the interplanetary medium, and the trapped planetary energetic-particle environment. More Principal investigator: Edward Stone / Caltech / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (website) Data: PDS/PPI data catalog, NSSDC data archive
Planetary Radio Astronomy Investigation (disabled)	(PRA)	Utilizes a sweep-frequency radio receiver to study the radio-emission signals from Jupiter and Saturn. More Principal investigator: James Warwick / University of Colorado Data: PDS/PPI data catalog, NSSDC data archive
Photopolarimeter System (defective)	(PPS)	Utilized a telescope with a polarizer to gather information on surface texture and composition of Jupiter and Saturn and information on atmospheric scattering properties and density for both planets. More Principal investigator: Arthur Lane / JPL (PDS/PRN website) Data: PDS/PRN data catalog
Plasma Wave System (active)	(PWS)	Provides continuous, sheath-independent measurements of the electron-density profiles at Jupiter and Saturn as well as basic information on local wave–particle interaction, useful in studying the magnetospheres. More Principal investigator: Donald Gurnett / University of Iowa (website) Data: PDS/PPI data catalog

For more details on the Voyager space probes' identical instrument packages, see the separate article on the overall Voyager Program.Template:Gallery

Mission profile

Timeline of travel

Date	Event
September 5, 1977	Spacecraft launched at 12:56:00 UTC.
December 10, 1977	Entered asteroid belt.
December 19, 1977	Voyager 1 overtakes Voyager 2. (see diagram)
September 8, 1978	Exited asteroid belt.
January 6, 1979	Start Jupiter observation phase. Time Event March 5, 1979 Encounter with the Jovian system. 06:54:00 Amalthea flyby at 420,200 km. 12:05:26 Jupiter closest approach at 348,890 km from the center of mass. 15:14:00 Io flyby at 20,570 km. 18:19:00 Europa flyby at 733,760 km. March 6, 1979 02:15:00 Ganymede flyby at 114,710 km. 17:08:00 Callisto flyby at 126,400 km. April 13, 1979 Phase end
August 22, 1980	Start Saturn observation phase. Time Event November 12, 1980 Encounter with the Saturnian system. 05:41:21 Titan flyby at 6,490 km. 22:16:32 Tethys flyby at 415,670 km. 23:46:30 Saturn closest approach at 184,300 km from the center of mass. November 13, 1980 01:43:12 Mimas flyby at 88,440 km. 01:51:16 Enceladus flyby at 202,040 km. 06:21:53 Rhea flyby at 73,980 km. 16:44:41 Hyperion flyby at 880,440 km. December 14, 1980 Phase end
December 14, 1980	Begin extended mission.

Extended mission
February 14, 1990	Final images of the Voyager program acquired by Voyager 1 to create the Solar System "Family Portrait".
February 17, 1998	Voyager 1 overtakes Pioneer 10 as the most distant spacecraft from the Sun, at 69.419 AU (Template:Convert/round km; Template:Convert/round mi). Voyager 1 is moving away from the Sun at over 1 AU per year faster than Pioneer 10.
December 17, 2004	Passed the termination shock at 94 AU and entered the heliosheath.
February 2, 2007	Terminated plasma subsystem operations.
April 11, 2007	Terminated plasma subsystem heater.
January 16, 2008	Terminated planetary radio astronomy experiment operations.
August 25, 2012	Crossed the heliopause at 121 AU and entered interstellar space.
July 7, 2014	Further confirmation probe is in interstellar space.

Launch and trajectory

Voyager 1 lifted off with a Titan IIIE

The Voyager 1 probe was launched on September 5, 1977, from Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, aboard a Titan IIIE launch vehicle. The Voyager 2 probe had been launched two weeks earlier, on August 20, 1977. Despite being launched later, Voyager 1 reached both Jupiter and Saturn sooner, following a shorter trajectory.

Flyby of Jupiter

Main article: Exploration of Jupiter

Voyager 1 began photographing Jupiter in January 1979. Its closest approach to Jupiter was on March 5, 1979, at a distance of about 349,000 kilometers (Template:Convert/round miles) from the planet's center. Because of the greater photographic resolution allowed by a closer approach, most observations of the moons, rings, magnetic fields, and the radiation belt environment of the Jovian system were made during the 48-hour period that bracketed the closest approach. Voyager 1 finished photographing the Jovian system in April 1979.

Discovery of active volcanic activity on the moon Io was probably the greatest surprise. It was the first time active volcanoes had been seen on another body in the Solar System. It appears that activity on Io affects the entire Jovian system. Io appears to be the primary source of matter that pervades the Jovian magnetosphere – the region of space that surrounds the planet influenced by the planet's strong magnetic field. Sulfur, oxygen, and sodium, apparently erupted by Io's volcanoes and sputtered off the surface by impact of high-energy particles, were detected at the outer edge of the magnetosphere of Jupiter.

The two Voyager space probes made a number of important discoveries about Jupiter, its satellites, its radiation belts, and its never-before-seen planetary rings.

Voyager 1 time-lapse movie of Jupiter approach (Link to full size video)

Jupiter's Great Red Spot, an anticyclonic storm larger than Earth, as seen from Voyager 1

View of sulfur-rich lava flows radiating from the volcano Ra Patera on Io

The eruption plume of the volcano Loki rises 160 km (Template:Convert/sround mi) over the limb of Io

Europa's lineated but uncratered face, evidence of currently active geology, at a distance of 2.8 million km.

Ganymede's tectonically disrupted surface, marked with bright impact sites, from 253,000 km.

Io by Voyager 1

Flyby of Saturn

Main article: Exploration of Saturn

The gravitational assist trajectories at Jupiter were successfully carried out by both Voyagers, and the two spacecraft went on to visit Saturn and its system of moons and rings. Voyager 1 encountered Saturn in November 1980, with the closest approach on November 12, 1980, when the space probe came within 124,000 kilometers (Template:Convert/pround mi) of Saturn's cloud-tops. The space probe's cameras detected complex structures in the rings of Saturn, and its remote sensing instruments studied the atmospheres of Saturn and its giant moon Titan.

Voyager 1 found that about 7 percent of the volume of Saturn's upper atmosphere is helium (compared with 11 percent of Jupiter's atmosphere), while almost all the rest is hydrogen. Since Saturn's internal helium abundance was expected to be the same as Jupiter's and the Sun's, the lower abundance of helium in the upper atmosphere may imply that the heavier helium may be slowly sinking through Saturn's hydrogen; that might explain the excess heat that Saturn radiates over energy it receives from the Sun. Winds blow at high speeds in Saturn. Near the equator, the Voyagers measured winds about 500 m/s (1,100 mph). The wind blows mostly in an easterly direction.

The Voyagers found aurora-like ultraviolet emissions of hydrogen at mid-latitudes in the atmosphere, and auroras at polar latitudes (above 65 degrees). The high-level auroral activity may lead to formation of complex hydrocarbon molecules that are carried toward the equator. The mid-latitude auroras, which occur only in sunlit regions, remain a puzzle, since bombardment by electrons and ions, known to cause auroras on Earth, occurs primarily at high latitudes. Both Voyagers measured the rotation of Saturn (the length of a day) at 10 hours, 39 minutes, 24 seconds.

Voyager 1's mission included a flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which had long been known to have an atmosphere. Images taken by Pioneer 11 in 1979 had indicated the atmosphere was substantial and complex, further increasing interest. The Titan flyby occurred as the spacecraft entered the system to avoid any possibility of damage closer to Saturn compromising observations, and approached to within 4,000 mi (Template:Convert/round km), passing behind Titan as seen from Earth and the Sun. Voyager's measurement of the atmosphere's effect on sunlight, and Earth-based measurement of its effect on the probe's radio signal, were used to determine the atmosphere's composition, density, and pressure. Titan's mass was also measured by observing its effect on the probe's trajectory. Thick haze prevented any visual observation of the surface, but the measurement of the atmosphere's composition, temperature, and pressure led to speculation that lakes of liquid hydrocarbons could exist on the surface.

Because observations of Titan were considered vital, the trajectory chosen for Voyager 1 was designed around the optimum Titan flyby, which took it below the south pole of Saturn and out of the plane of the ecliptic, ending its planetary science mission. Had Voyager 1 failed or been unable to observe Titan, Voyager 2's trajectory would have been altered to incorporate the Titan flyby, precluding any visit to Uranus and Neptune. The trajectory Voyager 1 was launched into would not have allowed it to continue on to Uranus and Neptune, but could have been altered to avoid a Titan flyby and travel from Saturn to Pluto, arriving in 1986.

Crescent Saturn from 5.3 million km, four days after closest approach

Voyager 1 image of Saturn's narrow, twisted and braided F Ring.

Mimas at a range of 425,000 km; the crater Herschel is at upper right

Tethys, with its giant rift valley Ithaca Chasma, from 1.2 million km.

Fractured 'wispy terrain' on Dione's trailing hemisphere.

The icy surface of Rhea is nearly saturated with impact craters.

Titan's thick haze layer is shown in this enhanced Voyager 1 image.

Layers of haze, composed of complex organic compounds, covering Saturn's satellite Titan.

Titan by Voyager 1

Voyager Saturn encounter animation

Exit from the heliosphere

The "family portrait" of the Solar System acquired by Voyager 1

On February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 took the first ever "family portrait" of the Solar System as seen from outside, which includes the image of planet Earth known as "Pale Blue Dot". Soon afterwards its cameras were deactivated to conserve power and computer resources for other equipment. The camera software has been removed from the spacecraft, so it would now be complex to get them working again. Earth-side software and computers for reading the images are also no longer available.

The pale blue dot image showing Earth from 6 billion kilometers appearing as a tiny dot (the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right) within the darkness of deep space

On February 17, 1998, Voyager 1 reached a distance of 69 AU from the Sun and overtook Pioneer 10 as the most distant spacecraft from Earth. Travelling at about 17 kilometers per second (Template:Convert/round mi/s) it has the fastest heliocentric recession speed of any spacecraft.

As Voyager 1 headed for interstellar space, its instruments continued to study the Solar System. Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists used the plasma wave experiments aboard Voyager 1 and 2 to look for the heliopause, the boundary at which the solar wind transitions into the interstellar medium. As of 2013, the probe was moving with a relative velocity to the Sun of about 17030 m/s. With the velocity the probe is currently maintaining, Voyager 1 is traveling about 325 million miles per year (520 million kilometers per year), or approximately half a light-year per ten millennia.

Termination shock

Close flybys of gas giants gave gravity assists to both Voyagers

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory think that Voyager 1 entered the termination shock in February 2003. This marks the point where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speeds. Some other scientists expressed doubt, discussed in the journal Nature of November 6, 2003. The issue would not be resolved until other data became available, since Voyager 1's solar-wind detector ceased functioning in 1990. This failure meant that termination shock detection would have to be inferred from the data from the other instruments on board.

In May 2005, a NASA press release said that the consensus was that Voyager 1 was then in the heliosheath. In a scientific session at the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans on the morning of May 25, 2005, Dr. Ed Stone presented evidence that the craft crossed the termination shock in late 2004. This event is estimated to have occurred on December 15, 2004 at a distance of 94 AU from the Sun.

Heliosheath

On March 31, 2006, amateur radio operators from AMSAT in Germany tracked and received radio waves from Voyager 1 using the 20-meter (Template:Convert/LoffAonSon) dish at Bochum with a long integration technique. Retrieved data was checked and verified against data from the Deep Space Network station at Madrid, Spain. This seems to be the first such amateur tracking of Voyager 1.

It was confirmed on December 13, 2010 that Voyager 1 had passed the reach of the radial outward flow of the solar wind, as measured by the Low Energy Charged Particle device. It is suspected that solar wind at this distance turns sideways because of interstellar wind pushing against the heliosphere. Since June 2010, detection of solar wind had been consistently at zero, providing conclusive evidence of the event. On this date, the spacecraft was approximately 116 AU or 10.8 billion miles (17.3 billion kilometers) from the Sun.

Voyager 1 was commanded to change its orientation to measure the sideways motion of the solar wind at that location in space on March 2011. A test roll done in February had confirmed the spacecraft's ability to maneuver and reorient itself. The course of the spacecraft was not changed. It rotated 70 degrees counterclockwise with respect to Earth to detect the solar wind. This was the first time the spacecraft had done any major maneuvering since the family portrait photograph of the planets was taken in 1990. After the first roll the spacecraft had no problem in reorienting itself with Alpha Centauri, Voyager 1's guide star, and it resumed sending transmissions back to Earth. Voyager 1 was expected to enter interstellar space "at any time". Voyager 2 was still detecting outward flow of solar wind at that point but it was estimated that in the following months or years it would experience the same conditions as Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was reported at 12.44° declination and 17.163 hours right ascension, and at an ecliptic latitude of 34.9° (the ecliptic latitude changes very slowly), placing it in the constellation Ophiuchus as observed from the Earth on May 21, 2011.

On December 1, 2011, it was announced that Voyager 1 had detected the first Lyman-alpha radiation originating from the Milky Way galaxy. Lyman-alpha radiation had previously been detected from other galaxies, but because of interference from the Sun, the radiation from the Milky Way was not detectable.

NASA announced on December 5, 2011 that Voyager 1 had entered a new region referred to as a "cosmic purgatory". Within this stagnation region, charged particles streaming from the Sun slow and turn inward, and the Solar System's magnetic field is doubled in strength as interstellar space appears to be applying pressure. Energetic particles originating in the Solar System decline by nearly half, while the detection of high-energy electrons from outside increases 100-fold. The inner edge of the stagnation region is located approximately 113 AU from the Sun.

Heliopause

Template:Multiple image

NASA announced in June 2012 that the probe was detecting changes in the environment that were suspected to correlate with arrival at the heliopause. Voyager 1 had reported a marked increase in its detection of charged particles from interstellar space, which are normally deflected by the solar winds within the heliosphere from the Sun. The craft thus began to enter the interstellar medium at the edge of the Solar System.

Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to cross the heliopause in August 2012, then at a distance of 121 AU from the Sun, although this was not confirmed for another year.

As of September 2012, sunlight took 16.89 hours to get to Voyager 1 which was at a distance of 121 AU. The apparent magnitude of the Sun from the spacecraft was −16.3 (less than 30 times the brightness of the full moon). The spacecraft was traveling at 17.043 km/s (Template:Convert/round mi/s) relative to the Sun. It would need about 17,565 years at this speed to travel a light-year. To compare, Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, is about 4.2 light-years (Template:Val) distant. Were the spacecraft traveling in the direction of that star, 73,775 years would pass before reaching it. (Voyager 1 is heading in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus.)

In late 2012, researchers reported that particle data from the spacecraft suggested that the probe had passed through the heliopause. Measurements from the spacecraft revealed a steady rise since May in collisions with high energy particles (above 70 MeV), which are thought to be cosmic rays emanating from supernova explosions far beyond the Solar System, with a sharp increase in these collisions in late August. At the same time, in late August, there was a dramatic drop in collisions with low-energy particles, which are thought to originate from the Sun. Ed Roelof, space scientist at Johns Hopkins University and principal investigator for the Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument on the spacecraft declared that "Most scientists involved with Voyager 1 would agree that [these two criteria] have been sufficiently satisfied." However, the last criterion for officially declaring that Voyager 1 had crossed the boundary, the expected change in magnetic field direction (from that of the Sun to that of the interstellar field beyond), had not been observed (the field had changed direction by only 2 degrees), which suggested to some that the nature of the edge of the heliosphere had been misjudged. On December 3, 2012, Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology said, "Voyager has discovered a new region of the heliosphere that we had not realized was there. We're still inside, apparently. But the magnetic field now is connected to the outside. So it's like a highway letting particles in and out." The magnetic field in this region was 10 times more intense than Voyager 1 encountered before the termination shock. It was expected to be the last barrier before the spacecraft exited the Solar System completely and entered interstellar space.

In March 2013, it was announced that Voyager 1 might have become the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space, having detected a marked change in the plasma environment on August 25, 2012. However, until September 12, 2013, it was still an open question as to whether the new region was interstellar space or an unknown region of the Solar System. At that time, the former alternative was officially confirmed.

Voyager 1 reached a distance of 135 AU from the Sun on May 18, 2016. Its progress can be monitored at NASA website (see: External links).

Voyager 1 and the other probes that are in or on their way to interstellar space

Interstellar medium

On September 12, 2013, NASA officially confirmed that Voyager 1 had reached the interstellar medium in August 2012 as previously observed, with a generally accepted date of August 25, 2012, the date durable changes in the density of energetic particles were first detected. By this point most space scientists had abandoned the hypothesis that a change in magnetic field direction must accompany crossing of the heliopause; a new model of the heliopause predicted that no such change would be found. A key finding that persuaded many scientists that the heliopause had been crossed was an indirect measurement of an 80-fold increase in electron density, based on the frequency of plasma oscillations observed beginning on April 9, 2013, triggered by a solar outburst that had occurred in March 2012 (electron density is expected to be two orders of magnitude higher outside the heliopause than within). Weaker sets of oscillations measured in October and November 2012 provided additional data. An indirect measurement was required because Voyager 1's plasma spectrometer had stopped working in 1980. In September 2013, NASA released audio renditions of these plasma waves. The recordings represent the first sounds to be captured in interstellar space.

While Voyager 1 is commonly spoken of as having left the Solar System simultaneously with having left the heliosphere, the two are not the same. The Solar System is usually defined as the vastly larger region of space populated by bodies that orbit the Sun. The craft is presently less than one seventh the distance to the aphelion of Sedna, and it has not yet entered the Oort cloud, the source region of long-period comets, regarded by astronomers as the outermost zone of the Solar System.

Future of the probe

Image of Voyager 1's radio signal on February 21, 2013

Voyager 1 will reach the Oort cloud in about 300 years and take about 30,000 years to pass through it. Though it is not heading towards any particular star, in about 40,000 years, it will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445, which is at present in the constellation Camelopardalis. That star is generally moving towards the Solar System at about 119 km/s (Template:Convert/round km/h; Template:Convert/round mph). NASA says that "The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way."

Provided Voyager 1 does not collide with anything and is not retrieved, the New Horizons space probe will never pass it, despite being launched from Earth at a faster speed than either Voyager spacecraft. New Horizons is traveling at about 15 km/s, 2 km/s slower than Voyager 1, and is still slowing down. When New Horizons reaches the same distance from the Sun as Voyager 1 is now, its speed will be about 13 km/s (8 mi/s).

Year	End of specific capabilities as a result of the available electrical power limitations
2007	Termination of plasma subsystem (PLS)
2008	Power off Planetary Radio Astronomy Experiment (PRA)
2015	Terminate scan platform and Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) observations
2017 approx	Termination of gyroscopic operations
2018 approx	Termination of Data Tape Recorder (DTR) operations (limited by ability to capture 1.4 kbit/s data using a 70 m/34 m antenna array. This is the minimum rate at which the DTR can read-out data.)
2020	Start shutdown of science instruments (as of October 18, 2010 (2010-10-18) the order is undecided but the Low-Energy Charged Particles, Cosmic Ray Subsystem, Magnetometer, and Plasma Wave Subsystem instruments are expected to still be operating)
2025–2030	Will no longer be able to power any single instrument.

Golden record

Main article: Voyager Golden Record

Voyager Golden Record

Each Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that the spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life forms from other planetary systems. The disc carries photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from people such as the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States and a medley, "Sounds of Earth," that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a collection of music, including works by Mozart, Blind Willie Johnson, Chuck Berry, and Valya Balkanska. Other Eastern and Western classics are included, as well as various performances of indigenous music from around the world. The record also contains greetings in 55 different languages.

See also

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External links

• NASA Voyager website
• Current positions of Voyager spacecrafts (NASA)
• Voyager Spacecraft Lifetime – interstellar mission coverage.
• Voyager 1 Mission Profile by NASA's Solar System Exploration
• Position of Voyager 1 (Live-Counter)
• Voyager 1 (NSSDC Master Catalog)
• Heavens-above.com: Spacecraft Escaping the Solar System – current positions and diagrams
• Weekly Mission Reports – includes information on current spacecraft state
• We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot. A short film on The Pale Blue Dot picture taken by Voyager. Narrated by Carl Sagan.
• JPL Voyager Telecom Manual
• Voyager 1 Has Outdistanced the Solar Wind
• Explanation of VIM
• Gray, Meghan. "Voyager and Interstellar Space". Deep Space Videos. Brady Haran. http://www.deepskyvideos.com/videos/other/voyager.html. 
• Updated distance travelled by Voyager 1