Showing posts with label interstellar space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interstellar space. Show all posts

Sunday, May 1, 2011

voyager adventure in three minutes

voyager adventure in three minutesA wonderful three minute NASA video provides story of Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977, a link provided via article at Universe Today. The video celebrates contributions made by the two craft as they near Interstellar Space. Ed Stone, California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, a Voyager Project Scientist, estimates in an article at NASA website, "...heliosheath is 3 to 4 billion miles in thickness...[which]...means we'll be out within five years or so...In many ways, the heliosheath is not like our models predicted".

The video and article relate details of Golden Record, "The Sounds of Earth". "Each probe is famously equipped with a Golden Record, literally, a gold-coated copper phonograph record. It contains 118 photographs of Earth; 90 minutes of the world's greatest music; an audio essay entitled Sounds of Earth (featuring everything from burbling mud pots to barking dogs to a roaring Saturn 5 liftoff); greetings in 55 human languages and one whale language; the brain waves of a young woman in love; and salutations from the secretary general of the United Nations. A team led by Carl Sagan assembled the record as a message to possible extraterrestrial civilizations that might encounter the spacecraft." You can only imagine what the record would bring at auction? It's an interesting story to revisit 33 years later!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

voyager 1 nears interstellar space

voyager 1 nears interstellar spaceUniverse Today reports Voyager 1, launched on Sept. 5 1977, has reached a point in outer space where there is no solar wind.  The solar wind has measured zero since June, when Voyager was 10.6 billion miles from the Sun.  The solar wind has turned the corner,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. “Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space.” Voyager 1 has reached the boundary of the solar system, scientists believe the satellite will cross from the heliosphere and enter interstellar space in about 4 years.