Voyager is about to leave the solar system
"Voyager has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space, as it begins exploring the solar system's final frontier," said Dr. Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which built and operates Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2.
More: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/voyager_agu.html
Voyager probes celebrate 30 years
The US space agency's (Nasa) venerable Voyager mission is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
Its two probes were launched within weeks of each other in 1977 to make a detailed study of the outer planets.
The probes were then sent on trajectories that will eventually take them out of the Solar System and into interstellar space.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6979696.stm
And of course: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
Voyager 2's journey toward interstellar space has revealed surprising insights into the energy and magnetic forces at the solar system's outer edge, and confirmed the solar system's squashed shape.
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continue to send data to Earth more than 30 years after they first launched. During the 1990s, Voyager 1 became the farthest manmade object in space
More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080702-voyager-crosses-shock.html
Voyager 2 has been in space for 30 years. It has sent back data that show exotic particles from outside the solar system dominate the outer edge of our solar system. That means it's much more complex out there than we thought.
More: http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2008/07/voyager-2-unrav.html
Have aliens hijacked Voyager 2 spacecraft ?
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/wacky/have-aliens-hijacked-voyager-2-spacecraft/story-e6frev20-1225865566982
nope, it's become self-aware.
I know this because I've seen Startrek: The Motion Picture...
Yes, I think Voyager 2 realised what a lot of tosh was on the disc & has destroyed it!!!!!!!
So it's sending back data in an unknown format. Hmmm, couldn't simply be that it's broke, could it? :evil:
It may be decades before humanity sets foot on Mars, but we're only five years away from sampling the vast stretches of interstellar space beyond our solar system for the first time, researchers say.
NASA's twin unmanned Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977, are streaking toward the edge of the solar system at around 37,000 mph (60,000 kph). At that rate, they'll probably pop out of our sun's sphere of influence and into interstellar space by 2016 or so, according to mission scientists.
"They are about to break free of the solar system," Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., said during a media teleconference yesterday (April 28). "We are trying to get outside of our bubble, into interstellar space, to directly measure what is there."
More: Still doing cool stuff (http://www.space.com/11527-nasa-voyager-spacecraft-leave-solar-system.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29)
The iconic Voyager 2 spacecraft celebrated its 35th birthday Monday (Aug. 20) in a milestone for NASA's longest-running mission ever.
Voyager 2 was launched in 1977
More: Voyager (http://www.space.com/17201-voyager-2-nasa-longest-mission.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29)
Cheers, Voyager: 35 Years of Exploration
September 05, 2012
What would a birthday party be without cake, music and toasts? Thirty-five years ago today, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft launched on its mission of exploration. It is now the most distant human-made object and the second-longest operating spacecraft. (Voyager 2 is the longest.) NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., which manages the Voyager spacecraft, held a celebration today.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-278
NASA Voyager Status Update on Voyager 1 Location
"The Voyager team is aware of reports today that NASA's Voyager 1 has left the solar system," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space. In December 2012, the Voyager science team reported that Voyager 1 is within a new region called 'the magnetic highway' where energetic particles changed dramatically. A change in the direction of the magnetic field is the last critical indicator of reaching interstellar space and that change of direction has not yet been observed."
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-107
Voyager probe 'leaves Solar System'
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.
More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24026153
NASA Spacecraft Embarks on Historic Journey Into Interstellar Space
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.
New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident. A report on the analysis of this new data, an effort led by Don Gurnett and the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, is published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.
"Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind's historic leap into interstellar space," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are."
More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20130912.html
Sun Sends More 'Tsunami Waves' to Voyager 1
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a new "tsunami wave" from the sun as it sails through interstellar space. Such waves are what led scientists to the conclusion, in the fall of 2013, that Voyager had indeed left our sun's bubble, entering a new frontier.
"Normally, interstellar space is like a quiet lake," said Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, the mission's project scientist since 1972. "But when our sun has a burst, it sends a shock wave outward that reaches Voyager about a year later. The wave causes the plasma surrounding the spacecraft to sing."
Data from this newest tsunami wave generated by our sun confirm that Voyager is in interstellar space -- a region between the stars filled with a thin soup of charged particles, also known as plasma. The mission has not left the solar system -- it has yet to reach a final halo of comets surrounding our sun -- but it broke through the wind-blown bubble, or heliosphere, encasing our sun. Voyager is the farthest human-made probe from Earth, and the first to enter the vast sea between stars.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-221
'Tsunami Wave' Still Flies Through Interstellar Space
• The Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three shock waves
• The most recent shock wave, first observed in February 2014, still appears to be going on
• One wave, previously reported, helped researchers determine that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space
The "tsunami wave" that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft began experiencing earlier this year is still propagating outward, according to new results. It is the longest-lasting shock wave that researchers have seen in interstellar space.
"Most people would have thought the interstellar medium would have been smooth and quiet. But these shock waves seem to be more common than we thought," said Don Gurnett, professor of physics at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Gurnett presented the new data Monday, Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4411
'Pale Blue Dot' Images Turn 25
Valentine's Day is special for NASA's Voyager mission. It was on Feb. 14, 1990, that the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back at our solar system and snapped the first-ever pictures of the planets from its perch at that time beyond Neptune.
This "family portrait" captures Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Earth and Venus from Voyager 1's unique vantage point. A few key members did not make it in: Mars had little sunlight, Mercury was too close to the sun, and dwarf planet Pluto turned out too dim.
Taking these images was not part of the original plan, but the late Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team at the time, had the idea of pointing the spacecraft back toward its home for a last look. The title of his 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot," refers to the image of Earth in this series.
"Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward Earth and saw a 'pale blue dot,' " an image that continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home," said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission, based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4484
NASA's last original Voyager engineer is retiring
Imagine if you were working on a 40-year-old computer at your office. Your IT department wouldn't even know what to do with it.
That's the problem NASA's Voyager mission faces. The spacecraft was built in 1975 and has a computer from the Atari age. The last guy who truly understands how to program it is 80-year-old NASA engineer Larry Zottarelli.
And he's retiring.
More: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/technology/voyager-nasa/
Voyager 1 Helps Solve Interstellar Medium Mystery
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft made history in 2012 by entering interstellar space, leaving the planets and the solar wind behind. But observations from the pioneering probe were puzzling with regard to the magnetic field around it, as they differed from what scientists derived from observations by other spacecraft.
A new study offers fresh insights into this mystery. Writing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Nathan Schwadron of the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and colleagues reanalyzed magnetic field data from Voyager 1 and found that the direction of the magnetic field has been slowly turning ever since the spacecraft crossed into interstellar space. They believe this is an effect of the nearby boundary of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that comes from the sun.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4756
Boffins hand in their homework on Voyager 2's first readings from beyond Solar System
NASA's Voyager 2, launched to study the Solar System's outer planets, has had its first readings from interstellar space, collected after travelling more than 11 billion miles over forty years, analyzed by scientists.
It is only the second probe to have sailed beyond the heliosphere – the expansive region made of plasma and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. It finally broke free from the Solar System to enter interstellar space last year, joining its twin companion Voyager 1, which exited in 2012.
More: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/05/voyager_2_phone_home/
Thanks Rick for keeping us updated. Was reading something on digital media yesterday about the voyager(s).
Such interesting cosmology!
Best
Hugh
Voyager mission's project scientist retires after 50 years of service
The Voyager mission's project scientist has retired after 50 years in the job.
Ed Stone signed on for the gig when the two Voyager spacecraft were still on the drawing board in 1972.
He's had the job ever since. As NASA explained, Stone rose to become director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and, as that facility manages the Voyagers, he kept the gig managing the twin probes. He later retired from JPL in 2001 but continued to serve as the Voyager mission's project scientist.
More: https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/26/ed_stone_voyager_boss_retires/
Search for Voyager 2 after Nasa accidentally sends wrong command
Nasa is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after it lost contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away.
Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar space, Voyager 2 has been out of touch ever since flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command more than a week ago that tilted its antenna away from Earth. The spacecraft's antenna shifted a mere 2%, but it was enough to cut communications.
Although it's considered a long shot, Nasa said on Monday that its huge dish antenna in Canberra was on the lookout for any stray signals from Voyager 2, which is more than 12bn miles (19bn km) away. It takes more than 18 hours for a signal to reach Earth from so far away.
More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/01/search-for-voyager-2-after-nasa-accidentally-sends-wrong-command
Oh No!
Let's hope the October reset gets it back in touch ~ fingers crossed.
~ Hugh
Story updated:
Nasa detects signal from Voyager 2 after losing contact due to wrong command
Efforts to re-establish contact with Nasa's Voyager 2 probe have received a boost after the space agency detected a "heartbeat" signal from the far-flung probe.
Mission controllers stopped hearing from Voyager 2 more than a week ago after sending a faulty command that tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth. The small change in orientation was enough to cut all contact with the probe.
The signal from Voyager 2, which is now more than 12bn miles from Earth, was detected during a routine scan of the sky, Nasa said, and confirms that the spacecraft is still broadcasting and in "good health".
More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/01/search-for-voyager-2-after-nasa-accidentally-sends-wrong-command
Rick
It's incredible that we are still getting a signal from Voyager 2 after 47 years, its obviously now in interstellar space still travelling very fast
Hide and seek in outer space highlights a battle here on Earth
The true measure of technology is not how well it matches human intelligence, but how well it survives human stupidity. Humanity's most iconic robots, the Voyager space probes, seem to be up to that job. Nearly 20 billion kilometers from home and nearly 50 years in deep space, Voyager 2 has just been told to point its antenna away from Earth and await further orders.
You may think you've tasted the profound bitterness of disabling the network on a remote machine. Not like this, you haven't. It's like dropping your phone down the Kola Superdeep Borehole and wondering why Find My Device won't work.
But wait – it's not game over. The Deep Space Network (DSN) that communicates with our mechanical explorers already picked up the Not Dead Yet signal, and then got full service back in short order. Even without that, confidence was high that the antique astro automaton would fix the problem by itself in time.
More: https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/07/opinion_column_voyager/
Rick,
This is a very interesting article, really highlights how technology for communication still works well on Voyager 2
Amazing that even 50 years ago they planned for software updates to a primitive computer system in comparison with todays computer processing power.
Are we still receiving communications from Voyager 1 and how far has it travelled
Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble
Engineers are hopeful the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 has turned a corner after spending the past three months spouting gibberish at controllers.
On March 1, the Voyager team sent a command, dubbed a "poke," to get the probe's Flight Data System (FDS) to try some other sequences in its software in the hope of circumventing whatever had become corrupted.
Readers of a certain vintage will doubtless have memories of poke sheets for various 1980s games. Not that this hack ever used a poke to get infinite lives in Jet Set Willy, of course.
While Voyager 1's lifespan is not infinite, it has endured far longer than anticipated and might be about to dodge yet another bullet. On March 3, the mission team saw something different in the stream of data returned from the spacecraft, which had been unreadable since December.
More: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/voyager_1_not_dead/
Good news - glad they never gave up.
Really incredible that we can still communicate with Voyager 1- lets hope this continues
A little more detail...
NASA engineers discover why Voyager 1 is sending a stream of gibberish from outside our solar system
For the past five months, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending a steady stream of unreadable gibberish back to Earth. Now, NASA engineers finally know why.
The 46-year-old spacecraft sends regular radio signals as it drifts further from our solar system. But in November 2023, the signals suddenly became garbled, meaning scientists were unable to read any of its data, and they were left mystified about the fault's origins.
In March, NASA engineers sent a command prompt, or "poke," to the craft to get a readout from its flight data subsystem (FDS) — which packages Voyager 1's science and engineering data before beaming it back to Earth.
After decoding the spacecraft's response, the engineers have found the source of the problem: The FDS's memory has been corrupted.
More: https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/nasa-engineers-discover-why-voyager-1-is-sending-a-stream-of-gibberish-from-outside-our-solar-system
Voyager 1 transmitting data again after Nasa remotely fixes 46-year-old probe
Earth's most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, has started communicating properly again with Nasa after engineers worked for months to remotely fix the 46-year-old probe.
Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which makes and operates the agency's robotic spacecraft, said in December that the probe – more than 15bn miles (24bn kilometres) away – was sending gibberish code back to Earth.
In an update released on Monday, JPL announced the mission team had managed "after some inventive sleuthing" to receive usable data about the health and status of Voyager 1's engineering systems. "The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again," JPL said. Despite the fault, Voyager 1 had operated normally throughout, it added.
More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/23/voyager-1-transmitting-data-again-after-nasa-remotely-fixes-46-year-old-probe
...and from NASA JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth