Mission of Voyager 1 & 2
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One of mankind's great dreams is the discovery of other planetary systems and the ability to travel to them, and a first step in fulfilling this dream is the unmanned probe represented by the Voyager Interstellar Mission. This is a difficult mission by any measure. Voyager I was launched September 5, 1977, and after it has been speeding along for more than 20 years, it is now 6.8 billion miles away from Earth traveling at nearly 51,000 miles per hour. In cosmic terms, that is only about 10 light hours away. However, the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.3 light years, or 25 trillion miles, away. If Voyager were pointed in the right direction, it is calculated that it would take some 74,000 years to make the trip. However, effective interstellar missions must occur on a human time scale preferably within an individual's lifetime -- which means a maximum of 40 years for a "slow" mission, and a far more desirable 10 years for a fast one (DiChristina & Sauls, 1999, 56). In the beginning, Voyager was developed as a means of reaching the outer planets to gather data that had never been possible before. The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft were sent to Jupiter, which Voyager 1 reached in March 1979 before going on to Saturn in November 1980. With its planetary mission completed, it continues to search for the edge of the solar system. Voyager 2 reached Jupiter in July 1979, Saturn in August 1980, and continued on to a rendezvous with Uranus in Janu
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onds; (3) the rings are likened to the grooves of a phonograph, rings within rings numbering in the hundreds, with spokes in the B ring and shepherding satellites controlling the F ring; (4) Titan, the satellite almost as large as Jupiter's Ganymede, has a dense haze that hides its surface; (5) the inner five satellites - Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea - are mainly water ice; and of the outer satellites, Iapetus has one bright, one dark hemisphere; (6) the satellite count rose to 15 (Thorne, 1990).
Voyager 2 reached Jupiter on July 9, 1979 and concentrated on areas and characteristics of the planet and its satellites that complemented the findings of Voyager 1. Voyager 2 (1) confirmed the constant changes of the atmosphere and changes in the Red Spot in size and color; (2) photographed the ring above and below to find it 6,500 km (4,000 mi) wide and 10 km (6 mi) thick and a fainter ring within the inner edge of the bright ring; (3) made a time lapse movie of 150 frames to record the volcanic activity on lo, offered another view of Callisto showed uniform impact crater distribution, and noted that Europa's flat surface resembles a cracked egg shell. Saturn was reached August 25, 1981 and noted the following new fea
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Approximate Word count = 1489
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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