happy birthday, voyager 2!
Aug. 20th, 2022 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoelevenit's 45 years old today.
the voyager missions were some of the defining cool science achievements of my youth to early adulthood. before them, we knew next to nothing about the outer solar system. pioneers 10 and 11 flew by jupiter and saturn (pioneer 11 only), bringing back some pretty pictures and some data, but they were extremely primitive machines, barely brighter than traffic lights. they were programmable in the same sense modern traffic lights are: mission control could turn different instruments on and off by remote control, and change the spacecrafts' orientation, but not much more.
the voyagers were a bit smarter -- each as bright as several intersections' worth of traffic lights -- carried a ton more instruments, but most importantly, flew much bolder missions, the pioneers having shown that they were possible.
they brought us back the first real information on the moons of outer planets (io has volcanoes! enceladus has geysers! titan has a really funky atmosphere! triton has geysers!) and everything we know about uranus and neptune. and they delivered that over about a decade of steady discoveries.
voyager 2's neptune encounter remains my favorite part of the mission. the flyby was about a week before the 47th worldcon (noreastcon 3) and the con had a panel discussion on the hot new data, some of which was just being released to the public. a group of science fiction authors, actual rocket scientists from MIT, and a few other luminaries tried to describe what we were seeing, which frankly nobody understood (and some of which which we still don't understand). that's one of the neatest events of my life, watching science as it was being done.
the voyagers are still going strong, plowing through interstellar space, gathering data. if they can last until 2027 -- 50 years after launch -- they'll be the first to last that long while still operating. voyager 2 is already the longest-lived space probe. voyager 1 is more likely to last that long; for mysterious reasons, its radioisotope power supply is a holding up a bit better. i'm eager to see if that happens.
the voyager missions were some of the defining cool science achievements of my youth to early adulthood. before them, we knew next to nothing about the outer solar system. pioneers 10 and 11 flew by jupiter and saturn (pioneer 11 only), bringing back some pretty pictures and some data, but they were extremely primitive machines, barely brighter than traffic lights. they were programmable in the same sense modern traffic lights are: mission control could turn different instruments on and off by remote control, and change the spacecrafts' orientation, but not much more.
the voyagers were a bit smarter -- each as bright as several intersections' worth of traffic lights -- carried a ton more instruments, but most importantly, flew much bolder missions, the pioneers having shown that they were possible.
they brought us back the first real information on the moons of outer planets (io has volcanoes! enceladus has geysers! titan has a really funky atmosphere! triton has geysers!) and everything we know about uranus and neptune. and they delivered that over about a decade of steady discoveries.
voyager 2's neptune encounter remains my favorite part of the mission. the flyby was about a week before the 47th worldcon (noreastcon 3) and the con had a panel discussion on the hot new data, some of which was just being released to the public. a group of science fiction authors, actual rocket scientists from MIT, and a few other luminaries tried to describe what we were seeing, which frankly nobody understood (and some of which which we still don't understand). that's one of the neatest events of my life, watching science as it was being done.
the voyagers are still going strong, plowing through interstellar space, gathering data. if they can last until 2027 -- 50 years after launch -- they'll be the first to last that long while still operating. voyager 2 is already the longest-lived space probe. voyager 1 is more likely to last that long; for mysterious reasons, its radioisotope power supply is a holding up a bit better. i'm eager to see if that happens.
no subject
Date: Aug. 21st, 2022 06:35 pm (UTC)boldly going where no machine has gone recently!
Date: Aug. 21st, 2022 07:27 pm (UTC)the chinese have mooted a neptune orbiter, but that wouldn't be launched until 2040ish, and even with the proposed nuclear-electric propulsion, wouldn't get there until 2053-56, depending on how big a push they can give it.