NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2, the longest and farthest flight out of the solar system among human-made probes, will exceed 45 years of space exploration at the end of this month and early next month, respectively.
Voyager 2, which was first launched on August 20, 1977 among the Voyager ‘twins’, made a close exploration of Jupiter and Saturn, followed by Uranus and Neptune, and then moved at a speed of 55,000 km/h at a distance of regarding 19.5 billion km from Earth. are flying
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, more than half a month following Voyager 2 departed due to a system problem, but following exploring Jupiter and Saturn by adopting a faster orbit, Voyager 1 is currently at a speed of 61,000 km per hour from a distance of regarding 23.48 billion km. traversing the interstellar universe.
Voyager 1 entered interstellar space on August 25, 2012, and Voyager 2, on December 18, 2018, respectively.
According to NASA, Voyager 1 and 2 equipment was state-of-the-art at the time, but compared to the present 45 years later, it is like a ‘time capsule’. It is equipped with an 8-track tape player that is older than a cassette tape as a data storage device, and the memory capacity is 64KB, which is only 1/3 million of that of a mobile phone. Data transmission speed is only 1/38,000 of 5G.
Nevertheless, it is still playing an important role in collecting and transmitting valuable scientific data in the vicinity as the only ‘spearhead’ to enter interstellar space among human probes.
Linda Spielker, a project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which operates Voyager, said, “Both Voyager 1 and 2 are flying in interstellar space and provide data observed in unknown areas. “This is the first opportunity to directly observe how they interact with particles and magnetic fields outside.”
However, Voyager has also run out of energy as nearly half a century has passed, and breakdowns are becoming more frequent.
Voyager 1 and 2 both get their power from a plutonium 238 cell called a ‘radioisotope heat generator’ (RTG), but the amount of heat that can be converted into electricity is decreasing.
To conserve power as much as possible, the Voyager operation team turned off the thermostat, considered essential in space, and shut down non-essential equipment altogether. Fortunately, since 2019, all five scientific instruments that have turned off the thermostat are said to be still operating at temperatures much lower than they were designed for.
Even so, it is predicted that the equipment will become impossible to operate due to a lack of electricity between 2025 and 2030.
In addition, Voyager 1 recently had a problem that the actual position did not match the readings of the ‘Attitude and Junction Control System’ (AACS), which serves to orient the probe and equipment, such as pointing the high-performance antenna toward the Earth. did.
“Voyager continues to make amazing discoveries and inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers,” said Susan Dodd, Voyager project manager. I am sure we will provide more.”
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