In March of 1977, engineers at JPL were busy preparing Voyager 2 to be launched by NASA in August, 1977. This spacecraft will carry out scientific missions by carrying 10 different instruments; however, over the years, some have been turned off to conserve power. Image Credit: NASA
In the last few years, I have been very interested in the history of space travel from the first missions to the present time. I have also been impressed with how far both Voyager spacecraft have travelled over time and how long they continue to operate. Like Voyager 1, Voyager 2 is just as remarkable. It was launched in 1977 and was originally designed to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, but it ended up being the only spacecraft to fly by all four of the outer giant planets! Here's what it did:
It discovered a 14th moon of Jupiter and studied its extremely complex atmospheric system.
It also defined the unusual structure of Saturn's A ring and its ring spokes.
It discovered 10 new moons and two rings of Uranus, in addition to finding that its magnetic field tilted.
It also found six new moons of Neptune, imaged Neptune's Great Dark Spot, and imaged geysers erupting on Triton.
Voyager 2 continued to journey farther out from the planets after completing its flybys of the four outer planets and crossed the heliosphere into interstellar space on November 5, 2018. It is the second human-made object to leave the heliosphere, after Voyager 1. Even decades after its launch, it continues to send data back to Earth via NASA's Deep Space Network while it travels through interstellar space, and it continues to collect important scientific data, including measurements of plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particle densities in an area of space that has never been explored before.
Currently, it is so far from the Earth that it takes over 18 hours for a signal transmitted to reach the Earth. The power for Voyager 2's instruments comes from plutonium-based radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which are slowly being turned off to conserve power. Some of Voyager 2's instruments are anticipated to continue to function through the 2030s.
It is impressive how Voyager has maintained this incredible longevity; it was designed to operate in the deep space environment, using engineering technology that is simple and highly reliable and it sounds really intriguing knowing that there's also a Voyager Golden Record on board, which is a copper phonograph record that contains sounds and images of Earth and is also on Voyager 2 to serve as a time capsule (or message to the universe) from humanity.
Reference:
NASA. (n.d.). Voyager 2 mission overview
