Voyager at 35: Break on Through to the Other Side

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

News feature: 2012-249 Aug. 20, 2012

Voyager at 35: Break on Through to the Other Side

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-249&cid=release_2012-249

Thirty-five years ago today, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, the first Voyager
spacecraft to launch, departed on a journey that would make it the only spacecraft
to visit Uranus and Neptune and the longest-operating NASA spacecraft ever.
Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, that launched 16 days later on Sept. 5, 1977, are
still going strong, hurtling away from our sun. Mission managers are eagerly
anticipating the day when they break on through to the other side – the space
between stars.

"Even 35 years on, our rugged Voyager spacecraft are poised to make new
discoveries as we eagerly await the signs that we've entered interstellar space," said
Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. "Voyager results turned Jupiter and Saturn into full, tumultuous worlds,
their moons from faint dots into distinctive places, and gave us our first glimpses of
Uranus and Neptune up-close. We can't wait for Voyager to turn our models of the
space beyond our sun into the first observations from interstellar space."

Voyager 2 became the longest-operating spacecraft on Aug. 13, 2012, surpassing
Pioneer 6, which launched on Dec. 16, 1965, and sent its last signal back to NASA's
Deep Space Network on Dec. 8, 2000. (It operated for 12,758 days.)

Scientists eagerly awaiting the entry of the two Voyagers into interstellar space have
recently seen changes from Voyager 1 in two of the three observations that are
expected to be different in interstellar space. The prevalence of high-energy
particles streaming in from outside our solar system has jumped, and the
prevalence of lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system has
briefly dipped, indicating an increasing pace of change in Voyager 1's environment.
Voyager team scientists are now analyzing data on the direction of the magnetic
field, which they believe will change upon entry into interstellar space.

Notable discoveries by Voyager 2 include the puzzling hexagonal jet stream in
Saturn's north polar region, the tipped magnetic poles of Uranus and Neptune, and
the geysers on Neptune's frozen moon Triton. Although launched second, Voyager 1
reached Jupiter and Saturn before Voyager 2, first seeing the volcanoes of Jupiter's
moon Io, the kinky nature of Saturn's outermost main ring, and the deep, hazy
atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. Voyager 1 also took the mission's last image:
the famous solar system family portrait that showed our Earth as a pale blue dot.

Voyager 2 is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from the sun, heading
in a southerly direction. Voyager 1 is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers)
away from the sun, heading in a northerly direction. For the last five years, both
spacecraft have been exploring the outer layer of the heliosphere, the giant bubble
of charged particles the sun blows around itself.

"We continue to listen to Voyager 1 and 2 nearly every day," said Suzanne Dodd,
Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The
two spacecraft are in great shape for having flown through Jupiter's dangerous
radiation environment and having to endure the chill of being so far away from our
sun."

Dodd and her team have been carefully managing the use of power from the
continually diminishing energy sources on the two spacecraft. They estimate that
the two spacecraft will have enough electrical power to continue collecting data and
communicating it back to Earth through 2020, and possibly through 2025. While no
one really knows how long it will take to get to interstellar space, Voyager scientists
think we don't have long to wait. And, besides, the first 35 years have already been a
grand ride.

A public lecture about the journey of the twin Voyager spacecraft will be held at JPL
on Sept. 4. More information is available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.cfm?year=2012&month=9 .
The Voyager spacecraft were built by JPL, which continues to operate both. JPL is a
division of the California Institute of Technology. The Voyager missions are a part of
the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division
of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

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