YOU ARE NOT ALONE

                               YOU ARE NOT ALONE

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is honoring the legacy of its farthest reaching spacecraft by sending a message to the 40-year-old probe. Voyager 1 has traveled almost 13 billion miles from Earth.After 37 years NASA was able to communicate with the voyager 1 which has reached farest distance were no man kind nor any space probes went and found itself among the cluster of stars.

           But sorry to disappoint you, it wasn't an alien trying to talk to us. Just to bring you up to speed, Voyager 1 was launched back in 1977 and is the only man-made object which is cruising beyond our solar system.

    In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to leave our solar system and enter interstellar space, and Voyager 2 became the longest-operating spacecraft in history. Voyager 1 is now traveling at speeds of more than 38,000 miles (about 61,155 kilometers) per hour and has traveled so far from Earth that it takes light from Earth more than 19 hours to reach the spacecraft.



VOYAGER 1:

Basically, Voyager 1 guides itself through the interstellar space by using tiny thrusters, firing them tiny puffs which last milliseconds at a time. Recently, NASA ordered the craft to blast out several puffs to orientate itself and, quite impressively, it actually obeyed.

In order to receive more messages from Earth in the future, Voyager 1 used its four back up thrusters to orientate itself so its antennas are facing towards us.

Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, “With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years.”

But, it's quite surprising that even after travelling at the speed of light, the signal took more than 17 hours to transmit from NASA to Voyager 1 out in interstellar space. Nasa transmitted its orders on November 28, and after waiting for almost a day, Voyager sent back confirmation that it had received them and carried out the manoeuvre.

“The Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test. The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all,” said Todd Barber, a JPL propulsion engineer.

UNPARALLELED JOURNEY’

After 40 long years of traveling in space, NASA still has the ability to communicate with the twin Voyagers every day.

“It's amazing that the two spacecraft are still working after 40 years. When we launched, the Space Age itself was only 20 years old, so this is an unparalleled journey, and we're still in the process of discovering what's out there,” Ed Stone, a Voyager project scientist since the mission's inception in 1972, said in an interview with Space.com on the 40th anniversary of Voyager 2.

The Voyager mission was officially completed in 1989 after the twin Voyagers “visited more planets, discovered more moons, and imaged more unique places than any other spacecraft in NASA history,” the agency said in a statement.

GRAND TOUR

During their Grand Tour, the spacecraft became the first to explore all four giant planets in the outer solar system. They captured more than 33,000 pictures of Jupiter and its five major satellites, including the first known images of active volcanoes outside of Earth on the Jupiter moon Io. They also captured the first images that revealed the complexity and variety of the structure in the Saturn ring systems. The probes are also the only spacecraft to capture close-up images of Uranus and Neptune.

‘PALE BLUE DOT’

In 1990, Voyager turned around and took the first ever portrait of the solar system. The image showed Earth as “a pale blue dot,” according to Dr. Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team.

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

Voyager 1 carries a 12-inch gold-plated phonograph record that includes sounds, pictures and messages from Earth. The record contains spoken greetings in 55 different languages, 115 images encoded in analog form, 19 audio tracks of the various natural sounds from Earth, and 90 minutes of music including 27 different tracks from different cultures and eras.The outward facing cover of the record also contains messages engraved on the surface, with instructions that detail the correct way to play the record and a map that shows the location of our solar system with respect to 14 pulsars.

Mission Overview
                  Both Voyagers are headed towards the outer boundary of the solar system in search of the heliopause, the region where the Sun's influence wanes and the beginning of interstellar space can be sensed. The heliopause has never been reached by any spacecraft; the Voyagers may be the first to pass through this region, which is thought to exist somewhere from 8 to 14 billion miles from the Sun. This is where the million-mile-per-hour solar winds slows to about 250,000 miles per hour—the first indication that the wind is nearing the heliopause. The Voyagers should cross the heliopause 10 to 20 years after reaching the termination shock. The Voyagers have enough electrical power and thruster fuel to operate at least until 2020. By that time, Voyager 1 will be 13.8 billion miles (22.1 billion KM) from the Sun and Voyager 2 will be 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion KM) away. Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248 and in about 296,000 years, it will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky . The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.

              The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there — such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings — the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond.

INTERSTELLAR MISSION:

          The mission objective of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) is to extend the NASA exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits of the Sun's sphere of influence, and possibly beyond. This extended mission is continuing to characterize the outer solar system environment and search for the heliopause boundary, the outer limits of the Sun's magnetic field and outward flow of the solar wind. Penetration of the heliopause boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium will allow measurements to be made of the interstellar fields, particles and waves unaffected by the solar wind.

CONCLUSION:

                   Voyager 1 has had more exciting life than all of us combined; while on its way out of the solar system, it sped past Jupiter and Saturn and is now destined to roam around in space till it crashes into something, or maybe some aliens will intercept it.

But the sad part is that we'll never get to hear about where all it has been, as it will soon be out of transmission range.