“Voyager 1 & 2: The Great Human Inventions”
Ms. N.S Patil, (nspatil@coe.sveri.ac.in), Assistant Professor, Department of E&TC, SVERI’s COE, Pandharpur
We humans are always in search of the knowledge, for which we are ready to take any risks at any costs. Before a century our knowledge about world outside the earth was limited. In early 1600s, telescope inventions made clear visions. The era of space research started to grow, with the different discoveries in interstellar space. Which then lead to the discovery of making the spacecrafts which could travel through the space.
NASA (National Aeronautics Space Agency of US) launched its first spacecrafts Voyager 1 and its twin voyager 2 in the 1970s with the mission to explore the Jupiter, Saturn’s rings, and the larger moons of both the planets as well as the planets Uranus, Neptune and search of life outside the earth. Voyager 2 was launched on 20th Aug, 1977 and voyager 1 launched about 2 weeks later on September 5, 1977. Since then both the spacecrafts are travelling along the different paths at different speeds. They have travelled the distance of about billions of kilometres in space exploring the planets, asteroid belts, the great rings of Saturn, its moons, the giant red spot of Jupiter’s storm and much more. It had made discoveries which we have never thought or imagined. The things such as volcano eruptions at the Jupiter’s moon, the icy crust of Europa (Jupiter’s smallest moon), and atmosphere of titan (Saturn’s largest moon) were the most important and thrilling discoveries. These are the only spacecrafts that have gone beyond Neptune till now! Both the spacecrafts have travelled from planet to planet. Voyager found that Saturn’s atmosphere is almost made up of hydrogen and helium and it is the only planet that is less dense than water.
One more interesting fact about the twins is that NASA had sent the phonograph records, on a 12 inch gold plated copper disk called as ‘golden records’ containing 115 images selected to depict the diversity of life and culture on the earth, a variety of natural sounds such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals, including songs of birds and whales. Again to this they added musical selections from different culture and eras, spoken greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages, other human sounds like footsteps and laughter etc. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial (outside the earth) life whoever may find them.
After completion of the set task again the mission got extended. And now both spacecrafts have crossed our solar system and are still in the working condition.Following are the stunning photographs that both the satellites have shared with us! Let’s have a look J
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