If you are in your teens, chances are that you have probably never heard about Voyager II but your dad must have surely heard, and maybe even read about this beautiful space bird when he was a college-goer. Yes, that is how old is Voyager II.
Voyager II is an American space probe which was launched on 20th of august, 1977, which means that as of now, while I am writing this article, Voyager II has already completed its journey of 34 whooping years, and 3 precise months! Even a mule brain would be able to figure out that it is indeed, a very big deal. But anyway, why, of all the topics, did I choose to write about Voyager II? Well the reason is that on 16th of November, this sweetheart of every astronomer, has successfully completed its all mission objectives and is bidding us good bye once again for its all new journey into interstellar space. No space craft has EVER, gone so far away from its home – the Earth. It definitely makes Voyager II a very special probe. NASA has announced that Voyager 2 has successfully switched to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft. Do you have any idea how much has Voyager travelled in all these years since it began its journey? It is 9 billion miles away from us…think! 9 billion miles! Well more literally, it means that Voyager has started to go past the solar system itself.
So, since our little brother is going so far away into the space, chances are that it might actually intercept aliens at some point of time! No I am very much serious, people. That is why Voyager 1 and 2 each have a gold plated disk. The discs carry photos of the Earth and its life forms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from the people (e.g. the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States, and the children of the Planet Earth) and a medley, "Sounds of Earth", that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a variety of music. So maybe if the aliens find Voyager 2 someday and run the gold disk in their laptops (lol) they will get a feel of what Earth is like!... It Crossed Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1980, Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 already and is now on an interstellar mission to become Earth’s eyes and find out what is the universe like past the solar system. Voyager 2 is currently transmitting scientific data at about 160 bits per second. Information about continuing telemetry exchanges with Voyager 2 is available from Voyager Weekly Reports. Information on the current location of Voyager 2 can be found at HeavensAbove.
So, did you realize where the big deal is? If not, Duh! Haha, no well I’m kidding. This article is here to tell you why Voyager II is so interesting. Think about these two questions and you will know.
1. What kind of fuel is being used to make this spacecraft travel so far? I mean really, what sort of weird fuel doesn't get exhausted even after making this spaceship travel for nine billion years and that too at a speed of 16.49 kilometers per second!
2. Secondly what kind of signals is this spacecraft sending to the signal reception points on earth so that even after being so far away from us, we are still able to get the signals from voyager very efficiently? Here is a little video about the Voyager.
Well the answer to the first question is Nuclear power. Some of the smart people out there will care enough to questions back? When the hell on Earth did we make a nuclear powered spacecraft?! But yes, Voyager 2 uses radioisotope thermoelectric generators to power itself at unimaginable speeds. A radioisotope thermoelectric generator is an electrical generator that obtains its power from radioactive decay. In such a device, the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material is converted into electricity by the Seebeck effect using an array of thermocouples. So yes, even if not quite literally, Voyager 2 Uses nuclear power in the sense that radioactive decay is also a nuclear phenomenon. Two, Voyager is able to send us such strong signals because it transmits data on an S Band medium which is very powerful. Built with the intent for eventual interstellar travel, Voyager 2 included a large, 3.7-meter parabolic, high-gain antenna to trans-receive data with the Deep Space Network on Earth. Communications are conducted over the S-band which has a 13 cm wavelength and X-band with a 3.6 cm wavelength providing bandwidth as high as 115.2 kilobits per second! But even so, the spacecraft is not always able to communicate with Earth due to occasional disturbances in Earth’s atmosphere. When the spacecraft is unable to communicate with Earth, the Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) is able to record up to 62,500-kilobytes of data to later transmit when communication is reestablished.
That is wonderful, however I wonder if the assumption we make very often, about aliens being intelligent than us or at par, is not true. The discs would certainly be no help then, would they!
ReplyDeleteIncredible effort never the less.
P.S. welcome to the club though, blogger :)
I totally agree mate, Aliens can be idiots or super intelligent species for all I care, but sending a disk and expecting aliens to actually find it is just weird. Never the less it is an interesting fact :)
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you!