The first Human-made object to enter interstellar space. A probe launched by NASA to study the outer part of our solar system in the 1970s and is still up and working with some of its scientific instruments after leaving the solar system.
The Spacecraft Construction
Three separate booms were attached to the central decahedral bus. A 3.66 m diameter(Parabolic) high-gain antenna was mounted on top of this Bus.
Science boom: Extending out 2.5 m from the bus, had Steerable scan platform with imaging and spectroscopic remote sensing instruments at the end. Plasma and charged particle detectors were placed at various distances along this boom.
Magnetometer boom: A separate 13 m. long boom opposite to Science boom had Magnetometers.
Generator boom: A third boom extending down and away from the science boom holding the power source of the spacecraft(RTGs).
Two whip antennas (10 m each) also extended from the spacecraft for plasma wave and planetary radio astronomy investigations.
The Power source
Plutonium oxide generated heat as it decayed and a bimetallic thermoelectric device was used to convert this heat into electric energy for spacecraft instruments. The initial output of the RTGs was 470 W of 30 V DC power at launch but it kept decreasing as more Radioactive material was expended.
Mission Timeline
Launch: Sept. 5 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Florida onboard Titan IIIE-Centaur launch system. With a primary mission of exploring Jupiter and Saturn.
Exploration of Jovian system: The closest encounter(280,000 km) of Voyager 1 to planet Jupiter was on March 2, 1979, but the imaging of Jovian system had already started in April 1978. At the beginning of January 30, 1979, Voyager took pictures of Jupiter every 96 seconds for a total of 100 hours allowing us to generate colour timelapse of 10 rotations of Jupiter.
Voyager 1 also captured incredible images of several of Jupiter’s moons during the flyby: Amalthea (420,200-kilometer range), Io (21,000 kilometers), Europa (733,760 kilometers), Ganymede (114,710 kilometers), Callisto (126,400 kilometers) and also discovered two new moons: Thebe and Metis.
The spacecraft made two course corrections after encountering the Jovian system to move to the Saturn system one of which was on April 9, 1979. And the second on Oct 10, 1979, was specifically for avoiding its trajectory to hit the Titan.
Exploration of Saturn System: The closest approach to planet Saturn was on Nov. 12 1980 within a range of about 126,000 km. During this, Voyager 1 found 5 new moons around the planet and also thousands of bands in the rings of the planet with shepherd moons which keep the rings well-defined.
It also photographed moons of Saturn: Titan, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea. with the close approach to Titan at around 4000 km on November 12, 1979. Which revealed incredible details about the moon with a thick atmosphere and a possibility of liquid existing on the surface.
Boundaries of Solar System: The planetary encounters were over after a visit to Saturn’s system, and Voyager 1 was set on a trajectory to leave our solar system with a speed of about 523 million km per year(59,703 km/hr). On December 16, 2004, spacecraft showed an indication of crossing the termination shock and entering into the Heliosheath. And it finally exited the solar system on August 25, 2012, and set the record for human-made spacecraft to ever leave the Solar system.
Before this record, on February 14, 1990, Voyager 1’s cameras were pointed Backwards to take the first ‘Selfie’ of our Solar System from a distance of 6 billion km(40 Astronomical Unit) from the Sun. The image was later known as ‘Solar System Family Portrait’ with no Mercury as it was too close to Saturn and only the dark side of Mars was visible.
Key Facts
On February 17, 1998, Voyager 1 overtook Pioneer 10 at a distance of 69.4 AU from the Sun to become the most distant object sent into space by humans.
Voyager 1 was launched 16 days after the launch of Voyager 2 but it was on a faster route and overtook Voyager 2 on December 15, 1977.
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