What did the Voyager probes discover?
Voyager 1 is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. Voyager 1 discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and two new Jovian moons: Thebe and Metis. At Saturn, Voyager 1 found five new moons and a new ring called the G-ring.
What planets did Voyager visit?
The prime Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn brought Voyager 1 to Jupiter on March 5, 1979, and Saturn on November 12, 1980, followed by Voyager 2 to Jupiter on July 9, 1979, and Saturn on August 25, 1981.
What did Voyager 1 and 2 discover?
In 1980, Voyager 1 sped past Saturn, spying intricate details in the planet’s rings and discovering the first nitrogen atmosphere beyond Earth, around the moon Titan. Voyager 2 took the more scenic route, visiting Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1981, then ventured past Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
How do Neptune’s rings compared to Saturn’s rings?
Saturn, which has by far the largest ring system, was known to have rings for a long time. It was not until the 1970s that rings were discovered around the other gas planets. The rings around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are much smaller, darker, and fainter than the rings of Saturn.
Why did the Voyager space probes need gravitational assists?
Gravity assistance can be used to accelerate a spacecraft, that is, to increase or decrease its speed or redirect its path. The “assist” is provided by the motion of the gravitating body as it pulls on the spacecraft.
How many Voyager probes are there?
two
The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, to fly near them while collecting data for transmission back to Earth.
What happened to the Voyager space probe?
Voyager 1, which is traveling up away from the plane of the planets, passed out of the heliosphere into interstellar space, beyond the bubble of the solar wind, on Aug. 25, 2012.
Where is Voyager 2 right now?
On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched from Earth in 1977. The craft is now traveling more than 11.6 billion miles (18.8 billion km) from Earth. It is beyond the heliopause, or boundary region, where the sun’s influence ends and the interstellar medium begins.
What was Voyager 1 mission?
Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in August 2012 and is the most distant human-made object in existence. Launched just shortly after its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, in 1977, Voyager 1 explored the Jovian and Saturnian systems discovering new moons, active volcanoes and a wealth of data about the outer solar system.
Where are Voyager 1 and 2 now?
Where are the Voyagers now? Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have reached “Interstellar space” and each continue their unique journey through the Universe. In the NASA Eyes on the Solar System app, you can see the real spacecraft trajectories of the Voyagers, which are updated every five minutes.