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Journalism of Courage
On September 5,1977,NASA launched Voyager 1 spacecraft to study the outer solar system and interstellar medium. On February 17,1998,it became the most-distant man-made object in space. This month,35 years and six months after its launch,this 722-kg space probe is more than 11 billion miles 18 billion kilometres from Earth marking another milestone in human space exploration by entering a previously unknown region of space,either already outside our solar system or about to cross that bridge.
The Voyager mission was designed to take advantage of a rare geometric arrangement of outer planets in the late 1970s and 1980s. This layout of Jupiter,Saturn,Uranus and Neptune,which occurs about every 175 years,allows a spacecraft on a particular flight path to swing from one planet to the next without the need for large onboard propulsion systems.
ANYBODY OUT THERE?
Both Voyager spacecrafts carry a greeting to any form of life,should that be encountered. The message is carried by a phonograph record a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. Dr Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras,and spoken greetings from Earth in 55 languages.
DID YOU KNOW?
865 million: The total cost of the Voyager mission from May 1972 through the Neptune encounter was 865 million.
11,000 workyears: Workyears devoted to the project till the Neptune encounter. This is equivalent to one-third the amount of effort estimated to have been taken to complete the Great Pyramid at Giza to King Cheops.
5 trillion: A total of five trillion bits of scientific data had been returned to Earth by both Voyager spacecraft at the completion of the Neptune encounter.
2000 colour TV sets: Each Voyager has the equivalent electronic circuit complexity of some 2000 colour TV sets
