THE JOURNEY OF NASA'S VOYAGER CONTINUES....
The most iconic spacecrafts of NASA, that changed our view of our solar system,
THE VOYAGERS are still operational
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Our previous post on Voyager’s flyby of Saturn was quite appreciated a lot by you guys.
If you haven’t until now then you can check here
What did the Voyagers find about the planet Saturn?
The Voyager1 and Voyager 2 flyby of outer planets was a revolutionary step to our enhancement of our knowledge of our solar system. Among the planets the flyby of Jupiter was the first and a significant one. Let us know more about it.
What Voyagers discovered at Jupiter? OR What Voyager find during their flyby of Jupiter? Well, Let us break this question into simpler questions.
When did the voyager space crafts reached Jupiter?
Voyager 1's closest approach to Jupiter occurred on March 5, 1979. Voyager 2's closest approach was July 9, 1979.
When did the photography of Jupiter began (by the Voyagers)?
The photography of Jupiter began in January 1979. These images were far superior to the ones taken earlier.
How many photographs did the voyagers take of Jupiter?
Voyager 1 took almost 19,000 pictures of Jupiter.Voyager 1 completed its Jupiter encounter in early April, after taking almost 19,000 pictures and many other scientific measurements. Voyager 2 picked up in late April and its encounter continued into August. They took more than 33,000 pictures of Jupiter and its five major satellites.
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Which spacecraft preceded Voyager to Jupiter? OR Which spacecraft reached Jupiter before the Voyagers?
Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Jupiter had already been visited by the Pioneer spacecraft, but it still held surprises for Voyager 1 when it flew by in 1979.
What kind of alignment was there in 1977?
An unusual planetary alignment that happens every 175 years, according to NASA. The gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune lined up in such a way that a spacecraft could use the gravitational field of one planet to swing on to the next.
Which planets did both the Voyagers visited?
Voyager 2 flew past all four planets, while Voyager 1 instead traveled high above the plane of the solar system after visiting Jupiter and Saturn.
What is the atmosphere of Jupiter made up of?
Mostly hydrogen and helium.
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| Callisto |
What did the Voyagers learned about the great red spot?
That it’s big and violent. Large enough to hold a pair of Earth-sized planets, the Great Red Spot rolls between two jet streams and completes a rotation in about six days. It spins counterclockwise, the opposite direction as hurricanes in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, classifying it as a high-pressure system. Its cloud tops extend nearly 5 miles (8km) above neighboring layers. .
Material associated with the Great Red Spot, Jupiter's most prominent atmospheric feature, moves in a counter-clockwise (anticyclonic) direction. At the outer edge, material appears to rotate in four to six days; near the center, motions are small and nearly random in direction.
Small spots appear to interact with the Great Red Spot and with each other.
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| The great red spot |
What we learned about the satellites of jupiter?
Ganymede, the largest and most massive moon in the solar system, is slightly bigger than Mercury, while Callisto is nearly the planet’s diameter. Both Io and Europa are roughly the size of Earth’s Moon.
What Voyagers discovered about Io?
Volcanoes. Possibly the most stunning of Voyager 1's discoveries was that Io has extremely active volcanoes, powered by heat generated by the stretching and relaxing the moon endures every 42 hours as its elliptical orbit brings it closer to and then farther from Jupiter.
What about Europa, Ganymede and Callisto?
These moons have icy surfaces and probable global oceans underneath.
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| The moon Io |
Does Jupiter have a ring?
Yes . Jupiter have a ring. Voyager discovered a ring around Jupiter. Its outer edge is 129,000 kilometers (80,000 miles) from the center of the planet.
What Voyagers learnt about Europa?
Europa displayed a large number of intersecting linear features in the distant, low-resolution photos from Voyager 1. There is a possibility that Europa may be internally active due to tidal heating at a level one-tenth or less that of Io. Models of Europa's interior show that beneath a thin crust (5 kilometers or 3 miles) of water ice, Europa may have oceans as deep as 50 kilometers (30 miles) or more.
What Voyagers learnt about Callisto?
That it is one of the most heavily cratered celestial body in our solar system.
What Voyagers learnt about Ganymede?
That Ganymede turned out to be the largest satellite in the solar system. Before the Voyager encounters, astronomers thought that Saturn's satellite, Titan, was the largest. Ground-based observations of Titan, of necessity, had included its substantial atmosphere.
Voyager measurements of Ganymede showed it is larger than Titan. Ganymede had two distinct terrain types --- cratered and grooved, telling scientists that Ganymede's entire, ice-rich crust has been under tension from global tectonic processes.
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| The great redspot |
Where are the Voyager
Spacecraft Now?
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft have been flying longer than any other spacecraft in history. Continuing on their decades-long journeys since their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto. Yes, much farther than Pluto.
In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between stars. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through NASA’s Deep Space Network, or DSN.
Which mission followed
Voyager’s journey to Jupiter?
Cassini, Galileo, Juno. Galileo and
Juno has expanded our knowledge a lot since voyagers flyby of Jupiter.
What are the future plans
of NASA for Jupiter?
The Europa Clipper is proposed and
JUICE is on the table. ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) has been
selected as part of ESA's Cosmic Vision science program. It is expected to
launch in 2023 and, after a series of flybys in the inner Solar System, arrive
in 2031.
Let’s have a great tech leap and
advance our civilization ahead.
Thank you for reading the article.
For all images : Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech