On August 20, 1977, NASA launched Voyager 2 as planned. Its goal was to detect the four far-solar planets in the solar system. About half a week later, on September 5, Voyager 1 and also launched successfully. begin their historic mission.
These two detectors are just like their names. They carry humankind's desire as travelers to go to the deep space of the universe to see the world.
In the last century, the United States and the Soviet Union launched a fierce competition in the space field. Sometimes the scientific purpose was not even the first priority, but was often just a matter of face. For example, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 (Спутник-1) on October 4, 1957. This was mankind's first artificial earth satellite, which was of great significance.
On April 12, 1961, Gagarin entered space on the Vostok 1 spacecraft and became the first human being to fly out of the earth and into space, which was also of great significance.
The success of the Soviet Union deeply stimulated the United States, and NASA began to carry out a manned moon landing program. We all know the results. From 1969 to 1972, NASA succeeded 6 times and sent 12 astronauts to the lunar surface. . In fact, during that period, the United States and the Soviet Union not only detected the moon, but also carried out detection work on the four rocky planets in the solar system.
The rapid development of mankind is reflected in the increasing range of detectable objects in the space field. We are no longer limited to the detection of celestial bodies near the earth. Planets slightly further away in the solar system have also become human detection targets.
The Voyager sisters launched in 1977. Their main mission is to detect the four gas giant planets "Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune" and their satellites in the solar system. In 1977 In fact, it is a rather special year. There is a window period in that year, and a detector can be launched to detect four gas giant planets at once. They can appear in a straight line in the sky.
After completing the detection of Jupiter, the detection of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune can be realized in one stop.
Voyager 1, because it focused on detecting the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, missed the detection of the Uranus and Neptune systems. In the end, this task was left to Voyager 2 to complete.
The two detectors have fulfilled their mission and completed the detection of four gas giant planetary systems and obtained a lot of information and data that humans did not understand before.
The basic detection targets of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes are the four far-solar planets. The ultimate goal is actually to fly out of the solar system and fly all the way to the deep space of the universe.
At least to this day, the legend of the Voyager sister detectors is still continuing. According to scientists’ speculation, they will completely lose power and lose contact with the control room on Earth in 2025. By then, the two detectors will Really become a traveler!
html August 20th is the 45th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 2, and half a month later, September 5th is the 45th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 1. Take Voyager 1 as an example. Since it set off from the earth in 1977, it has flown approximately 23 billion kilometers in 45 years.The most famous photo is called the "Pale Blue Dot" and was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990. The
picture shows our Earth, which has hosted millions of species and billions of years of development history. In the photo, it is a dot of less than one pixel. After Voyager 1 completed the basic detection target, To fly towards the solar system, the camera was controlled by the ground to turn around and record the scene at that time. At that time, it was about 6.4 billion kilometers away from the earth.
Voyager 1 is now more than 20 billion kilometers away from us, so have they flown out of the solar system?
Human understanding of the size of the solar system actually has a slow development process. At first we thought that the scope of the eight planets of and was the solar system, but later we discovered the Kuiper Belt objects further away. Later, scientists believed that the scope of the solar wind It is the size of the solar system. For example, Voyager 1 passed through the heliopause and entered interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 completed it in 2018.
It is currently believed that the size range of the solar system is the range of the sun's gravity, generally referring to the boundary of the Oort drink, which is a hypothetical structure within the solar system and is considered to be the home base of long-period comets.
Scientists believe that the diameter of Oort cloud is about 2-3 light-years. Calculated as a minimum, if Voyager 1 is allowed to fly out of the solar system for at least one light-year, it will currently be about 23 billion kilometers away from the earth. According to the current average flight speed of Voyager 1, it will take about 17,600 years to fly out of the solar system. In fact, in a sense, humans may never be able to fly out of the solar system.
text/Science Black Hole, the picture source is network intrusion and deletion.
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