The Voyager Missions: Modern space exploration and travel can be described as a journey to the solar system's edge.
The Voyager missions, a pinnacle of NASA's planetary exploration, stand out as a remarkable achievement. Launched in 1977, the twin missions, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, embarked on an extensive observational campaign of the outer planets, providing humanity with its first-ever close-up views of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Jupiter was encountered at the closest by Voyager 1 in 1979, and while exploring the system, Io was found to be geologically active with volcanic activities, and the planet's complex and chaotic weather was observed in detail. The flyby of Saturn in the later part of the same year unveiled a system of rings along with the moons of Saturn and insight into an interplanetary electric storm. Voyager 2 is still in active space exploration; its mission involved visiting all the outer planets of our solar system – it captured images of Jupiter's lightning in 1979 while exploring the 'odd' icy world of Uranus in the same year, 1986. It ended in August 1989 when it made the closest approach to Neptune at 3,000 miles.
Today, more than 40 years after their mission's inception, both spacecraft remain operational. It may seem funny, but the fact of the matter is that Voyager 1 is currently as far away from the Earth as it is possible to get. Based on the distances recorded in 2020, it measures more than fourteen billion miles and moves through the interstellar medium at more than thirty-eight thousand miles per hour. Another spacecraft, Voyager 2, is gradually entering interstellar space after crossing the bow wave of charged particles, protecting the solar system in August 2018.
Regarding the Voyager missions, these outer planets remained relatively uncharted, and the missions delivered extraordinary data sets and images. However, it is just as crucial as it brings a sample of the human race beyond our solar system. Every Voyager Interstellar Spacecraft has a 'Golden Record': two copper discs plated with gold containing various geometric shapes, numerical numbers, and symbols, diagrams of human anatomy, human voice, animal vocal sounds, bird, whale, and dolphin sounds, greetings in 55 different languages, and music – all recorded from planet Earth – similar to a message in a bottle for any other form of intelligence in the universe that may stumble upon these metal cylinders.
Further out in the space between star clusters, the Voyagers extend the distance of the interstellar environment beyond the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, the only other artificial object outside the heliosphere. The Golden Records guarantee that something of humankind will be left behind even if the fusion reactor of the sun swallows the inner planets with its expansion into a red giant. While the Voyagers are programmed to shut down their transmission back to Earth sometime in the next decade, they are man's vanguard interstellar wanderers bearing through light years of space the memory, music, and voices of our home planet forever or at least until a curious alien or a cosmic meteorite sends them into oblivion millions of years from now.
Thanks for reading 🥰
