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A Voyage Like No Other


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Excerpt:

 

The spacecraft is close to leaving the Solar System and into the uncharted territory of the Milky Way after more than three decades in space.

 

Voyager 1 was launched with its twin, Voyager 2, by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) in 1977.

 

Voyager 1 is travelling at just under 11 miles per second and sending information from nearly 11 billion miles away from the sun.

 

It is about to become the first man-made object to leave the Solar System, although Nasa expects it to take between several months and years before it completely enters interstellar space. Voyager 2 will follow later.

 

Ed Stone, the Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said: "Voyager tells us now that we're in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system. Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back.

 

Read the article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8...-Milky-Way.html

 

Voyager might actually be second probe to exit the solar system. Pioneer 10 may have done so by now but communication with it was lost in 2006. I remember clearly as a kid when the images transmitted back of Jupiter and Saturn by Voyager 1 & 2 were all over the nightly news. I was enthralled. It's simply amazing that not only do they still work but are expected to continue sending data back until their fuel is spent sometime around 2020. By that time Voyager 1 will have traveled some 12 billion miles from the sun. And in 76000 or so years it may well be captured by the star Proxima Centauri. It would be cool if the human race has already been there and someone is there to greet it. Don't you think?

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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Some of us still remember Skylab :thumbsup:

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein

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... wouldn't it be a tragedy if the Voyager probes were caught in the Oort cloud and demolished?

Victor of the 5 year fan fic competition!

 

Kevin Butler will awesome your face off.

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Jet Propulsion Labs (the company that runs most of the unmanned projects) has an excellent web site for Voyager 1 & 2.

 

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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And in 76000 or so years it may well be captured by the star Proxima Centauri. It would be cool if the human race has already been there and someone is there to greet it. Don't you think?

 

Agreed. :thumbsup:

 

EDIT: Someone should seize all the money gathered by those bloody TV ads for snow leopards and put it into space exploration.

Edited by Walsingham

"It wasn't lies. It was just... bull****"."

             -Elwood Blues

 

tarna's dead; processing... complete. Disappointed by Universe. RIP Hades/Sand/etc. Here's hoping your next alt has a harp.

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