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Mars Base

At last, Voyager 1 slips into interstellar space | Atom & Cosmos | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/..._slips_into_interstellar_space

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • the probe is surrounded by a relatively dense fog of galactic particles rather than a thin mist of solar ones
  • from the beginning
  • team hoped the probes would survive long enough to investigate the region of space where our star’s dominance finally wanes
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • more than 60,000 kilometers per hour
  • August 25, when solar particles disappeared for good
  • combined with a surge in higher-energy particles from other stars, suggested that Voyager had exited the heliosphere
  • Several well-publicized studies made that claim
  • colleagues resisted that conclusion
  • lacked evidence of what they thought would be the key signature of interstellar space: a shift in the direction of the magnetic field
  • Solar plasma produces a distinctive magnetic field because it all comes from the same source
  • scientists expected that the field would shift in interstellar space, where particles flit around in all directions
  • Not everyone agrees, including a few holdouts on the Voyager team
  • have written a paper demonstrating how plasma could become dense enough within the heliosphere to produce
  • measurement
  • many other astrophysicists say the evidence is overwhelming that Voyager 1 has crossed the heliopause, but they acknowledge that they have to determine why the magnetic field direction didn’t shift
  • NASA estimates that Voyager 1 has enough plutonium fuel to keep all its instruments powered for another seven years
  • August 25, 2012 — the same date, coincidentally, that the world lost its most famous human space explorer, Neil Armstrong
Mars Base

It's Official: Voyager 1 Is Now In Interstellar Space - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...1-is-now-in-interstellar-space

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • NASA says the most distant human made object — the Voyager 1 spacecraft — is in interstellar space
  • It actually made the transition about a year ago
  • there is a bit of an argument on the semantics of whether Voyager 1 is still inside or outside of our Solar System
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • it is not farther out than the Oort Cloud
  • it will take 300 more years reach the Oort cloud and the spacecraft is closer to our Sun than any other star
  • the plasma environment Voyager 1 now travels through has definitely changed from what comes from our Sun to the plasma that is present in the space between stars.
  • debate
  • There’s also been a
  • between the latest various science papers and their authors
  • Scientists thought that when the spacecraft had crossed over into interstellar space, the magnetic field direction would change
  • that didn’t happen
  • scientists determined they needed to look at the properties of the plasma instead
  • The Sun’s heliosphere is filled with ionized plasma from the Sun
  • Outside that bubble, the plasma comes from the explosions of other stars millions of years ago
  • The main tell-tail difference is the interstellar plasma is denser.
  • the real instrument that was designed to make the measurements on the plasma quit working in the 1980’s
  • Instead they used the plasma wave instrument, located on the 10-meter long antennas on Voyager 1 and
  • from the Sun
  • a massive Coronal Mass Ejection
  • The antennas have radio receivers at the ends – “like the rabbit ears on old television sets
  • The CME erupted from the Sun in March 2012, and eventually arrived at Voyager 1′s location 13 months later, in April 2013
  • Because of the CME, the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string
  • The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma
  • the particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere
  • The plasma wave science team reviewed its data and found an earlier, fainter set of oscillations in October and November 2012 from other CMEs
  • extrapolation of measured plasma densities from both events, the team determined Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space in August 2012
  • certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly
  • not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space
  • the data are changing in ways that the team didn’t expect
  • after further review, the Voyager team generally accepts the August 2012 date as the date of interstellar arrival
  • The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause
  • expect the fields and particles science instruments on Voyager will continue to send back data through at least 2020
  • , it was first questioned in August of 2012, with more speculation in December 2012, then in March of 2013
  • Then about a month ago
  • Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft
  • emitted signals are currently very dim, at about 23 watts — the power of a refrigerator light bulb
  • Voyager mission controllers still talk to or receive data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 every day
  • planetary alignment that only happens every 176 years enabled the two spacecraft to join together to reach all the outer planets in a 12 year time period
  • By the time the signals get to Earth, they are a fraction of a billion-billionth of a watt
  • Data from Voyager 1′s instruments are transmitted to Earth typically at 160 bits per second
  • signal from Voyager 1 takes about 17 hours to travel to Earth.
  • After the data are transmitted to JPL and processed by the science teams, Voyager data are made publicly available
  • Scientists do not know when Voyager 1 will reach the undisturbed part of interstellar space where there is no influence from our Sun
  • They also are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space, but they believe it is not very far behind.
  • While Voyager 1 will keep going, we will not always be able to communicate with it, as we do now
  • In 2025 all instruments will be turned off, and the science team will be able to operate the spacecraft for about 10 years after that to just get engineering data
  • In the year 40,272 AD, Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor
Mars Base

Voyager 1 spacecraft reaches interstellar space, study confirms - 0 views

phys.org/...ecraft-interstellar-space.html

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • University of Iowa space physicist
  • says there is solid evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to reach interstellar space
  • 11 billion miles distant and 36 years after it was launched
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • For several months, the relative position of Voyager 1
  • remains some lingering evidence of the nearby heliosphere beyond the heliopause.
  • April
  • there are variations in some of Voyager's measurements that may be due to the nearby presence of the heliosphere
  • 11.6 billion miles from the sun, or about 125 astronomical units.
  • it takes more than 17 hours for a radio signal to travel from the spacecraft
  • The signal strength is so incredibly weak that it takes both a 230-foot and a 110-foot-diameter antenna to receive our highest resolution data
  • moving outward from the sun at about 3.5 AU per year
Mars Base

Listen to the Sounds of Interstellar Space, Recorded by Voyager 1 - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ar-space-recorded-by-voyager-1

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Voyager 1 was able to record the sounds of interstellar space. This helped the Voyager science team calculate the density of interstellar plasma
Mars Base

Planetary Resources Raises $1.5M for Crowdfunded Space Telescope | Space Telescopes | S... - 0 views

www.space.com/owdfunded-space-telescope.html

CrowdFunded Arkyd scibyte101

shared by Mars Base on 07 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Planetary Resources raised more than $1.5 million in 33 days to launch a small space telescope into low Earth orbit in 2015
  • 17,614 people donated money for the crowdsourced Arkyd-100
  • The company hit that goal June 19, then raked in another $505,366 in the final 10 days of the campaign, including $100,000 on June 30 from Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Planetary Resources, Bellevue, Wash., began a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign May 29 seeking to raise at least $1 million by June 30
  • 14,919 space selfies, according data from Kickstarter
  • Kicktraq.com, shows that Planetary Resources raised an average of $45,614 a day, with the 17,614 donors contributing an average of $85 each
Mars Base

Wow! Curiosity Rover Captures 2 Mars Moons Together In Stunning NASA Video | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/osity-martian-moons-video.html

Curiosity scibyte101

shared by Mars Base on 07 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Earth's moon
  • A spectacular new video from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the Red Planet's two tiny moons eclipsing each other
  • Curiosity snapped 41 images of the Mars moons in the night sky on Aug. 1, with rover scientists then stitching them together to make the final 30-second video
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • the first time a view of the two Martian satellites — called Phobos and Deimos — eclipsing each other has been captured from the vantage point of the planet's surface
  • researchers are studying the images to refine their knowledge of the orbits of Phobos and Deimos
  • ultimate goal is to improve orbit knowledge enough that we can improve the measurement of the tides Phobos raises on the Martian solid surface
  • Phobos' orbit is taking it closer to the surface of Mars very slowly
  • Deimos may gradually be getting farther and farther away from the planet
  • Phobos is just 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide on average, while Deimos is even smaller
  • But Curiosity was able to spot both of them because they orbit
  • 3,700 miles (6,000 km) in Phobos' case and 12,470 miles (20,070 km) for Deimos
  • Earth's moon
  • a diameter of about 2,160 miles (3,475 km)
  • farther away — its average distance is 239,000 miles (384,600 km)
  • Phobos appears half as big in the sky to Curiosity as Earth's moon does to human skywatchers
  • Earth's moon
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