NASA Missions-
Voyager Missions
Achievments
On 17 february 1998,Voyager 1 became the most distant human-made object in existence when it surpassed Pioneer 10's range from earth.As of March 2010,Voyager 1 was at a distance of 16.9 billion kilometres from the sun and travelling at a speed of about 523.6 million kilometres per year.
Technologies Used
Both Voyagers carry a 30cm gold-plated copper disc together with a needle playing instructions, is mounted on the body casing.On it are recorded natural Earth sounds, 90 minutes of music,115 pictures, and greting in 60 languages.
Each Voyager was equipped with a slow-scan colour TV to take live television images from the planets.
Each also carried an extensive suite of instruments to record magnetic, atmospheric, lunar and other data about the planets.
Discoveries
On November 1979 Voyager 1 found three new moons on Saturn.Prometheus and Pandora, the sheperding moons that keep the F ring well defined and Atlas which simarly sheperds the a ring.It also discoverd a new ring (the G ring)and revealed the intracate structure of the ring system, consisting of thousands of bands.
The spacecraft photographed Saturn's moons Titan,Mimas,Enceladus,Tethys,Dione and Rhea.based on incoming data, all the moons appeared to be largely composed of water ice.
The most interesting target was Titan ,which Voyager 1 passed at 05:41 on 12 November.Images showed a thick atmosphere that completely hid the surface.The spacecraft found that the moons atmosphere was completely composed of 90% nitrogen.
On 10th February 1979, the spacecraft crossed into the Jovian moons system, and in early March, it had already discovered a thin ring circling Jupiter.
Voyager 1's most interesting discovery was on Lo, where images showed a bizarre yellow, orange and brown with at least eight active volcanoes spewing materials into space
Voyagers Original Goals
NASA
Aeronautics and
Space
Administration