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Planetary Imagery: 30 Years From Voyager Spacecraft

wired.com — Voyager 1 was launched Sept. 5, 1977 atop a Titan rocket with a Centaur-6 upper stage. Still operational for 30 years,

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  • sebcity, on 10/10/2007, -12/+4Space is mental
  • scout29c, on 10/10/2007, -1/+30I know what intelligent beings will intercept the Voyager spacecraft. Us. Our descendants.
    Space is so vast and we are advancing so fast that we will develop the technology to catch up to both spacecrafts long before either get anywhere near a star -- even more so one that might harbor intelligence.
    Even if the earth is hit by a meter impact or the Yellowstone caldera erupts and the human population is reduced to what it was 100,000 years ago, we will recover and advance to the point we can intercept the spacecraft before they get anywhere near another solar system. We are advancing that fast and space is that vast.
    • simpleid, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14lol that's awesome :-)
      minus the fact that i won't be around to see it happen. :-(
    • jjb123, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Not very modest are we.
    • wonderchemist, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Except in 30 years we haven't made any spacecraft that will have a final solar escape velocity greater than Voyager 1. And it took us nearly 30 years just to launch the next probe (New Horizon) with a trajectory that will escape the solar system. Aside from New Horizons, I doubt there will be a solar escape mission for several decades as future outer solar system mission will either go into orbit around their targeted objects to maximize science data return or fly very slowly from target to target. And unless some probe finds a monolith out there will be no great rush to get out there.
      • jjb123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I think it will take at least a few hundred years for use to even think about interstellar manned flights. I think most of our exploring will be probes or self replicating probes, there is a really good article about it at mkaku.org.
    • Narfmaster, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Didn't they find it in an episode of star trek? Colided with some cosmic entity and imploded in a pile of pure evil...or something.
      I'm sure someone will clarify.
    • MrNexus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I like your positive outlook.
  • damndj, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Well, they sure don't make them like they used to!
    • Dustmuffins, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Well the mars rovers were supposed to last 3 months, and they're still chuggin' along after 3 years...
      • damndj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Good point. ;)
      • damndj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Gosh darn double comment

      • MrNexus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0They don't spend billions of dollars to put a piece of crap in space. If companies like Sony ever start building there own satellites, watch out.
  • fearlessfx, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3what, no pictures of Jeri Ryan in a leotard?
  • Flashman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Just looking at these pictures gives me a sense of the excitement and wonder that these discoveries must have generated at the time. Imagine working at NASA and seeing the first up-close pictures of the swirling Jovian atmosphere. The Voyager program is a simply astounding piece of work.
    • AlanCayce, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Imagine working at NASA now, and being pissed about funding.
      ***** war, lets put a foot print on mars!
    • brucerchapman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0And the worst thing is that this type of project gets no attention, no exxtra funding and the number of science and engineering graduates falls every year. Instead the lens of the world turns to a washed up ex pop star trailer trash junkie who gets out of a car with no knickers on, or a spoilt heiress who gets locked up for repeated drink driving. Look mum ! Britney and Paris are on TV again - ooh I so want to be like them!
      Makes me nostalgic for a time when people aspired to be smarter and let their achievements speak for themselves, not dumber and let their stupidity make the headlines
      Still, people get the media and governments they deserve.
      • ElwoodHerring, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Wish I could give you a dozen diggs for that - spot on.
  • cfarmer8, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I would love to hear the record
    anyone?
  • pixeldust, on 10/10/2007, -0/+20Then, at last, completing their long good-bye to the Solar System, broken free of the gravitational shackles that once bound them to the Sun, the Voyagers will make for the open sea of interstellar space. only then will Phase Two of their mission begin.



    Their radio transmitters long dead, the spacecraft will wander for ages in the calm, cold interstellar blackness-where there is almost nothing to erode them. Once out of the Solar System, they will remain intact for a billion years or more, as they circumnavigate the center of the Milky Way galaxy.



    We do not know whether there are other space-faring civilizations in the Milky Way. If they do exist, we do not know how abundant they are, much less where they are. But there is at least a chance that sometime in the remote future one of the Voyagers will be intercepted and examined by an alien craft.

    Accordingly, as each Voyager left Earth for the planets and the stars, it carried with it a golden phonograph record encased in a golden, mirrored jacket containing, among other things; greetings in 59 human languages and one whale language; a 12-minute sound essay including a kiss, a baby's cry, and an EEG record of the meditations of a young woman in love; 116 encoded pictures, on our science, our civilization, and ourselves; and 90 minutes of the Earth's greatest hits-Eastern and Western, classical and folk, including a Navajo night chant, a Japanese shakuhachi piece, a Pygmy girl's initiation song, a Peruvian wedding song, a 3,000-year-old composition for the ch'in called "Flowing Streams," Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky, Louis Armstrong, Blind Willie Johnson, and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."


    Space is nearly empty. There is virtually no chance that one of the Voyagers will ever enter another solar system-and this is true even if every star in the sky is accompanied by planets. The instructions on the record jackets, written in what we believe to be readily comprehensible scientific hieroglyphics, can be read, and the contents of the records understood, only if alien beings, somewhere in the remote future, find Voyager in the depths of interstellar space. Since both Voyagers will circle the center of the Milky Way Galaxy essentially forever, there is plenty of time for the records to be found-if there's anyone out there to do the finding.


    We cannot know how much of the records they would understand. Surely the greetings will be incomprehensible, but their intent may not be. (We thought it would be impolite not to say hello.) The hypothetical aliens are bound to be very different from us-independently evolved on another world. Are we really sure they could understand anything at all of our message? Every time I feel these concerns stirring, though, I reassure myself. Whatever the incomprehensibilities of the Voyager record, any alien ship that finds it will have another standard by which to judge us. Each Voyager is itself a message. In their exploratory intent, in the lofty ambition of their objectives, in their utter lack of intent to do harm, and in the brilliance of their design and performance, these robots speak eloquently for us.



    But being much more advanced scientists and engineers than we-otherwise they would never be able to find and retrieve the small, silent spacecraft in interstellar space-perhaps the aliens would have no difficulty understanding what is encoded on these golden records. Perhaps they would recognize the tentativeness of our society, the mismatch between our technology and our wisdom. Have we destroyed ourselves since launching Voyager, they might wonder, or have we gone on to greater things?



    Or perhaps the records will never be intercepted. Perhaps no one in five billion years will ever come upon them. Five billion years is a long time. In five billion years, all humans will have become extinct or evolved into other beings, none of our artifacts will have survived on Earth, the continents will have become unrecognizably altered or destroyed, and the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms.
Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on.

    -Carl Sagan
  • kilpack, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2According to the caption, the last photo is a "parting shot of Uranus". I guess even V'Ger gets lonely in the vacuum of space.
  • nycmac247, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1We barely remember who or what came before this precious moment,
    We are choosing to be here right now. hold on, stay inside...
    This holy reality, this holy experience. choosing to be here in...

    This body. this body holding me. be my reminder here that I am not alone in
    This body, this body holding me, feeling eternal all this pain is an illusion.

    Alive

    This holy reality, in this holy experience. choosing to be here in...

    This body. this body holding me. be my reminder here that I am not alone in
    This body, this body holding me, feeling eternal all this pain is an illusion...
    Of what it means to be alive

    Swirling round with this familiar parable.
    Spinning, weaving round each new experience.
    Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this
    Chance to be alive and breathing
    Chance to be alive and breathing.

    This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.
    Embrace this moment. remember. we are eternal.
    All this pain is an illusion.
  • agann, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0You will like these 20 beautiful space pictures:
    http://www.linkinn.com/_20_beautiful_space_pictures_1
  • kahrn, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6The voyager project is one of the great things we have achieved together. Quite advanced for it's time, too.
  • brucerchapman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Take a look at 21 of 24 - the photo of Saturn. The moon nearest Saturn's rings on the lower right hand side. Or should I say "DEATH STAR!". Darth Vader, leave Saturn alone!! Long time ago, Galaxy far, far away, indeed!

    http://www.wired.com/science/space/multimedia/2007/09/gallery_voyager_30?slide=21&slideView=1
  • bightchee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2V'Ger must evolve. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve. What it requires of its god, doctor, is the answer to its question, "Is there nothing more"?
  • bigfkncee, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1they forgot this one http://www.animationalley.com/images/prints/mpa/mpa_trek8.jpg
  • sjbdallas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I've read over this a few times now and I still don't get what this has to do with the new iPods.
  • chrysb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Might I add it was launched labor day, check out other notable happenings on labor day: http://www.aclevercookie.com/20-most-notable-happenings-on-labor-day/
  • joshmiao, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0goddamnit i was expecting the voyager that got lost in the delta quadrant.
  • Rustbelt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0It's incredible they've been traveling as long as they have and functioned as well as they did. Now if we could just build a damn car that would run so well we'd be in business.
  • iceshake, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0the pictures it captures are simply amazing!
  • xenolon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2this continues to boggle my mind. the planning, the engineering, the execution. it floors me every time i think about it.

    the idea that these spacecraft were designed over 30 years ago, with the technology available at the time. [which is what? a small fraction of the computing power than is available in my ipod?] that the on board systems function largely autonomously and continue to do so. that the craft is able to keep its communications array continuously pointed at earth. that the craft remains steady enough to capture sharp images over extremely long exposure times. that the trajectory of the flight was calculated with such precision. that they are 80+ AUs away, 30 years old, and continue to return data from the very edge of the solar system. i could go on and on. it's humbling.

    and the chances, however infinitesimally remote, that another form of life my happen upon our chunk of metal, is awe inspiring. because even these craft are never discovered by another living being [they won't be], we will have left our mark. we were here.

    cool.
  • docholliday101, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Voyager's one of the many things that NASA managed to get right. The pictures we've recieved from it are incredible.
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