Voyager 1: The Furthest Man-Made Object From Earth

hello everybody welcome back to another episode of mega projects this one before we get started it's brought to you by the fine people over at squarespace from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespaces the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business check out squarespace there is a link below more on them in a bit [Music] on the 25th of august 2012 one of the most significant events in human history took place yet it occurred so far away that not a single human being was there to witness it in terms of exploration this is about as colossal as you are going to get it's a journey that's still ongoing after a staggering 43 years and roughly 22.6 billion kilometers which is about 14.1 billion miles shortly before the end of august in 2012 with the world still basking in the afterglow of a successful summer olympics in london voyager 1 nasa's space pro launched in 1977 finally crossed the imaginary boundary that forms the heliopause to call the event historic would be something of a monumental understatement alright alright so heliocentric not exactly a word that many people are going to come across in their everyday this is because it denotes an area that is unimaginably far away it's difficult for us here on earth to wrap our minds around just how far away the heliopause is it's about 18 billion kilometers or about 11.1 billion miles away from earth and it marks the very edge of our solar system the point at which the sun's solar winds begin to lose strength and where objects enter the interstellar medium the matter and radiation that exists between stars it was at this point in august 2012 that an object that had originated on earth became the first to leave our solar system and to venture into the great unknown and nine years later this intrepid little explorer is still hurtling through now interstellar space like i said it's a little bit difficult to get head around the fact that roughly 22.6 billion kilometers away there's an object built by humans traveling at a speed of 61 000 kilometers an hour or 38 000 miles per hour going through interstellar space and it's now so far away that it takes light just over 21 hours to reach the probe from our sun it's hard enough to picture space and other planets but when you add an interstellar travel you begin to get a sense of just how extraordinary this journey really is yeah this is not just about where it is now but where it's been and the things it's seen since its launch on the 5th of september 1977. while it was not the first probe to visit jupiter and saturn the images are sent back of the two giants and their moons were by far the most impressive and comprehensive images we had ever seen perhaps his most famous image is the family portrait a series of pictures taken in 1990 put together to create a collage showing six separate planets and their positions in the solar system the lifespan of the mission has already extended well beyond expectations but it's generally assumed that we won't be able to communicate with voyager 1 past 2025 but even then that won't be the end for each one we might not be able to communicate with it but this space probe is set to continue for some time to come as the space race began heating up in the late 1950s and through the 1960s understandably much of the early focus was on the planets in our immediate vicinity and of course our moon by the way total side note here i just started watching the apple show for all mankind where the space race continues it's pretty good so far like three episodes in worth checking out let's move on the 970 saw some of the most dramatic events in space exploration we've recently done a video on the soviet mission to mars the blasted off in 1951 which became the first object to land on the red planet in 1975 the soviets also became the first nation to successfully photograph the surface of venus from its venera 9 and 10 spacecraft the americans were also pretty busy but it's noticeable how quickly public interest fell after the first moon landing in 1969 with the irony being that the most watched space event after it was the successful failure of apollo 13 again a topic that we've covered on mega projects so if you fancy getting stuck into the space race then this is the place to do it and if you want to get stuck into a fictional space race which continues there's the apple show now of course this is the point of video where i need to make a quick mention of our friends over at squarespace now more than ever people are getting creative with their time look you might be reaching into a savings account to start a business that you've been thinking about for a while or maybe you're just launching a politics blog to share your opinion with your friends and neighbors so in the future they will hate you but seriously blogs are pretty fun the world is yours and squarespace is the perfect web tool to help you fashion it into whatever you want it to be it is the platform to use when you're ready to get started on that next web project that you've been thinking about look if you're looking to get it in and out quick without thinking too much about all the little details of a website well just use one of squarespace's incredible templates or if you're a bit more fussy if you're a bit more finicky with the details well you can do whatever you want with squarespace really you can customize it to your heart's content and once you're done setting up your website tinkering with the design if you're so inclined or maybe just changing some colors that's what i would do because i am lazy well there are lots of extra features that squarespace provides so that your website can thrive email complaints patronage portal social integrations member only areas analytics commercial options 24 7 customer support everything you need in one place so when you're ready to get started on the next project of yours big or small if involves a website scotty with squarespace right now you can go to squarespace.com for a free trial when you really launch go to squarespace.com forward slash mega projects to save 10 of your first purchase of a website or a domain and let's get back to space really really far away space back in the days when we humans were bound by the constraints of our earth the grand tour was a 17th and 18th century upper class romp through aristocratic europe for many young men of the age this was a rite of passage a way of seeing the world before returning to one's roots and commencing adulthood in the 1960s nasa commenced a program with the same name intending to visit our distant planetary cousins the idea was to launch four space probes two of which would visit jupiter saturn and pluto while the other two would visit jupiter uranus and neptune if you're wondering why it's mixed up like that it's because of planetary orbits and their location and when each of the probes pass them it's complicated space stuff with things swinging into gear in the early 1970s the cost of the program ballooned to nearly a billion dollars that's 6.7 billion dollars today unfortunately for the grand tour program it had to compete for budget with another program that would go on to define nasa and space travel and that is of course the space shuttle program in december 1971 the decision was made to cancel the grand tour and instead send only two probes that would be part of the existing mariners series [Music] the mariner program had already achieved several notable successes the first flybys of mercury venus and mars were also the first to successfully photograph mars as well as performing the first gravity assist maneuver in space the 10 mission series came in at a cost of 554 million or 3.7 billion dollars today and once the grand or was cancelled the anticipated probe that would venture towards saturn and jupiter became known as mariner 11 but was later changed to voyager 1 as its mission profile began to differ considerably from the other marine emissions around the same time its sister mission also received a name change and became creatively voyager 2. but just to confuse things voyager 2 would actually blast off before voyager 1 but because of its trajectory emission profile it would be overtaken by voyager 1 while in space again science is complicated in the movies we see great hulking spacecraft hurtling through interstellar space but we're still a really really long way from that voyager 1 is relatively small especially in comparison to more recent manned flights voyager 1 weighs just 825.5 kilograms and it's the shape of a decahedral bus measuring 47 centimeters in height and 1.78 meters across that's 1.5 by 5.8 feet there's also a 3.6 meter or nearly 12 foot diameter parabolic high gain antenna mounted on the top of the probe while many of the scientific instruments on board are located on a boom that extends 2.5 meters 8.2 feet out from the probe located along this boom are plasma and charged particle detectors with a steerable scan platform at the tip along with imaging and spectroscopic remote sensing instruments a second boom extends out 30 meters from voyage 1 and houses the magnetometers while the third boom which points down and away from the other scientific instruments has the spacecraft's three radioisotope thermoelectric generators or rtgs these rtgs are powers for juan and each contains 24 pressed plutonium-238 oxide spheres as of april 2021 voyager is 70.86 of the plutonium-238 that it had at launch and by 2050 that will be down to roughly half by 2110 it will have 27.58 left and by 21.61 it's estimated that its plutonium reserve will have finally run out so basically as long as voyager 1 doesn't hit anything it's going to outlast us all by many many decades lastly are two 10 meter whip antennas each perpendicular to the other and used for the plasma wave and planetary radio astronomy investigations at the time of launch the entire system generated just 470 watts sequel to a low-end vacuum cleaner but this has been reduced even further over time and nasa now says that voyager 1 is running on 249 watts the probe is always transmitting and uses a 22.4 watt transmitter that's the same kind of wattage as a fridge light bulb by the way to send the information back to earth but the distances are now so vast that by the time it reaches earth its strength has been reduced to 0.1 billion billionth of a watt and nasa needs to use the large antennas at its disposal just to read the data communications to and from voyager 1 go through the deep space network station on earth a series of us communication facilities based in california spain and australia information coming back from voyager 1 is normally sent on either 2.3 gigahertz or 8.4 gigahertz frequencies while data sent out to it is centered 2.1 gigahertz at the moment signals going to or from voyage 1 take around 20 hours to reach earth on board there are two cameras a 200 millimeter focal length low resolution wide angle camera used primarily for spatially extended imaging and a 1500 millimeter high resolution narrow angle camera voyager 1 was launched on the back of titan 3e rocket on the 5th of september 1977 16 days after voyager 2 left earth but neither launch went exactly to plan voyager 2 experienced severe computer problems that nearly curtailed the entire mission it thought that the probe experienced robotic vertigo in which he struggled to orient itself correctly and even separated too early from its final stage booster it was a pretty nervous few minutes but eventually voyager 2 managed to correct itself and well it roared off towards jupiter with voyager 1 hot on the heels of voyager 2 nasa engineers raced to address the computer issues that had been almost disastrous for the first probe but as you would have it the computer was the least of their worries a fuel leak in the titan rocket meant that the second stage booster ran out before its scheduled cut-out time in response the final stage known as the centaur located on the space probe itself began firing earlier than planned to counteract the loss voyager 1 was in a desperate race against time to get out onto its jupiter trajectory before its booster fuel ran out and for many on the ground it appeared as if the probe was about to fall just short but as you already know because you're watching a video all about voyager 1 here in 2021 well everything went fine with just 3.5 seconds worth of thrust remaining voyage one made it onto its correct trajectory the centaur stage had effectively saved the day and like its sister ship voyage one began heading for the largest planet in our solar system on the 19th of december 1977 voyager 1 overtook voyager 2 within the massive asteroid field that separates us from jupiter to give you an idea of the size of the asteroid belt it would be almost another year before it finally cleared it and yes these things would go really really fast in january 1979 voyager 1 neared the colossal planet jupiter and immediately began photographing it this was by no means the first images of the great planet that were beamed back to earth with pioneer 10 having sent back grainy images of jupiter in 1973. but well what came back from voyager 1 was astonishing during its closest approach on the 5th of march 1979 at a distance of about 349 000 kilometers the most detailed images of the surface of jupiter we've ever seen began to emerge along with this were countless images of many of jupiter's moons including two new discoveries thebetis some of the most remarkable images came from the moon io which revealed a ferocious amount of volcanic activity and is now regarded as the most geologically active object in the solar system [Music] but well like every grand tour the time came to bid farewell to the jovian jupiter system in april 1979 and after successfully performing a booster set it on a gravitational assist trajectory voyager 1 set its sights on the next megaplanet saturn the space probe reached saturn in november 1980 and was at its closest on the 12th of november when it came within 124 000 kilometers of the planet once again the images and data sent back from voyager were mesmerizing with pictures of saturn's rings revealing complex structures inside composed mostly of water ice with some pieces estimated to be anywhere between 10 meters and a kilometer in thickness voyager 1 revealed that saturn's helium content in the upper atmosphere was 7 compared to 11 on jupiter while also showing the presence of strong winds that typically blew eastward it also found aurora-like ultraviolet emissions of hydrogen located in both of the polar regions of the planet and mid-latitudes also a fact that continues to puzzle scientists because similar events on earth only ever happen at high altitudes so apart from saturn itself another huge event was the flyby of the planet's largest moon titan this had in fact been chosen instead of a flyby of pluto because of the appearance of gravity on titan and that it may even have been one of the more inhabitable places in the solar system unfortunately a thick haze swirling around tight prevented detailed images of the surface from being taken but nonetheless readings from scientific instruments on board led to increased speculation that lakes of liquid hydrocarbons could exist on the surface as voyager 1 blasted clear of saturn it had effectively completed its mission the analysis of the two giant planets had been a huge success now all that was left was to continue on until it was powered out and voyage 1 finally fell silent but that was nearly 40 years ago and still voyager 1 creeps on in 1990 as it neared the extremities of our solar system the space probe turned in space and took a series of pictures that have come to be known as the family portrait the picture is actually 60 separate images in mosaic with venus earth jupiter saturn uranus and neptune all present along with the distant sun this is also where the famous pale blue dot image of the earth comes from and it was taken 6 billion kilometers 3.7 billion miles from our planet on the 17th of february 1998 voyager 1 overtook another object from earth pioneer 11 to become the furthest man-made object from earth as the next millennium began to progress the next question was when exactly would it become the first object to leave our solar system so things get complicated when we're talking about distances so impossibly difficult to comprehend but when we think about the solar system we need to imagine a bubble around us which we call the heliosphere essentially this is a cavity in space caused by the sun and the plasmas coming from it radiation levels are very different inside and outside the bubble as is the presence of solar wind coming from the sun towards the edge of this bubble is an area known as the termination shock the point where solar winds slow considerably and where the heliosheath begins a transitional area where our solar system meets true interstellar space forge 1 entered the termination shock in february of 2003 but this was not fully confirmed until several years later and by the end of 2011 those back on earth knew that voyager 1 was approaching the very edges of the solar system and was now traveling through an area named somewhat appropriately cosmic purgatory it was not until the end of summer 2013 that nasa revealed that voyage 1 had passed through the heliopause region and was now traveling through the interstellar medium it was showing significant changes in the charged particles in space most of which are normally affected by solar winds coming from the sun along with an 80-fold increase in electron density in 2017 nasa fired up the four trajectory correction maneuver thrusters for the first time since 1980 a quite remarkable fact considering that they hadn't been used in 37 years the boost enabled the voyager 1 team to keep the antenna pointed back towards earth and should enable communication for the next few years but as i mentioned earlier when voyager 1 ceases communication that won't be the end far from it even after its power supply runs out the probe will continue through space destined to wander aimlessly for eternity or until it hits something we expected to reach the aut cloud a massive grouping of icy objects in space in around 300 years and from there it'll take only around 30 000 years to pass through it add another 10 000 years to that and voyager 1 should pass close to a son named ac 793888 creative long i guess we can't name all of the stars in the sky long after all of us are gone and either we've saved the planet or completely destroyed it voyager 1 will continue to travel through interstellar space the greatest journey that any man-made object has ever undertaken is only really just getting started in my mind just to end here this is the end of the video but i'll just add my own personal thought i hope at some point that we get ships that if they can't travel faster than the speed of lights because apparently that's impossible we'll travel at least up to that speed and we can go collect it and put it in a museum that'll be cool anyway this has been an episode of megaprojects thank you for watching thank you to the legends over at squarespace who made it possible if you want to support them and support the channel by supporting them there is a link below thank you for watching you

Channel: Megaprojects

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Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021