ΑΠΟΤΥΠΩΜΑΤΑ
The Voyager – The furthest we have gone to explore the universe !
50
ΑΠΟΤΥΠΩΜΑΤΑ
The Voyager spaceships are among the most well-known spaceships humanity has ever made . The Voyager mission was one of the greatest space exploration projects in history and gave us essential information that dramatically changed the way we see our solar system . It was launched in 1977 with the takeoff of two spaceships , Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 .
The date was selected precisely , as at that point Jupiter , Saturn , Uranus and Neptune were aligned in a way allowing the spaceships to fly near all of them and collect valuable data . The Voyagers followed a precisely designed path and took advantage of the planets ’ gravity to get the velocity required to escape the solar system . At the time of writing , the Voyagers are still in operation and continue sending information captured from their sensors back to earth . The Voyager 1 is about 24,341 million km away from earth , while the Voyager 2 around 20,371 million km . They both weight 773kg , while the cost for the whole project reached $ 895 million .
The Voyagers helped us learn a lot about our solar system . Here are the discoveries the 2 spaceships enabled the researchers to make :
• They provided images depicting Jupiter ’ s complex cloud forms , winds and storm systems
• They uncovered the existence of volcanic activity on Jupiter ’ s moon “ Io ”
• Smaller rings near the large rings of Saturn were discovered
• The Voyager 2 measured a substantial magnetic field around Uranus
• Ten unknown moons of Uranus were found
• Passing near Neptune the Voyager 2 found three rings surrounding it
• It uncovered six unknown until then Neptune ’ s moons