IN THE ENGLISH LESSON
Contrary to common intuition , the Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1 . The Voyager 1 followed a shorter and quicker path , overtaking Voyager 2 and the older Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spaceships . As a result , it became the most distant human made object from earth . In September 2013 , the Voyager 1 entered interstellar space , followed by the Voyager 2 in December 2018 . Apart from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 , there was also a third spare model that was built for testing .
The computer system of each Voyager consisted of 6 computers , with some of them serving for redundancy . The Voyager ’ s computers could process 8,000 instructions per second , which is much less than today ’ s standards , with even cheaper and simpler devices handling billions of instructions per second . The 6 computers used in Voyager can be separated in 3 kinds :
• Flight Data System : This system is responsible for controlling the instruments used to capture the information that gets sent to earth
• Attitude and Articulation Control System : This controls the orientation of the spaceship making sure that the antenna dish is correctly aligned to send data to earth and that the instruments point to the correct direction
• Computer Command System : The CCS is the central system of the Voyagers , managing the other 2 systems and handling things like fault detection and correction routines
Flight Data System of Voyager
The Voyagers are powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator using plutonium-238 as “ fuel ”. This generator provided in the early days approximately 470W at 30 volts . The generator loses around 0.79 % of its power output per year . In 2011 , the power output by the generator dropped below expected at 76 % its initial power , which was caused by a degradation in the thermocouples converting thermal energy to electricity . By 7 October of the same year , the power output of them dropped at 57 %. As a result , the Voyagers will have to turn off all scientific instruments to conserve power at around 2025 . They are also expected to have insufficient power for communication by 2032 .
Many parts of the Voyagers ’ functionality have actually already been turned off . The scan platform and all instruments of Voyager 2 were switched off in 1998 . The Gyro operations , the operations used to rotate the spaceship 360 degrees six times a year to measure the magnetic field of itself , also ended in 2016 . All the instruments of Voyager 1 except for the ultraviolet spectrometer have also been switched off . Its Gyro operations ended in 2017 . Regarding the structure of the Voyagers , a 3D interactive representation of the spacecraft is available in NASA ’ s web page at https :// voyager . jpl . nasa . gov / mission / spacecraft / interactive . php Both Voyagers had a 30cm golden phonograph record on them , which contained pictures and sounds of Earth , symbolic directions in the cover for playing the record and data detailing the location of earth . The record is intended as a combination time capsule and an interstellar message to any civilization , alien or far-future human , that may recover either of the Voyagers .
One of the most wonderful pictures the Voyager has sent us back to earth is the “ pale blue dot ”, a picture of the earth taken from 6 billion kilometers away . It reminds us of how little earth actually is compared to the entirety of the universe and how important it is to
IN THE ENGLISH LESSON
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