Carl Sagan - Voyagers

Carl Sagan - Voyagers...

Back in 1977, NASA launched the twin Voyager spacecraft to probe the outer reaches of our solar system. The space agency was still in its infancy then. But with the triumph of the Apollo moon landings just five years behind them, NASA was ready to dive headfirst into another bold idea.

Voyagers 1 & 2 have left our Solar System's, Heliosphere, into Interstellar Space..., Billions of miles from planet Earth... Watch and Listen to a great narrative by Carl Sagan... Remember, now, that these spacecraft were launched 43-years ago when NASA was still fundamentally still in its infancy...

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At Jupiter, the probes surprised scientists when they spotted volcanoes on the moon Io and discovered Europa is likely an ocean world. Saturn surrendered its atmospheric composition and new rings. And Voyager 2 returned humanity’s only close-up looks at Uranus and Neptune. To this day, scientists are still making new discoveries by exploring Voyager's decades-old data.

But these probes haven’t stopped scouting the outer solar system. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still functioning today, making them the longest-running and most-distant space mission in history. Though they are each taking different paths, both spacecraft are still screaming their way out of the solar system. And they still have a long way to go.

Voyager Trajectories - NASA
The two Voyager spacecraft took different paths through the solar system, and both have since left the sun’s influence entirely. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Where are the Voyager Probes Going? Even traveling at 35,000 mph, the Voyager probes will need another 300 years just to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud — a large sphere of icy space rocks that begins a couple of thousand times farther from the sun than Earth. The outer edge of the Oort Cloud may be so distant that it take the Voyager probes 30,000 years or more to completely cross it, according to NASA.

After that, in about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 could finally approach another star. Voyager 2, however, will need 300,000 years before it comes close to bathing in the light of another star.
Thankfully, we don’t have to wait that long for new discoveries. Both probes are still making fascinating finds along the way.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful & historical Video...