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A New World: NASA Recalls Voyager 2 Probe's 1989 Neptune Encounter

A quarter-century ago, the world got its first good look at the solar system's other blue planet.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft made the first-ever flyby of Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989, zipping by the "ice giant" and its frigid moon Triton in quick succession. The historic encounter gave a face to two worlds that until that time had dwelt in depth and shadow, mission team members said Monday (Aug. 25) during a NASA event commemorating the flyby's 25th anniversary.

"I think in many ways, [a first planetary] encounter is almost like giving birth," said Bonnie Buratti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "First of all, you have no control over the time; it's going to come no matter what. And you go from just an idea in your mind to a whole new person, or a whole new world." [ 5 Facts About NASA's Voyager Spacecraft ]

The encounter revealed a storm the size of Earth swirling on Neptune, as well as winds topping 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h) — the fastest ever measured in the solar system. Such observations came as a surprise to mission scientists, because solar energy tends to drive atmospheric activity and Neptune lies so far from the sun.

Voyager 2's images of Triton also caused jaws to drop, showing incredibly complex terrain and active geysers blasting material into space.

In fact, the Triton encounter remains a highlight for Voyager project scientist Ed Stone, who has overseen  the science operations of the mission since its inception in the early 1970s.

"The Triton flyby was my favorite moment partly because it was a bookend. The journey really started with the discovery of volcanoes on [Jupiter's moon] Io with Voyager 1, 10 years earlier — the first bookend," Stone, who's based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a NASA statement . "We finished the planetary part of the mission with another bookend, the flyby of Triton, where we discovered a much colder, smaller world that was also geologically active."

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Voyager 2 launched in August 1977, a few weeks before its twin, Voyager 1. Together, the two probes pulled off an unprecedented "grand tour" of the solar system's big planets, flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and, finally, Neptune. NASA transformed its JPL television studio into Neptune mission control for the final flyby, with legendary singer Chuck Berry performing in a special concert at the center to commemorate the event.  

But after Neptune, the two Voyager spacecraft weren't finished. They kept right on flying, during an extended phase known as the Voyager Interstellar Mission. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in August 2012, and Voyager 2, which took a different path through the solar system, should make it there soon as well. Both spacecraft are still going strong today.

As the two Voyagers streaked through space, lifting the veil on world after world, mission scientists marked off big milestones in their own lives.

"There was a personal aspect — relationships formed, marriages; people had babies," said David Grinspoon of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who worked on Voyager in the 1970s and '80s. "And so there was this really growing sense of a family gathering at each of these encounters in addition to the scientific excitement of the encounter."

In a strange but appropriate coincidence, NASA's New Horizons probe crossed the orbit of Neptune Monday, 25 years to the day after Voyager 2's encounter. New Horizons is speeding toward Pluto, which it will fly by on July 14, 2015.

Like Voyager 2, New Horizons will return the first up-close views of exotic and faraway worlds — in this case, the dwarf planet Pluto and its five known moons.

"We don't know a thing now, and a year from now we're going to write the textbooks," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said during a news conference Monday. "It's going to be very exciting."

Stern referred to the Voyager team as "heroes," noting the influence they have had on space science and on researchers such as himself.

"We stand on the shoulders of giants — giants like Ed Stone and his Voyager science team that pioneered how to do the exploration of the deep outer solar system," he said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter  @michaeldwall  and  Google+ . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook  or Google+ . Originally published on  Space.com .

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with  Space.com  and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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Voyager 2: the story of its mission so far – in pictures

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• The Contents
• The Making of
• Where Are They Now
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Q & A with Ed Stone

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Where are they now.

• frequently asked questions
• Q&A with Ed Stone

Mission Overview

The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their more-than-40-year journey since their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the sun than Pluto. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between stars, filled with material ejected by the death of nearby stars millions of years ago. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018 and scientists hope to learn more about this region. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network, or DSN.

The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there — such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings — the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond.

Interstellar Mission

The mission objective of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) is to extend the NASA exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits of the Sun's sphere of influence, and possibly beyond.

› Learn more

Planetary Voyage

The twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched by NASA in separate months in the summer of 1977 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. As originally designed, the Voyagers were to conduct closeup studies of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, and the larger moons of the two planets.

› View more

Launch: Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket. On September 5, Voyager 1 launched, also from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.

Voyager Map Details Neptune's Strange Moon Triton

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft gave humanity its first close-up look at Neptune and its moon Triton in the summer of 1989.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft gave humanity its first close-up look at Neptune and its moon Triton in the summer of 1989. Like an old film, Voyager's historic footage of Triton has been "restored" and used to construct the best-ever global color map of that strange moon. The map, produced by Paul Schenk, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, has also been used to make a movie recreating that historic Voyager encounter, which took place 25 years ago, on August 25, 1989.

The new Triton map has a resolution of 1,970 feet (600 meters) per pixel. The colors have been enhanced to bring out contrast but are a close approximation to Triton's natural colors. Voyager's "eyes" saw in colors slightly different from human eyes, and this map was produced using orange, green and blue filter images.

In 1989, most of the northern hemisphere was in darkness and unseen by Voyager. Because of the speed of Voyager's visit and the slow rotation of Triton, only one hemisphere was seen clearly at close distance. The rest of the surface was either in darkness or seen as blurry markings.

The production of the new Triton map was inspired by anticipation of NASA's New Horizons encounter with Pluto, coming up a little under a year from now. Among the improvements on the map are updates to the accuracy of feature locations, sharpening of feature details by removing some of the blurring effects of the camera, and improved color processing.

Although Triton is a moon of a planet and Pluto is a dwarf planet, Triton serves as a preview of sorts for the upcoming Pluto encounter. Although both bodies originated in the outer solar system, Triton was captured by Neptune and has undergone a radically different thermal history than Pluto. Tidal heating has likely melted the interior of Triton, producing the volcanoes, fractures and other geological features that Voyager saw on that bitterly cold, icy surface.

Pluto is unlikely to be a copy of Triton, but some of the same types of features may be present. Triton is slightly larger than Pluto, has a very similar internal density and bulk composition, and has the same low-temperature volatiles frozen on its surface. The surface composition of both bodies includes carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen ices.

Voyager also discovered atmospheric plumes on Triton, making it one of the known active bodies in the outer solar system, along with objects such as Jupiter's moon Io and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Scientists will be looking at Pluto next year to see if it will join this list. They will also be looking to see how Pluto and Triton compare and contrast, and how their different histories have shaped the surfaces we see.

Although a fast flyby, New Horizons' Pluto encounter on July 14, 2015, will not be a replay of Voyager but more of a sequel and a reboot, with a new and more technologically advanced spacecraft and, more importantly, a new cast of characters. Those characters are Pluto and its family of five known moons, all of which will be seen up close for the first time next summer.

Triton may not be a perfect preview of coming attractions, but it serves as a prequel to the cosmic blockbuster expected when New Horizons arrives at Pluto next year.

The new Triton map and movie can be found at:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/icy_moons/

In another historic milestone for the Voyager mission, Aug. 25 also marks the two-year anniversary of Voyager 1 reaching interstellar space.

The Voyager mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, manages the New Horizons mission for NASA's SMD.

For more information about the Lunar and Planetary Institute, visit:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu

For more information about Voyager, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/voyager

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information about New Horizons mission, visit:

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu

http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons

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Elizabeth Landau/Preston Dyches

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Paul Schenk

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[email protected]

Michael Buckley

240-228-7536

[email protected]

Iowa scientist thrilled NASA regains link with distant Voyager spacecraft

by Matt Kelley | Apr 25, 2024

A research scientist in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa is delighted NASA engineers were able to reestablish communication with the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has flown further into space than any human-made object.

Dr. Bill Kurth says Voyager, which he started working on at the UI five decades ago, is now 15-billion miles from Earth. “That’s 165 times farther from the sun than we are,” Kurth says. “It’s 22-and-a-half hours ‘light time’ from Earth. That means if we send a signal to Voyager, it takes almost a day to get to Voyager and if Voyager responds, it takes almost another day for it to come back.”

Bill Kurth (UI photo)

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 and are now well beyond the edge of our solar system. This past November, Voyager One went silent after a memory chip in one of its three onboard computers failed. A few days ago, the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was able to restore the spacecraft and regain the ability to receive and transmit messages over the incredibly great distance.

“The team at JPL has worked miracles over the decades,” Kurth says. “They’ve basically pulled both of these spacecraft out of the fire a number of times and I was not terribly surprised that they could do it again.”

Despite its aging electronics, Kurth says Voyager is still sending back information that’s vitally important to researchers who are trying to understand the fabric of our universe.

“We’re now in a region of space that no instrument or spacecraft from Earth has ever been. It’s in what we call the ‘interstellar medium.’ That’s the stuff between the stars,” Kurth says. “We’re outside of the extended sun’s atmosphere for the first time and we’re making measurements of that medium.”

Kurth started working on Voyager as a UI graduate student in 1974. He’s now the principal investigator for the plasma wave science instrument on the spacecraft, which was designed and built at Iowa. When the Voyagers were launched, they were designed to visit the planets Jupiter and Saturn, and perhaps be able to go on to Uranus and Neptune.

“After the Neptune flyby, the spacecraft were in good health and NASA decided to rename the mission the Voyager Interstellar Mission with the hopes that someday, it would get into the interstellar medium. And it has,” Kurth says. “It took a long cruise to get there and I’m just very happy to have been part of that.”

Much like the Mars rovers that far exceeded their original lifespans, Voyager One is expected to continue soaring into deep space, and NASA says its generators may continue to have power to run its instruments through 2036.

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