#voyager 1 and 2

[foxprints]

NASA stickers, now available in my shop!

[graciliswindowsill]

So 2 days ago was the 47° anniversary of the Voyager 2 launch (Voyager 1 was lauched after for some reason??) and I'm listening to a science podcast about the 2 of them and omg its so emotional

The sounds of Earth in them? The human mother calming a crying baby?? The fact that in the golden discs there's the sound of a human brain working (the sound that translate the readings of the nervous impulses) AND THIS BRAIN that was read was from Ann Druyan, film director and science communicator, who at the time was in love with Sagan (they married afterwards). During the brain reading she says she could only think about him, and the sentiment of love. And aaksjdfjdjajsjdjdjs

There, more than 20 light-hours away, floats among other amazingly mundane things the readings of a human brain thinking about love. In about 40,000 years they will be less than 2 light-years away from 2 other stars, spreading our messages to anyone who might get by (if anyone, what counts is the trying).

How am I expected to be a productive person at work today knowing all this????

[describingcolours]

"well youve had it 6 years that's a good amount of time for that kind of thing to work"

"you should be grateful you got 3 years of use out of that thing, I'm lucky if mine last a year haha"

listen, in 1977 nasa launched the voyager spacecrafts to take advantage of a planetary alignment that takes place every 175 years. These 2 crafts were planned to flyby the outer planets of our solar system and gather data on them to send back to us. Voyager 2 launched first on the 20th of August despite its name because it was planned to reach our gas giants after its counterpart voyager 1, which launched a little later on the 5th of September.

The voyager mission was planned to end 12 years later in 1989. In that time, voyager 1 and 2 passed by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They discovered new moons, confirmed theories about Saturn's rings, found the first active volcanoes found outside the earth, and they take close-up images of planets only seen at that point from telescopes.

On the 25th of August 1989, voyager 2 encounters Neptune, the last planet in our solar system the voyagers will meet. And that was that. End of mission. Now obsolete.

~

Less than 1 year later on valentine's day in 1990 voyager 1 looked back on the planet that had built it and sent with it a world's worth of hopes and dreams and took a picture. We called it the solar system family portrait and in it, we see ourselves. The pale blue dot nestled in the darkness of space

And then commands were sent to shut down their cameras. Preserve fuel.

35 years after launch, in 2012 voyager 1 sent back to us data about interstellar space. The very first manmade object to enter it.

41 years after launch voyager 2 did the same. Still operational, still going. Still sending back to us invaluable data, teaching us about our own solar system and the suns influence in our local bubble of space.

They are expected to continue to operate until the year 2025 - almost 50 whole years after they were launched and 36 years after their mission was supposed to have ended.

48 years of harsh space travel, battered by solar winds, pulled by gravity but fast enough just to escape, pelted by who knows how much space dust and radiation.

And even after that, they still have a purpose. Each craft was given a golden record. A disc filled with human knowledge and knowledge of humans and the planet they live on. Greetings and well-wishes to any prospective extraterrestrial life that could potentially pick it up. Co-ordinates, an invite. Samples of our music, the things we love, sounds of the earth, a story of our world. The surf, the wind, birds and whales, images of a mother, our moon, a sunset. Long after the voyager spacecrafts go dark, probably long after we are gone, they will still be doing their job; educating a species about our very tiny corner of the galaxy.

They are nasa's longest-running operation.

And it was all done using 70s technology.

So excuse me if I want a phone that lasts more than 2 years or a vacuum cleaner that doesn't break down after 6, or god fucking forbid, a refrigerator that will keep my food cold my entire fucking lifetime.

[insanewaykathy]

She just touches him all over his body… and I find that very platonic.

[anghraine]

"Much knowledge that was forgotten because it wasn't needed for many years has been recovered" sounds like something out of a fantasy novel, but it's actually from Voyager mission engineer Kareem Badaruddin wrt Voyager 1, and one of various awesome quotes in this article about the possible effective death of the Voyager 1 mission.

[stardotnet]

ive been thinking a lot about the golden records lately

[sleepyminty]

I love how gacha games depicted the spacecraft voyager as starchildren full of wonders and curiosities. With the difference that r1999 voyager inspired from the golden record whereas fgo voyager inspired from le petit prince. Also fun fact NASA launch two Voyagers to space

[spockvarietyhour]

Star Trek Voyager "Year of Hell Pt. 1" & Star Trek Prodigy "Ascension Pt. 2"

[vampireofsorrow]

little comic i made to try & figure out the personalities of both the voyagers

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I'm glad the Voyager probes launched when Jimmy Carter was president, because if Ronald Reagan had been in charge at the time his message to aliens would have been all about God and Jesus and faith in one almighty creator. Carter was just as relgious as Reagan in his personal life, but his administration was much more secular, and I respect that.

We are now 340 million out of 8 billion, and we are not much closer to solving the same problems we faced nearly 50 years ago.

[persephinae]

me getting emotional over humankind's robots again

[star-trek-dumb-comics]

Ok so I finally watched Prodigy ! And it was surprisingly good. This is obviously a kids' show but I ended up being pretty invested in the story. The main character started as Ezra Bridger-ass annoying but he's grown on me. Genuinely I think this might be the best new trek show with Lower Decks lmao. It even got me caring about what happens to CHAKOTAY of all things !

Also it had GREAT alien rep omfg there were so few humans I LOVE THIS SHIT !!! especially UFP founding members rep ahhhhh !!!!!!!!!! I've been wanting this for YEARS they did it for me

[smoked-salmon-official]

Robo request-

The Voyager Twins!

Day 104 of drawing robots ^_^ requests in inbox open!

[gardenofeden5457]

a size comparison all 17776 characters (and a few more) (voy1, voy2 and clipper) (i would have included the iss too but it was twice as big as juice so)

from left to right: pioneer 9, pioneer 10, voyager 2, voyager 1, hubble, jupiter icy moons explorer, europa clipper

inspired by this post, from @literal-bot-account

also yeah voy1 and voy2 are different sizes. voy1's dish is bigger by 3 cm

for 9, i measured by body size. for 10, voy1 and voy2, i measured by dish diameter. for hubble, i measured by length. for juice and clipper, i measured by solar panel span

also here's the chart. so u can see exact sizes (made with this website)

[keep-beach-city-pretty]

space probes and football

I read 17776 about a week ago and besides being totally blown away and in love with the concept, it also got me thinking. Now I, being a fanfic lover (as many on this hellsite are), ran to ao3 for fan content as soon as I could. And, of course, I ran to Tumblr as well. And then I maybe fell down a wormhole.

Those who are familiar with the story will know that JUICE mentions this plaque on Pioneer Ten with naked people on it. We don't get a ton of context for that, so I obviously Wikipedia'ed it because what else was I supposed to do? Just accept the fact that a space probe had naked people on it and move on? I think not.

Here's a photo of the plaque, for reference:

So, to quickly break down everything on there, it's clearly a man and a woman in the nude, and then we have the hyperfine transition of hydrogen in the top left (don't ask me what that is; I have NO CLUE), a radial pattern to show the distance of pulsars to the sun and center of the galaxy?, and then, of course, the solar system at the bottom and a silhouette of the spacecraft at scale behind the people.

All this detail was reserved for two plaques: one on the Pioneer Ten and one on Pioneer Eleven, from 1972 and 1973 subsequently. At this point we've lost contact with both probes, whose purposes were pretty much to observe space and the solar system. The inclusion of the plaques was purely to provide some sort of information on the Earth if the probes were at any point encountered by intelligent alien life.

Next I want to turn my attention to the Voyager Golden Record, two identical records made for about the same purpose as the plaques that were launched on their crafts in 1977. What's interesting is that we still have contact with the Voyager probes, whose original missions were to explore far reaches of the solar system but have since moved far beyond the Sun and into interstellar space and are reporting on that.

Now, the records carried on Voyagers 1 and 2 contain sounds and images of the Earth, including over a hundred photos and sounds of human life, greetings, and music. The records also have many engravings similar to that of the plaques on them.

17776 posits that we live in a universe with no other intelligent life, and that people are perfectly okay with that. But all evidence of these "time capsules" says otherwise. All evidence says that people are always looking to space for more -- for answers that space may not be able to give.

I think that if we really were alone on this planet, it would be terrifying. Again, 17776 poses the idea that humans inherently seek out play above all other change. But isn't exploration play in itself? Isn't play just another form of discovery? And if it is, isn't space exploration and discovery inherently human?

I think people have by far accepted that there is a nonzero chance of aliens existing. And in a universe that is, for all intents and purposes, infinitely expanding, a nonzero chance is practically a confirmation, isn't it? Even in a universe as insanely empty as 17776's, I can't imagine humanity giving up on that small chance that we're not alone out here.

The idea that we're not unique in our existence is strongly non-creationist, which I will admit freely. It belies the fact that we are not a chosen people after all. But I think that we have a built-in desire to not want to be alone in the big, dark universe. Not a pale blue dot within infinite vastness, but rather part of a larger group.

Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in space ever. I think that's incredible. Maybe one day, extraterrestrial life will stumble upon our probes and play our records and hear the whale sounds recorded on them. Maybe they won't. But all signs show that we want them to.

[atarial]

finally finished watching ds9 😢