This Day, That Year – August 25

This day in history we feature the Voyager 1. On this day in 2012, the Voyager 1 space probe, entered interstellar space.

Trivia – Voyager 1

Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and interstellar space beyond the Sun’s heliosphere. Launched 16 days after its twin Voyager 2, Voyager 1 has been operating for 44 years, 11 months and 17 days as of August 23, 2022 and still communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data is provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 156.61 AU (23.429 billion km; 14.558 billion mi) from Earth as of July 31, 2022, it is the most distant artificial object from Earth.

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The probe made flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. NASA had a choice of either doing a Pluto or Titan flyby; exploration of the moon took priority because it was known to have a substantial atmosphere. Voyager 1 studied the weather, magnetic fields, and rings of the two gas giants and was the first probe to provide detailed images of their moons.

As part of the Voyager program and like its sister craft Voyager 2, the spacecraft’s extended mission is to locate and study the regions and boundaries of the outer heliosphere and to begin exploring the interstellar medium. Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space on August 25, 2012, making it the first spacecraft to do so. Two years later, Voyager 1 began experiencing a third “tsunami wave” of coronal mass ejections from the Sun that continued to at least December 15, 2014, further confirming that the probe is indeed in interstellar space.

Source – Wikipedia

Voyager 1 space probe enters interstellar space Voyager 1 space probe enters interstellar space