Transcripts For CSPAN3 Voyager Spacecraft 40th Anniversary 2

CSPAN3 Voyager Spacecraft 40th Anniversary September 23, 2017

Spacecraft launched to explore our solar system. Panel of scientists who worked on the Voyager Mission recounts the project genesis and discussed the discoveries made so far. Today in aere gallery that celebrates human and oration in earth orbit and human. Human exploration in earth orbit and beyond. We are here today to celebrate and commemorate with them the 40th anniversary of the voyager spacecraft. It was an epic mission to explore the outer planets. Commission that stands out as one of the most ambitious that nasa ever sent out into the solar system. To me, the mission has personal relevance not because i was ever involved with it, but because as a child, the encounters with the helped to define my childhood and helped to define my own understanding of our place in the solar system. I was too young to enjoy the slides of jupiter and saturn, but uranus and neptune i remember quite clearly as a kid seeing the images on the news and being impressed by what we were doing out there in the solar system. I could feel that i was one of the first to see these planets in such great resolution. Im sure several others of you born in the 1970s might feel the same. Want to note before going any further that we have a wonderful model of the voyager spacecraft upstairs in our exploring the planets gallery that is true to the actual voyager. If you want to see that spacecraft and its real fullsize and glory, i suggest you take some time to go upstairs and take a look at the model. If you are watching us on nasa tv, please come to the museum when you can and take a look at that model. I dont think you will be disappointed. To get started, i want to associatethe administrator for the Science Mission directorate at nasa headquartered here at nasa headquarters in washington, d. C. He has authored or coauthored more than 200 articles and referee journals on solar phenomenon. Hes been involved with several a missions [applause] thanks, everybody. Its really a pleasure to be here with you today to celebrate this pioneering moment for both nasa and for exploration history of humanity. Happy anniversary to voyager. [applause] of course, you know that on september 5 four decades ago, nasa launched the voyager one spacecraft. A little over eight years after the blast off of apollo 11 in a can 69. In 1969. Voyager was the apollo 11 of space science. A mission that changed everything. And not only changed what we think. Ut how we its about exploration of the unknown and redefining what we can and cannot do as humans. Children all around the country going to school this fall, getting their school books and looking at these pictures in these books and looking at especially the pictures of the planets commit many of these pictures of ours are pretty young. Pictures. S pretty ive taken images there. Out and all of a sudden you get to neptune and uranus. Every picture you see there at High Resolution comes from these spacecraft that are out there from the spacecraft that flew by. They are out there and we have not gone back. To me, its also the beginning of my interest in space science. Was tost book i ever got celebrate the upcoming launch of voyager two. I have this book in my office. For me, it was an inspiration. We all have a personal story that relates to voyager, even if we were not fortunate enough to be there with handson. Voyager today affects the lives of children all over the world. Born whenere not voyager was still on the ground. Half of humanity today was not born when voyager was launched. Were celebrating 40 years of discovery and exploration history decrypting everybodys expectations. Wager continues to provide us with unprecedented information about the place in space its traveled more than 13 billion miles from earth, the farthest of any spacecraft. Its traveling through the loneliness of interstellar space, having left the spirit of influence of the sun. Its expected to transmit data 2025. About voyager two is approaching the boundary of the it is still going. Voyager is the apollo 11 of robotic exploration, robotic explorer to the space beyond the imaginable. Its a Mission Driven by Scientific Research and enabled by innovative technologies. A mission of pioneering and inspiration. A mission that has opened entirely new questions that keep us awake at night today. The subject of ongoing signs its hard tos imagine without voyager ahead of it. Of the water below the icy s surface, again starting with voyager. We look at images of june oh remember galileo, one of the most recent passes over jupiters gigantic storm which has lasted for millennia. We are imagining the next missions to explore europa, one ns. Jupiters moo a whole ocean of wonders waiting to be explored. We just put an announcement out to make the next steps towards outhis mission is to map this giant exploration region out there and the tech interstellar gas in ways weve tech seen before the interstellar gas in ways weve never seen before. These technologies we have today allow us to go the voyager distance but we want to go farther and faster. Ofare dreaming of course t possibly traveling some time to other stars. All theo congratulate generations of voyager. Remember the ones that are no longer with us. We celebrate the ones making. Oyager work today in australia, it big satellite dish listens to voyager in the deep sky. Congratulations and encouragement to those squeezing every bit of science out of these bits coming from deep space to us. Dd,ant to thank suzanne do the first manager who began working on this mission in 1984. Many of her friends are here and im so excited to welcome you all from jpl. Many of you have started in the 1980s, others have started more recently. We wont say who. [laughter] im really excited that you are here and celebrating with us. Dr. Ed stone has been my friend for decades. The retired director on the 1972, aproject since major spokesperson for the voyager science team and one of the key contributors. Six new yorkte times bestsellers, which is still inspiring to me. The greater director of the interstellar masters project the grantored multiplan admission using the gravity assist technique to reduce the Mission Duration from 40 years to less than 10 years. Nasa used this with voyager and voyager two missions. Dr. Alan cummings, one of the funniest guys in any party will ever go to. A Senior Scientist who works with ed stone studying the nature of particles entering the solar system from the local interstellar medium and locally accelerated. I want to thank the national air and space museum for hosting us. It is a lovely place. Im here more often than you care to tell you right now. Educating and inspiring the public of all ages. Let these lonely spacecraft be our inspiration and drive us to keep pushing against the walls of ignorance to be researchers, explores and in fact voyageurs. I want to kick off a movie that was prepared for this event. Thank you so much. [applause] [indiscernible] we knew that the spacecraft itself way weonceivable are 40 years later. Look at the discovery theyve given us, including most place where the interstellar medium begins. Pride. The utmost [applause] it is now my pleasure to introduce our first panel today. Allow me to briefly reintroduce them. We have dr. Ed stone, who has been a project scientist on voyager from 1972 to the present. Fromve dr. Gary flandreau the university of tennessee space institute, who was the first to propose the grand tour multiplan it exploration multiplanet exploration of the outer planets. Who hasalan cummings, been employed at the Space Radiation Laboratory of caltech since 1973. Hes currently a Senior Scientist and member of the professional staff there. We have suzanne dodd, jpls director for the Interplanetary Network directorate. And we have ann, an author and lecturer and Television Writer and producer. She was cowriter of the Emmy Awardwinning Television Series cosmos. Ado, i willher start asking our panelists a few questions to talk about the Voyager Mission. We start with dr. Stone. To you, what is so special about voyager . From the many points of view, voyager represents humanitys most ambitious journey of discovery. That is its legacy. Tell us about the beginnings of the mission, the early years. Voyager began when gary that thereiscovered 1997 when a single andecraft could be launched flyby all four major planets. Downsizedhey had been a fouryear mission to those two giant planets and their moons and rings. That was to be launched in 1977. If they continued to work, they could go on to uranus and neptune, completing the grand tour of the outer planets as gary had promised a way to do that in 12 years rather than 30 years. We have him to thank. Voyager has made many discoveries. What are your favorites . If i could have the first slide, please, which shows jupiter and its great red spot, along with two of jupiters moons. Before voyager, the only known active volcanoes in the solar the only known active volcanoes were here on earth. A moonyager flew by io, of jupiter, about the size of our moon but 10 times the volcanic activity of the earth. Quite the striking change. The only liquid water oceans were here on earth. Europa was covered with ice and. Oyager saw it was cracked ice the Galileo Mission subsequently demonstrated that there is a liquid water ocean. Io being the orange colored one and europa being the white one because of the icy crust. On ive is saturday, one of the moons titan. The only what we thought on earth. Then we flew by and it has 50 higher pressure atmosphere thing here on earth. Not oxygen. That sunlight is treating complex molecules which create this change that cannot be seen. Luckily the casino emission appeared several decades later. It sought indeed that there are lakes of natural gas on this moon. Perhaps revealing what the early earth could have looking like. Only knownger the their northld had pole and south wall new the rotational axis of the planet was the flat rotation which created this Magnetic Field. Found theptune we magnetic pole was from the equator. Earthntral view from about what Magnetic Field for like had to be greatly expanded. The final object we visited and the solar system was another moon. Tan it is more than our moon. It is very cold. Is so cold that the nitrogen has frozen into a white polar cap. The dark streaks are geysers interrupting. Activee working on two geysers we flew by. It is so cold that even the nitrogen froze. Are and time again we extending what we thought we knew about planets and what we thought we knew about Magnetic Fields. Has changed and created a legacy of discovery now for many future missions to these outer planets. I will ask you this next. 1970s you would ask somebody how long it would take to get to neptune the answer would be maybe a few decades. How did this mission end up being possible . Used free is we energy. We are not using rockets. First slide up. This is actually the result of thousands of calculations. Ofusands and thousands calculations looking at the outer planet mission. This is was my favorite that we published. I put this up so you can get some idea about the angle of what the trajectory is. You gain energy by the way. Started from 1978 on that little line. 8135 degree turn. Here is where we start seeing the energy. I would come right back if i did not do anything. Jupiter o past jupiter is moving along and pulling its gravity field. I used to tell my students that a use to be about a volkswagen size. There are four rockets out that you could hook up to and get a tremendous boost. Now we have lost that spacecraft and it is on a spin now. It is over to saturn. I love this one in 1978. To clear out neptune in two and a half years. You can see the rings there was saturn. I would have to go between the planet and the rain. That scares some people. The cd has been doing that recently. You could get to your and us very quickly. That is going to go interstellar at that point. Key to selling this is to notice what happens every four years. That is what made at work. Along the bottom are the dates from when i was working. Axis those of the angles i was showing you and that last slide. I can see something relate remarkable here. By the 1980s or so all of the across the same side. That means you could probably get one spacecraft and hit all of those planets which is what happened. That is how it was discovered. Then with enough work you have to run this. Then you can find the launch window. That was in 1977 and 1978. It only occurs every 155 years. It takes time to build a spacecraft. We had about 10 years to do it. The less than this opportunity came was when Thomas Jefferson was the president. Let me ask you. Back in 1974 there was mariner 10. How did you know this would work . What other problems if you think would happen . A new it would work. That it had been known since the 1700s. You would gain or lose energy depending on where you are. I knew it would work. Earth there are the venus and mercury energies. Getting it done was the hard part. I will not ask that you did that. We will move on to alan cumming. Tell us how you first got involved with voyager. Voyager involved with because i lost the experiment i was working on. They went missing. Seriously. What happened was i was in canada back in 1973. I was doing what we have been doing for years which was attaching experiments to a balloon and take measurements. West 100was if it goes miles in the course of one day. You would cover it and start all over again. I thinkular time this is the only time this happened. The command to cut it down to network. The backup did not work. It just kept going. Right around the world it went around twice. S because half time russia noticed it and got it. That ended that experiment. I got back to caltech dejected and they asked if i would like to start working on a new project. That was going to be later called voyager. I said ok. The rest is history. I have been working on it ever sense. At 1973 and losing in the balloon it was not all that bad. I got to start working on the greatest mission ever. You are put at the right place at the right time . Tell me about your experience with voyager, what are your memories . Think i off the bat i was the last person to physically touch the spacecraft. Right during the last bit of the spacecraft we were worried about the fragile windows on our instruments. I was able to climb up in there and inspected. Our of the inspection process was to make sure that the on the were tight telescopes. I gave each one a little twist. If i was the last person to touch it, the next person who touches a will be a alien. When you bring up this slide. Yes. Teamis a picture of our looking at the first bit of data in 1977. I am the one in the front bench over. I was the will only one who could read it upside down. We were neck and really convince this instrument was working. It was and has been ever since. Am a physicist. Getting this into interstellar space was sort of the holy grail in my area of research. Coulds the first time you measure this distribution. With solar activity both parts are not detected. We can only do it when they get there. Not that we have been there we have measured it. That is important. Astronautsazard to on longduration missions. Sun goesow that the quiet for a time. Then we look at what the astros would have to deal with. Let me ask you a question maybe you can explain, how do we know voyager is out in hellers out in interstellar space . Echoes from our data. We know thathave that happened in 202012. Thele can along and said Magnetic Field direction did not change at all. That would mean the Magnetic Field were lined up. That did not seem likely. Then the plasma wave team came to the rescue. That is what you will see here in a minute. Wave. N set up a big last they reached the vicinity of it. That cause the plasma to us away. The plasma wave experiment measures the frequency of those oscillations. Has been shown here. The splotches here are discussions on the oscillations. It shows of the density that occurred was not inside the helio sphere. That is how we knew it went interstellar. Way many are looking at this data and try to figure out why it happened. It is a little bit more complicated. Doctor, you are currently managing the mission. Maybe we can ask you where exactly is voyager one and two . Questioning of the first graphic. Bring up the first graphic. I would love to say we have this model. We have to spacecraft that are identical. Voyager one is the one if you look at the graphic is going up and out. Space itrstellar happened on 202012. Voyager two is going down and out. The boundary cross into interstellar space. That is probably the number one question anyone gets. I always do for that question. Voyager one was actually launched second but it is traveling the fastest. For thisrst list spacecraft from us. It is traveling at 38,000 miles per second. Per hour. Voyager one is traveling at 34,000 miles per hour. That is 30 times the speed of sound here on earth. That so far away, how do we communicate with these crafts . Awaycause they are so far they need to use the deep Space Network antennas which are a large array of dishes. Antennas. 0 millimeter they are located in australia, spain and in california. So the way voyager operates is that most of the data comes down continuously. The neck comes down to the earth. We capture the data with this Space Network antennas. When we are listening to that data we capture it. We captured data from both spacecraft for six hours per day. We send commands to the spacecraft approximately once a week a lot of those commands are just how are you . The roundtrip light time voyager one is 38 hours. What that means is us as engineers, we will be an our office on a monday afternoon and send a command did we come back into the office not on tuesday but on wednesday morning and voyager will say i am fine. Aat is more than a day and half. That has its own challenges in communicating with the spacecraft. How are they doing . If we pull up the next slide. As voyager craft are healthy Senior Citizens can be. That is how i like to think of them. They are twin spacecraft that are identical. They are twin sisters. Each had different ailments over the years. For example voyager two is tone deaf victim was send a command to the spacecraft we have to put it in a different frequency in order for the spacecraft to hear it. Does not have a scienceg plasm

© 2025 Vimarsana