Interstellar Space Revisited

[Peter_Puget]

Out on business and much to my surpise when I return more has happened on One Live to Live than on CC.com!

 

So I thought I'd just say that Nels Cline has usurped Fela's place as leader of the world. As honorable subjects go out and buy Interstellar Space Revisited.

 

Oh and forget all that Mike Watt wimpy stuff!

 

PP

[Dru]

LKJ in Dub VOL III is where its at.

 

Mike Watt still wears flannel shirts. That is cool in itself.

 

How many Devo cover bands are there anyways?

[Bob_Clarke]

Here's some real Space News:

 

RELEASE: 02-156

 

25 YEARS LATER, VOYAGER MISSION KEEPS PUSHING THE SPACE ENVELOPE

 

A quarter-century after NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft

departed Earth to visit outer planets, the historic mission is

flying a race against time.

 

During the first 12 years after launch in 1977, the Voyagers

chalked up a wealth of discoveries about four planets and 48

moons, including fast winds on Neptune, kinks in Saturn's rings

and volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io. As scientists and engineers

mark the mission's silver anniversary, they hope at least one

Voyager will pass beyond the boundary of the Sun's influence

before the onboard nuclear power supply wanes too low to tell us

what's out there. Voyager 1 is now the most distant human-made

object, about 85 times as far from the Sun as Earth is. Voyager 2

is now about 68 times the Sun-Earth distance.

 

"After 25 years, the spacecraft are still going strong," said Dr.

Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist since 1972 and former

director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena,

Calif. "Back in 1977, we had no way to know they would last so

long. We were initially just on a four-year journey to Jupiter

and Saturn."

 

The Voyager team at JPL still receives information almost daily

from the durable spacecraft traveling beyond all the planets. The

Voyagers are examining the far reaches of the solar wind, a gusty

flow of particles hurled outward by the Sun. The eventual goal is

to become the first spacecraft to taste interstellar space.

Voyager 1, which launched on Sept. 5, 1977, flew past Jupiter and

Saturn, then angled northward out of the plane of the planets'

orbits. After Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and completed

its tour of Jupiter and Saturn, NASA extended the spacecraft's

adventure with flybys of Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.

 

"A radio signal traveling at the speed of light takes nearly 12

hours to travel between Voyager 1 and Earth. That raises

operational concerns," said Ed Massey, Voyager's project manager

at JPL. " If something went wrong on board, at least a full day

would lapse before a signal revealing the problem could reach

Earth and commands to fix it could be returned.

 

It could be too late." So the project team tries to anticipate

any emergencies and program the spacecraft's computers with

advance instructions on how to react to them, he said.

 

Both spacecraft are studying the vast bubble the Sun inflates

around itself by outward pressure of the solar wind. The bubble

has a boundary, called the heliopause, where this outward

pressure is counterbalanced by inward pressure of the

interstellar wind in our neck of the galaxy. The interstellar

wind outside that boundary is a flow of atoms and other particles

blasted from explosions of dying stars. The location of the

heliopause varies with the level of solar activity during the

Sun's 22-year sunspot cycle and with changes in the interstellar

wind, Stone said. Some scientists suggest that, on a much longer

time scale, the interstellar wind may occasionally press the

boundary far enough inward to sway Earth's climate.

 

Voyager 1 is rushing toward the heliopause at about one million

miles (1.6 million kilometers) a day. Whether it gets there

before about 2020, while it still has adequate electrical power,

depends on how far away the heliopause is. Recent estimates are

that, depending on that distance, it would take Voyager 1 between

seven and 21 years to reach the heliopause.

 

Voyager 1 has already discovered that the outbound solar wind

around it is slowing from effects of inbound interstellar

particles leaking through the boundary. A much better prediction

of the boundary's location will come when the spacecraft

encounters the termination shock, the zone where the solar wind

begins piling up against the heliopause. That encounter may come

within the next three years, Stone estimates.

 

Whatever their future holds, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have already

earned a prominent place in the history of exploration. Among

their big surprises: Jupiter's moon Io has active volcanoes.

Jupiter's atmosphere has dozens of huge storms. Saturn's rings

have kinks and spoke-like features. The hazy atmosphere of

Saturn's moon Titan extends far above the surface. Miranda, a

small moon of Uranus, has a jumble of old and new surfacing.

Neptune has the fastest winds of any planet. Neptune's moon

Triton has active geysers.

 

Long after they fall silent, the Voyager twins will keep speeding

away from our solar system, each carrying an "interstellar

outreach program" of recorded sounds and images from Earth,

Massey said.

 

More information about Voyager is available at:

 

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

 

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in

Pasadena, manages Voyager for NASA's Office of Space Science,

Washington.

 

-end-

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

Space news sucks, yo.

[Peter_Puget]

YO! This is a happy thread. No thumbs down allowed.