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Voyager 6 was a deep space probe launched from Earth by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the latter half of the 20th century . The sixth probe in the Voyager series , it was designed to collect data and transmit it back to Earth. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

  • 1 Technical information
  • 3.1 See also
  • 3.2 Background information
  • 3.3 Apocrypha
  • 3.4 External link

Technical information [ ]

Voyager 6 was equipped with an antenna and a ground test computer , for use in communicating with Earth. It was designed to transmit a signal relaying its readiness to transmit the information gathered, and to do so upon receipt of a code signal instructing the computer to transmit the data. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

History [ ]

During its mission, Voyager 6 disappeared into what was once called a black hole (see V'ger ), emerging on the other side of the galaxy , where it fell into the gravitational field of a planet populated by a race of living machines. The inhabitants found the probe to be one of their own kind, primitive, yet kindred. Discovering its simple, 20th century programming, which directed Voyager to collect all data possible and return that information to the creator, the machines interpreted it literally, and constructed a massive vessel around the probe in order to facilitate that directive. On its journey back to Earth, it amassed so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness itself, becoming a living thing. In the 2270s , the entity was detected by Starfleet en route to Earth, and was intercepted by the USS Enterprise , whose crew was able to discover the fate of the long-lost probe. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

Appendices [ ]

See also [ ], background information [ ].

According to Star Trek Chronology , Voyager 6 was launched in 1999 . According to Decker's line in the movie, however, it was launched " more than 300 years ago ". This suggests a launch date sometime before or in the early 1970s . In the real world, the actual launches of the first (and only) two Voyager probes took place in 1977.

Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 8 , p. 106, also uses the Star Trek Chronology 's 1999 date, noting that " Voyager VI " [sic] was officially approved in May of 1972 , and that all six of the Voyager series were built identically of 65,000 individual parts, including a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, plasma and cosmic ray detectors, and a data storage capacity of 500 million bits.

The fictional Voyager 6 probe around which V'ger was built, was actually a full-scale mock-up of the real world Voyager 1 and 2 probes of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). JPL's director John Casani agreed to loan the model to the studio in October 1977, mere months after the actual Voyager probes were launched in August and September that year. Then Star Trek: Phase II (the immediate predecessor of The Motion Picture ) Producer Robert Goodwin reported in a progress memo, dated 21 October 1977, " After your conversation with John Casani at Jet Propulsion Laboratories, JPL has agreed to loan us the mock-up of the Voyager, to be used as part of our set as the interior of the Alien Spaceship [note: indicating that the name V'ger had not yet been conceived at the time] . Joe Jennings and Matt Jefferies attended a briefing in JPL last night in the Voyager and Joe Jennings will return there next week with Bud Arbuckle to get measurements so that we can incorporate this large full-scale mock-up into our plans for the set." ( Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series , p. 52) The text commentary on the Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director's Edition DVD even stated that JPL was willing to even go a step further and loan the production an actual engineering duplicate of the Voyager spacecraft, but the studio declined, saying that the risk of the duplicate being damaged on the set was too high.

Apocrypha [ ]

The William Shatner novel The Return , in which Kirk and Picard join forces to lead an assault on the Borg homeworld and end the recent Borg/ Romulan alliance once and for all presents the theory that a Borg transwarp conduit consumed the probe rather than a black hole, and that the planet seen by Spock was in fact, the Borg homeworld . The suggestion continues that the Borg assimilated the probe, yet the assimilation went "afoul" and changed Voyager 6 into a more sentient being.

Star Trek: Legacy presented the theory that the 20th century Borg civilization was a peaceful race. When V'ger encountered them, they studied its programming, repaired the probe, and sent it on its task. When V'ger returned to the Sol system it could not find its creator, but "a biological infestation." The probe returned to the Borg homeworld and joined with them, and its programming propagated throughout the Collective . Something of a civil war broke out. Massive amounts of knowledge, including the location of Earth, were lost in the resulting conflict, and the Borg of the 24th century were born.

In Star Trek Online , the mirror universe counterpart of V'ger , known as "the Other", is encountered in the 25th century. The probe at its core is known as Conqueror 6 , sent out by the Terran Empire in the 20th century to find new worlds to dominate.

External link [ ]

  • Voyager 6 at Wikipedia
  • 2 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)
  • 3 Star Trek: The Next Generation

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The most distant human-made object

Computer-generated view of a Voyager spacecraft far from the Sun.

No spacecraft has gone farther than NASA's Voyager 1. Launched in 1977 to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012 and continues to collect data.

Mission Type

What is Voyager 1?

Voyager 1 has been exploring our solar system for more than 45 years. The probe is now in interstellar space, the region outside the heliopause, or the bubble of energetic particles and magnetic fields from the Sun.

  • Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to cross the heliosphere, the boundary where the influences outside our solar system are stronger than those from our Sun.
  • Voyager 1 is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space.
  • Voyager 1 discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and two new Jovian moons: Thebe and Metis.
  • At Saturn, Voyager 1 found five new moons and a new ring called the G-ring.

In Depth: Voyager 1

Voyager 1 was launched after Voyager 2, but because of a faster route, it exited the asteroid belt earlier than its twin, having overtaken Voyager 2 on Dec. 15, 1977.

Voyager 1 at Jupiter

Voyager 1 began its Jovian imaging mission in April 1978 at a range of 165 million miles (265 million km) from the planet. Images sent back by January the following year indicated that Jupiter’s atmosphere was more turbulent than during the Pioneer flybys in 1973–1974.

Beginning on January 30, Voyager 1 took a picture every 96 seconds for a span of 100 hours to generate a color timelapse movie to depict 10 rotations of Jupiter. On Feb. 10, 1979, the spacecraft crossed into the Jovian moon system and by early March, it had already discovered a thin (less than 30 kilometers thick) ring circling Jupiter.

Voyager 1’s closest encounter with Jupiter was at 12:05 UT on March 5, 1979 at a range of about 174,000 miles (280,000 km). It encountered several of Jupiter’s Moons, including Amalthea, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, returning spectacular photos of their terrain, opening up completely new worlds for planetary scientists.

The most interesting find was on Io, where images showed a bizarre yellow, orange, and brown world with at least eight active volcanoes spewing material into space, making it one of the most (if not the most) geologically active planetary body in the solar system. The presence of active volcanoes suggested that the sulfur and oxygen in Jovian space may be a result of the volcanic plumes from Io which are rich in sulfur dioxide. The spacecraft also discovered two new moons, Thebe and Metis.

Voyager 1 at Saturn

Saturn

Following the Jupiter encounter, Voyager 1 completed an initial course correction on April 9, 1979 in preparation for its meeting with Saturn. A second correction on Oct. 10, 1979 ensured that the spacecraft would not hit Saturn’s moon Titan.

Its flyby of the Saturn system in November 1979 was as spectacular as its previous encounter. Voyager 1 found five new moons, a ring system consisting of thousands of bands, wedge-shaped transient clouds of tiny particles in the B ring that scientists called “spokes,” a new ring (the “G-ring”), and “shepherding” satellites on either side of the F-ring—satellites that keep the rings well-defined.

During its flyby, the spacecraft photographed Saturn’s moons Titan, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea. Based on incoming data, all the moons appeared to be composed largely of water ice. Perhaps the most interesting target was Titan, which Voyager 1 passed at 05:41 UT on November 12 at a range of 2,500 miles (4,000 km). Images showed a thick atmosphere that completely hid the surface. The spacecraft found that the moon’s atmosphere was composed of 90% nitrogen. Pressure ad temperature at the surface was 1.6 atmospheres and 356 °F (–180°C), respectively.

Atmospheric data suggested that Titan might be the first body in the solar system (apart from Earth) where liquid might exist on the surface. In addition, the presence of nitrogen, methane, and more complex hydrocarbons indicated that prebiotic chemical reactions might be possible on Titan.

Voyager 1’s closest approach to Saturn was at 23:46 UT on 12 Nov. 12, 1980 at a range of 78,000 miles(126,000 km).

Voyager 1’s ‘Family Portrait’ Image

Following the encounter with Saturn, Voyager 1 headed on a trajectory escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.5 AU per year, 35° out of the ecliptic plane to the north, in the general direction of the Sun’s motion relative to nearby stars. Because of the specific requirements for the Titan flyby, the spacecraft was not directed to Uranus and Neptune.

The final images taken by the Voyagers comprised a mosaic of 64 images taken by Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990 at a distance of 40 AU of the Sun and all the planets of the solar system (although Mercury and Mars did not appear, the former because it was too close to the Sun and the latter because Mars was on the same side of the Sun as Voyager 1 so only its dark side faced the cameras).

This was the so-called “pale blue dot” image made famous by Cornell University professor and Voyager science team member Carl Sagan (1934-1996). These were the last of a total of 67,000 images taken by the two spacecraft.

Voyager 1’s Interstellar Mission

All the planetary encounters finally over in 1989, the missions of Voyager 1 and 2 were declared part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), which officially began on Jan. 1, 1990.

The goal was to extend NASA’s 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.” Specific goals include collecting data on the transition between the heliosphere, the region of space dominated by the Sun’s magnetic field and solar field, and the interstellar medium.

On Feb. 17, 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant human-made object in existence when, at a distance of 69.4 AU from the Sun when it “overtook” Pioneer 10.

On Dec. 16, 2004, Voyager scientists announced that Voyager 1 had reported high values for the intensity for the magnetic field at a distance of 94 AU, indicating that it had reached the termination shock and had now entered the heliosheath.

The spacecraft finally exited the heliosphere and began measuring the interstellar environment on Aug. 25, 2012, the first spacecraft to do so.

On Sept. 5, 2017, NASA marked the 40th anniversary of its launch, as it continues to communicate with NASA’s Deep Space Network and send data back from four still-functioning instruments—the cosmic ray telescope, the low-energy charged particles experiment, the magnetometer, and the plasma waves experiment.

The Golden Record

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Each of the Voyagers contain a “message,” prepared by a team headed by Carl Sagan, in the form of a 12-inch (30 cm) diameter gold-plated copper disc for potential extraterrestrials who might find the spacecraft. Like the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11, the record has inscribed symbols to show the location of Earth relative to several pulsars.

The records also contain instructions to play them using a cartridge and a needle, much like a vinyl record player. The audio on the disc includes greetings in 55 languages, 35 sounds from life on Earth (such as whale songs, laughter, etc.), 90 minutes of generally Western music including everything from Mozart and Bach to Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson. It also includes 115 images of life on Earth and recorded greetings from then U.S. President Jimmy Carter (1924– ) and then-UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim (1918–2007).

By January 2024, Voyager 1 was about 136 AU (15 billion miles, or 20 billion kilometers) from Earth, the farthest object created by humans, and moving at a velocity of about 38,000 mph (17.0 kilometers/second) relative to the Sun.

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National Space Science Data Center: Voyager 1

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‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Documentary Gives Production Update; Releases Sneak Peek Video

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| August 29, 2021 | By: Brian Drew 72 comments so far

The Star Trek: Voyager documentary To the Journey was featured on a panel at this month’s 55-Year Mission Las Vegas Star Trek convention that included details on where they are in production and what they have planned. They also showed  a sneak peek, which is now available online.

To the Journey production continues

After wrapping up a record-breaking $1.2 million crowd-funding campaign earlier this year, the documentary team set up a new studio to shoot more interviews in June . At the Las Vegas panel, producer/director Dave Zappone said the team was still “deep in production,” but had already completed a number of interviews. He mentioned a couple of standouts, including one with Star Trek: Voyager co-creator Jeri Taylor (who was a surprise guest on the panel), thanking her and saying “She had us up to her home in northern California and our crew took over her house. It was a wonderful interview and you could not have been more gracious.” He also mentioned Robert Beltran’s interview, saying he sat down for them for two and half hours and it “really blew me away,” adding the actor “was just so open, he is just a wonderful, wonderful guy.”

A number of interviews with members of the cast were done in 2020 during a Voyager  reunion on Star Trek: The Cruise. This summer they have been bringing in more people who worked on the show, including guest stars and behind-the-scenes creatives. In Vegas, the team played the following video to the crowd that showcased some of the people who had dropped by the studio over the summer.

Behind the scenes, bloopers, HD, and more

Zappone assured the audience that the doc will not just be talking heads, mentioning that they are working their way through archives to find more footage shot contemporaneously with  Star Trek: Voyager in the ’90s. There is some particular material he was interested in, saying, “I am looking for the infamous blooper reel. We are looking everywhere for that.”

Voyager actor Garrett Wang has also been helping out with the doc and was part of the panel as well. He talked about how he and others are contributing their own footage:

I do have some footage from my own camera… So that’s the plan. It’s not just myself. There are other people that have documented their time on Voyager . That can definitely supplement this documentary.

The team is also planning on shooting footage on the Paramount lot with Garrett Wang giving a tour of where Voyager was shot and what it was like during that time. And with the team headed to the Destination Star Trek Germany convention to shoot more footage, including a Voyager reunion panel, Zappone revealed they are also going to take some time out to accept an invitation from the European Space Agency to visit their facilities and put Wang through some astronaut training.

One of the stretch goals for the crowd-funding was to help the team convert original Voyager footage into high-definition, and Zappone talked about how this was still a goal of the doc. “We are planning to upres—hopefully—the original 35 millimeter [film] like we did with What We Left Behind. ”

voyager 6 launch date

Garrett Wang, Jeri Taylor, Lolita Fatjo, and David Zappone at 55-Year Mission convention, Las Vegas, August 2021 (Photo: TrekMovie.com)

Why Voyager ?

To the Journey is the latest of a series of Star Trek documentaries produced by Zappone and his production company. He talked about how he has been surprised by the fan reaction so far:

Having done what we did with What We Left Behind and partnering with Ira [Steven Behr] who was an amazing collaborator, I knew the love for Deep Space Nine . I guess I didn’t realize it was just as great for Voyager . The fans are just as rabid, just as passionate. That is my pleasant surprise.

In 2020, right before the pandemic hit, the team was able to shoot footage of a  Voyager cast reunion on Star Trek: The Cruise, which Zappone said was crucial to the doc, adding, “If we didn’t have that, I honestly don’t think we would have a film.” He also talked about how they got a lot of great footage from fans on the cruise and promised that they will use as much as they can, saying, “the emotional reactions and the impact Voyager had [on the fans], it just blew me away.”

voyager 6 launch date

From To the Journey footage filmed on the 2020 Star Trek: The Cruise

When a fan asked what made  Voyager different, the answers revealed some variety in what the team was looking at in terms of some of the themes of the doc. Co-producers Lilita Fatjo (who also worked on Voyager) offered her personal take:

As the only female on stage, I honestly have to say it was because there was a female captain. I had the privilege of working with Michael [Piller], Jeri [Taylor], and Rick [Berman] for years. And being part of two shows that were created– Deep Space Nine and Voyager –and just watching them create these shows and characters was amazing, but I would have to say it was because of Captain Janeway.

Zappone added on to that:

It’s not just Captain Janeway, it’s the strong women in general. Roxann Dawson and of course Jeri Ryan, and Jennifer Lien was also strong. So not just the captain.

Garrett Wang said he felt the show stood out for having “amazing chemistry” amount the cast from the start, but he also talked about the diversity of the show being a key differentiator. He he took some pride in his own contribution, pointing out how after George Takei, there were no Asian-Americans on TNG or DS9 in the main cast:

One out of every five people in this world is Chinese—not Asian, Chinese—that’s a lot. There should be an Asian in every Star Trek. Voyager [had a] Native American first officer, Asian-American ops officer, African-American Vulcan.

Zappone noted something that came up in Garrett’s documentary interview which was how at the time of the show in the 1990s, he was the only Asian-American series regular on television. Wang also told a story of later meeting Lost star Daniel Dae Kim who thanked him, saying he’d “paved the way.”

voyager 6 launch date

Kate Mulgrew from To the Journey

Hoping for a theatrical event and streaming

It’s too early to talk about how the doc will be released, but Zappone did say that in addition to being distributed on Blu-ray he was hoping to follow the same route as What We Left Behind and do a short theatrical release with Fathom Events, which he noted had sold out 1,000 theaters. After that, he said he expected the doc to become available for streaming, but wasn’t sure which service might pick it up.

To keep updated on the project, visit voyagerdocumentary.com .

More from Vegas

We still have some more from the con, so stay tuned to TrekMovie for updates. And don’t forget to check out the coverage we’ve already posted .

Find more  news on Star Trek documentaries .

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That trailer was edited horribly. Why is it that these fan efforts always have such clunky production values?

I thought it was fine. It certainly wasn’t horrible.

It was definitely an awful trailer. Just a bunch of people sitting down.

Nothing about it made me want to watch the final doc. Where are the clips of the cast speaking? Where are the behind-the-scenes clips from the 90s they talk about? Where is the moment where someone teases something slightly intriguing, or dare I say– provocative? A funny moment from an interview, a dramatic moment where someone reveals tension on the set, an uplifting or emotionally inspirational moment; something, anything, to fascinate me and make me wonder what cool new things i’ll learn about the making of the show.

The trailer to “What We Left Behind” was way more intriguing, including ALL of the things I just mentioned; I suspect that’s because Ira Behr was involved. Go watch it. Teri Farrell is moved to tears, Marc Alaimo gets angry, Alex Siddig is inspirational, Avery Brooks speaks of what the role meant to him; Rene Auberjonois and Colm Meaney describe how hard they worked, DeBoer notes her awe at joining the show, and Michael Dorn mysteriously notes that “only those involved know the facts.” A bit melodramatic? Sure. But that’s what makes you want to see it. Great trailer to a great documentary.

After this trailer, I suspect the Voyager documentary will be a lot like the show: a watered down version of better docs that came before.

I don’t get the sense this was intended as an official trailer, just a casual sneak peek. Hence the title of the video.

Well then this is the worst sneak peek i’ve ever seen! Should at least had some cast members actually saying something– ANYTHING. This makes me LESS interested, not more.

Yeah, it was pretty bad.

So excited for this doc! I was literally watching an episode of VOY when I saw this article. I’m really really hoping it gets a theatrical release like ‘WWLB’ did. And I really love the fact they brought in so many other actors from the other shows. WWLB was strictly a DS9 affair, which was understandable, but it is cool to hear from other Trek stars on their thoughts on the show.

This is probably the most attention VOY has had since it went off the air, especially with all the characters appearing (or starring) in the multiple new shows and now this doc. It’s great to see for both old and new fans of the show! And imagine how many plates they can sell when it arrives! ;)

But no Kes 🥺

There’s a non-zero chance she’s in a mental institution or under conservatorship.

Well, WWLB did not have Avery Brooks participating on camera, and they made do with archival footage and anecdotes from other people. It worked, though in there case he was offering notes behind the scenes.

I hope Lien is getting the help she needs, I’m sure the doc will be an honest and respectful take on her time with the show.

There’s plenty of archival footage of Lien if they can clear it – Studio/Network EPK material from her time on the series, Entertainment Tonight, There was an E! BTS special early in the shows run, might be some convention footage out there – so there’s material available – they sure have enough of a budget to get SOMETHING.

Given the state of her health, why is that a surprise? Other cast members wishing her well is more then sufficient participation for her in this endeavor.

They should produce a plate of Boimler holding the Tom Paris plate to mark the occasion!

LOL! What’s funny is I could see someone at least considering it.

Anyone think Chakotay would sign my bowl?

I only recognized 3 of the people in that video…I guess most were behind the scenes or buried in makeup/prosthetics on-screen? They could have flashed their names at least. I love voyager and am looking forward to the doc, but this wasn’t very inspiring.

I totally agree … to assume that after all these years, and with many wearing prosthetics that totally changed their ‘real’ identities was silly. Their character image and/or name would have been very helpful. I only recognized the main characters and not the rest. Too bad, they deserved to be called out – maybe the final cut will do that.

This is a “sneak peak,” and I’m hoping that means that even the part we saw isn’t finished yet. Putting the names and functions of the people on the bottom of the screen (e.g. “Jeri Taylor, Executive Producer, 1995 – 1998”) would help a lot.

It’s very clearly not finished. But as a marketing person myself, if you have nothing intriguing to show, don’t show anything. Clearly some of these interviews have happened already, so they couldn’t find one or two good lines from them to get people interested? Awful job here.

Umm…where are the VOY cast??

When all the DS9 people turned up, I starting hoping Marc Alaimo would randomly appear for no reason.

I loved Armin Shimmerman’s reaction. “Why am I here?”

I suspect a lot of the audience will be asking the same thing as they watch the documentary!

He probably said the same thing on Insurrection.

It’s not just Captain Janeway, it’s the strong women in general. Roxanne Dawson and of course Jeri Ryan, and Jennifer Lein was also strong. So not just the captain.

Mulgrew and Ryan were strong. Dawson was average. Lien was weak, as was Wang. (Plus: an “African-American Vulcan”? Really? The actor, sure. The *character* had no human ancestry.)

It’s this kind of commentary that makes me think less of VOY; I’m glad we had a female captain, but cast diversity is not enough to compensate for poor characterization and writing. It certainly doesn’t compensate for the “Hollywood Indian” trope.

I believe that you are being unnecessarily harsh and hyper critical. Sounds like you didn’t watch the series but are here to comment for no apparent reason at all. Its confusing, did you watch the series or not? Sounds like you couldn’t stand it, yet you are here.

It’s called “literary criticism” for a reason. Criticism is the point.

I loved Dawson and thought she was very strong. But yeah I loved them all. ;)

I loved her too. Very under rated as an actress. Her character kinda disappeared into the background when Jeri Ryan came on the scene – that happened to most of the cast though – not her fault at all, that was the writers.

Maybe I’m just biased but I always loved Dawson and how she portrayed B’Elanna. Even though Worf was the most popular Klingon character, I liked B’Elanna because she was anti-Work or even Anti-Spock and really tried to be closer to her human side even though her Klingon side was always just underneath the surface. She played between the line very well. But I always love when her temper comes out lol.

But it’s all just opinions. People will like or hate different characters so completely understandable not every character or actors on these shows are loved by everyone.

Yep, Dawson nailed it as B’Elanna. She almost gets zero credit. She is the forgotten Voyager character.

TNG had already featured a Black Romulan.

The lack of diversity we sometimes see in alien races in science fiction is the problem. If the human race is anything to go by, and since the humanoids in Star Trek are supposed to be all related (again going back to TNG) then we should see more variations of skin color, not fewer.

Sigh. I guess I didn’t make my point clearly enough. I don’t have a problem with darker-skinned Vulcans; it’s just that they’re not “African-American Vulcans.” Africa and the Americas are continents on *Earth*.

What did you expect? It was a TV series produced in Hollywood. More chances than not the Black actor cast was going to be African-American. You know, that Hollywood that is located in America on Earth.

Oh, I see what you mean now. You wanted at least one cast member to be non-American. Well, we almost had that with the original actor cast as Janeway (her name escapes me at the moment), so you can’t fault them for at least keeping that in mind. But Tim Russ had already been cast at that point, so why single him out?

I don’t think it makes much sense to think “less of VOY” because the cast, crew, and fans of the show highlight it’s diversity as a positive, memorable, defining element of the show. And no one is saying that it compensates for failures in other areas of the production. The question wasn’t, “what element of Voyager balances out all the other mistakes of the show?”

As for the “Hollywood Indian” trope, I don’t think that you can lay all the blame on the Voyager staff (maybe 10-25%). The did hire a “respected Native American consultant” for the show – it just happened that that consultant was a fake and was conning Hollywood at large.

The “respected consultant” may have contributed to the problem, but he didn’t create the character, and he didn’t cast a non-Native actor in the role.

So sorry you were triggered by the mention of diversity and that someone different then yourself enjoyed seeing themselves reflected on the screen. Find something from the 1950’s on youtube that only features straight white men and take long, deep breaths.

In point of fact, I support diversity on Star Trek. I submit to you that VOY was the *least* diverse cast, and that the focus on the captain (and her ethnically ambiguous first officer, portrayed in blackface by a non-Native actor) were a way to deflect attention from this shortcoming.

Every other iteration of Star Trek has had at least one non-American human character in the main cast:

TOS: Chekhov (Russia), Scott (UK), Sulu (Japanese/Filipino, until TVH unfortunately retconned his ancestry a bit). TNG/PIC: Picard (France), LaForge (likely West Africa, possibly Caribbean); Worf’s roots on Earth were in Belarus; Yar (Ukraine/Lithuania). It was also lightly implied that Troi’s human ancestry was Greek; Rios (Chile). DS9: Bashir (Sudan), Miles O’Brien (Ireland) and Keiko O’Brien (Japan) (both also on TNG), Worf ENT: Sato (Japanese, possibly Brazilian-Japanese), Reed (UK) DIS: Owosekun (Nigeria), Detmer (Germany), Georgiou (Malaysia), Landry (likely India), Rhys (likely Hong Kong, but who knows?), probably others that I’ve missed, since the line between lead and supporting characters has grown blurred.

VOY had…*maybe* Annika Hansen from one of the Scandinavian countries. And that’s it. (And even she didn’t come until the fourth season.)

Chakotay, who was so “diverse” that they couldn’t name his tribal affiliation, doesn’t count; he was a Hollywood composite from nowhere (and alternatively implied he was born in Central America and Arizona, so who knows). The “diverse” captain was from…Indiana. “Farm country,” as she told us. Right next door to Kirk’s old stomping grounds, and not that different from wine country; only agrarian types make good captains, I guess. B’Elanna Torres was implied to be Mexican-American, not Mexican. Kim, whose actor now lectures us “every Star Trek series must have a Chinese character,” was clearly Korean-American, not Korean.

(Oh: and why? In Wang’s book, it’s OK not to have had a single Turkish, Indonesian, Argentine, or Congolese character in all of Star Trek, but we *must* have a Chinese main character in *every* series? By his standards, even Georgiou doesn’t qualify; she’s Straits Chinese. This is selective outrage at its finest.)

Then there were the little details. I can’t think of any VOY recurring or minor human characters who were non-American. In the other series, we had Khan Singh; engineer Singh (both in TOS and TNG); Xu (implied to be Chinese); Anaya (implied to be Bolivian); Admiral Komack (implied Iranian); Admiral Nechayeva (possibly Serbian or Croat); Fleet Admiral Shanti (West Africa); Rostov (Russian); Benayoun (possibly French, possibly Israeli).

I’ll also note that in-universe, VOY didn’t feature a single crew member from an unfamiliar Federation species. TOS gave us Vulcans, TNG Klingons and Bajorans (Ro was the first), DS9 Trill, ENT Denobulans and Andorians. VOY served slopppy seconds, warmed-over Klingons and Vulcans we’d seen before: an utterly disappointing lack of vision and creativity. The buffoonish Neelix (“Jetrel” excepted) and bland Kes (the implications of her short lifespan never examined) hardly counteracted this.

In short, VOY was easily the least multinational crew, and cast, in the history of Star Trek. (And VOY and ENT were filmed at the apex of post-Cold War globalization in the real world; TOS might have had an excuse for this, but VOY has none.) Say what you will about Gene Roddenberry, but he had a global perspective, no doubt from his military and Pan Am days, that Jeri Taylor absolutely did not. The VOY writers’ room hastily cobbled together a milquetoast set of characters (there was too much Trek on at once, and the lack of focus showed) and delivered lackluster storytelling for its first three seasons. To this day, its writers hide behind the one solid casting choice, Mulgrew, to deflect attention away from this weakness.

*I’m* the one triggered by diversity because I’m not a VOY fan? I must have the name of your occulist.

Oh, and all the above is before we get to the fact there wasn’t a single gay character on VOY. On a series that wrapped in 2001, not in the 1960s.

I read all of that above and as a Turkish person I agree with you about the need of Star Trek to have a Turkish crew member. If my memory doesn’t play tricks on me I think there was at least one Starfleet starship named after a Turkish historical figure but I’ll have to check Memory Alpha for that.

The obvious choice would be Sabiha Gokcen.

(Dollars to donuts Mr. “1950s on Youtube” above has zero clue who she is, at least not without consulting the Google.)

Ignoring the bit about Wang, but in terms of playing women with fortitude and strength, all four actresses did that. Torres and Kes may have gotten shortchanged at times, but the characters were strong women, haphazardly written.

I thought Roxann was wonderful in the series and as a director too. She went on to direct ten episodes of Enterprise. She broke ground for female directors of Star Trek. There aren’t a whole lot of them. They should be celebrated.

Whatever the merits of her acting on VOY, I’ve enjoyed her directorial work on THE AMERICANS, and she’s clearly vastly expanded herself in her post-Star Trek director career.

I don’t understand why the new Trek shows aren’t using her as a director. She always does very solid work with her directing, elevating the written material visually.

I find that weird as well. Maybe she is too busy directing other shows? No idea. But I’d like to see her name appear again on a new Star Trek episode(s)

Are you both ignoring the red elephant in the room?

Which is???

That the Discovery Team fired a black writer who used the N-word only as a quote in a story. If they are so sensitive about such things, why should they hire an AllLivesMatter hashtagger?

And if Dawson thinks it is decent to twitter anti-BLM, she would think Discovery is a show to her taste?

Come on have we really come to that time where what people post on twitter became more important than their talents and skills? This is probably a rhetorical question as everyone probably knows the answer. You know Odradek, you may have a point, I feel like this over-sensitivity was why Nick Meyer refused or didn’t work in Discovery after the 1st season.

A discovery actor? a couple of Ds9 actors? TOS? in a voyager Doc I would rather hear from the crew and cast of voyager rather than listening to people who was not involved talk about what voyager meant to them.

George Takei actually had a Captain Sulu episode so it is germane to the topic.

Yeah Voyager was the last tine Takei officially played Sulu as well. Hard to believe that was nearly 25 years ago now.

Andrew Robinson actually directed two episodes on VOY, which I only found out after I asked myself what he was doing there, so at least he has a connection to the show.

My personal guess is they included him (I don´t know how many other directors will be in the documentary) because Garak is so well known an loved as a character.

I would Like to buy the ds9 doc in europe…. Gut where

Same here, buddy…

I thought we weren’t supposed to share the trailers as it was backers only? I don’t get how this is exclisive content when it is distributed a week later to everyone.

What’s the point in a trailer that’s for backers only? The backers are already probably planning to watch the thing. They need to build up hype for general audiences.

I like the fact that they’re not putting the main cast up front. They usually tend to tell their small stories in such interviews, but its the backstage people who can talk about the meat and bones of the show. Color me interested.

Obviously it’s not that way but watching this made me feel like “those DS9 actors are always up for an interview huh, no matter how small the link might be”

Hopefully this is better than the ds9 documentary, where 1. Way too much Behr, he is annoying especially his cheesy sunglasses, and facial hair 2. It was odd to see them criticizing certain aspects of the show, for instance one case was in the use of gay characters. When they say that I think should remember the context that there were only three or four gay characters on TV when ds9 started and about 6 or 7 when ds9 ended.

Context like that needs to be remembered when they make comments about things.

But for a series that is part of a forward-thinking franchise that celebrates diversity, it was a black mark. I’m glad they did Rejoined, and little things like the rest of the crew not batting an eye over the idea of two women dating was appreciated, but this has always been an area where the franchise actually fell behind the curve.

There’s also a moment a lot of people overlook, in the episode “Rules of Acquisition”: before anyone knows that Pel is actually a woman– when everyone believes Pel to be a man– Dax says “it’s obvious hw you feel about [Quark]” meaning Pel’s romantic interest. This says that Dax found nothing odd about a Ferengi man’s attraction to another Ferengi man.

It’s a nice moment BECAUSE it doesn’t get highlighted, if you ask me.

Now it’s possible Dax saw it as no big deal because she is, essentially, a transgender species that does not prescribe to strictly heteronormative relationships, but I choose to believe that outside of Ferenginar– within the Federation– LGBTQ people are not seen as abnormal (and are perhaps even the norm, considering how many different alien races are members) in the 24th century.

There was a scene in Captain’s Holiday that seemed to me more progressiv, when I first saw it, than it really was. I saw it in dubbed version. When the Risean woman hits on Picard, Picard says his Horg’ahn for is his friend Riker. Now the woman assumes that Picard and Riker were lovers and because of the way Picard addressed Riker ln my language she would indicate that Riker is a man and she had to assume they were both gay. I expected the typical nervous ” no, no not that king of friend…” routine from Picard and was pleasently surprised when he was all non chalant about it. I thought :” How cool in the future no one cares about it orfeels the need to set the record straight if you are gay or not. I was a little disappointed after I saw the original version with no indication she thought Picard was gay.

I think you might be mistaken, because Picard very much does respond with the nervous “no, not that kind of friend” an even if you read it otherwise, the intent of the scene is clearly to make the audience laugh at a gay panic joke.

Actually, the woman says, “someone you love”, and Picard says, “I wouldn’t go that far”.

…which to be fair, was the point of “Rules of Acquisition” but the reaction of Dax was not meant to be a joke.

Star Trek should always be ahead of the curve when it comes to diversity. It is a shame that in this instance they were not.

To be honest, I found his self-criticism quite impressive. Believe me, Behr knew the context.

And why does it matter HOW MANY gay characters there were on TV in 1993 or 1998? The fact is, there were openly gay characters on mainstream TV as early as the 60s and 70s, in shows that discussed the issues facing LGBTQ people in a frank and serious way. Why Trek felt– even well into the 1990s– that they couldn’t include an open character, or make an existing character (like Garak) gay, is to me, an embarrassment to the franchise. Clearly Behr agreed, and I think that’s a GOOD thing.

I also felt that not using the Trill as a trans allegory, despite the VERY obvious parallels, to be a huge oversight (and one they finally followed through on in DSC) .

By the way, I find it rather odd that in the same paragraph as you hit back against the criticism of not representing LGBTQ characters, you mock the “annoying” sunglasses and facial hair of Behr; you seem to have some kind of inherent bias against people who are different.

I plan to get this on dvd just like I did the DS9 documentary and I sure hope they will do one for Enterprise

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Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn’t sent usable data from interstellar space in months.

voyager 6 launch date

By Orlando Mayorquin

When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that — and much more.

Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a “ pale blue dot, ” as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space.

Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.

Voyager 1 , the farthest man-made object in space, hasn’t sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what the Voyager mission’s project manager, Suzanne Dodd, called the “most serious issue” the robotic probe has faced since she took the job in 2010.

The spacecraft encountered a glitch in one of its computers that has eliminated its ability to send engineering and science data back to Earth.

The loss of Voyager 1 would cap decades of scientific breakthroughs and signal the beginning of the end for a mission that has given shape to humanity’s most distant ambition and inspired generations to look to the skies.

“Scientifically, it’s a big loss,” Ms. Dodd said. “I think — emotionally — it’s maybe even a bigger loss.”

Voyager 1 is one half of the Voyager mission. It has a twin spacecraft, Voyager 2.

Launched in 1977, they were primarily built for a four-year trip to Jupiter and Saturn , expanding on earlier flybys by the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes.

The Voyager mission capitalized on a rare alignment of the outer planets — once every 175 years — allowing the probes to visit all four.

Using the gravity of each planet, the Voyager spacecraft could swing onto the next, according to NASA .

The mission to Jupiter and Saturn was a success.

The 1980s flybys yielded several new discoveries, including new insights about the so-called great red spot on Jupiter, the rings around Saturn and the many moons of each planet.

Voyager 2 also explored Uranus and Neptune , becoming in 1989 the only spacecraft to explore all four outer planets.

voyager 6 launch date

Voyager 1, meanwhile, had set a course for deep space, using its camera to photograph the planets it was leaving behind along the way. Voyager 2 would later begin its own trek into deep space.

“Anybody who is interested in space is interested in the things Voyager discovered about the outer planets and their moons,” said Kate Howells, the public education specialist at the Planetary Society, an organization co-founded by Dr. Sagan to promote space exploration.

“But I think the pale blue dot was one of those things that was sort of more poetic and touching,” she added.

On Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1, darting 3.7 billion miles away from the sun toward the outer reaches of the solar system, turned around and snapped a photo of Earth that Dr. Sagan and others understood to be a humbling self-portrait of humanity.

“It’s known the world over, and it does connect humanity to the stars,” Ms. Dodd said of the mission.

She added: “I’ve had many, many many people come up to me and say: ‘Wow, I love Voyager. It’s what got me excited about space. It’s what got me thinking about our place here on Earth and what that means.’”

Ms. Howells, 35, counts herself among those people.

About 10 years ago, to celebrate the beginning of her space career, Ms. Howells spent her first paycheck from the Planetary Society to get a Voyager tattoo.

Though spacecraft “all kind of look the same,” she said, more people recognize the tattoo than she anticipated.

“I think that speaks to how famous Voyager is,” she said.

The Voyagers made their mark on popular culture , inspiring a highly intelligent “Voyager 6” in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and references on “The X Files” and “The West Wing.”

Even as more advanced probes were launched from Earth, Voyager 1 continued to reliably enrich our understanding of space.

In 2012, it became the first man-made object to exit the heliosphere, the space around the solar system directly influenced by the sun. There is a technical debate among scientists around whether Voyager 1 has actually left the solar system, but, nonetheless, it became interstellar — traversing the space between stars.

That charted a new path for heliophysics, which looks at how the sun influences the space around it. In 2018, Voyager 2 followed its twin between the stars.

Before Voyager 1, scientific data on the sun’s gases and material came only from within the heliosphere’s confines, according to Dr. Jamie Rankin, Voyager’s deputy project scientist.

“And so now we can for the first time kind of connect the inside-out view from the outside-in,” Dr. Rankin said, “That’s a big part of it,” she added. “But the other half is simply that a lot of this material can’t be measured any other way than sending a spacecraft out there.”

Voyager 1 and 2 are the only such spacecraft. Before it went offline, Voyager 1 had been studying an anomalous disturbance in the magnetic field and plasma particles in interstellar space.

“Nothing else is getting launched to go out there,” Ms. Dodd said. “So that’s why we’re spending the time and being careful about trying to recover this spacecraft — because the science is so valuable.”

But recovery means getting under the hood of an aging spacecraft more than 15 billion miles away, equipped with the technology of yesteryear. It takes 45 hours to exchange information with the craft.

It has been repeated over the years that a smartphone has hundreds of thousands of times Voyager 1’s memory — and that the radio transmitter emits as many watts as a refrigerator lightbulb.

“There was one analogy given that is it’s like trying to figure out where your cursor is on your laptop screen when your laptop screen doesn’t work,” Ms. Dodd said.

Her team is still holding out hope, she said, especially as the tantalizing 50th launch anniversary in 2027 approaches. Voyager 1 has survived glitches before, though none as serious.

Voyager 2 is still operational, but aging. It has faced its own technical difficulties too.

NASA had already estimated that the nuclear-powered generators of both spacecrafts would likely die around 2025.

Even if the Voyager interstellar mission is near its end, the voyage still has far to go.

Voyager 1 and its twin, each 40,000 years away from the next closest star, will arguably remain on an indefinite mission.

“If Voyager should sometime in its distant future encounter beings from some other civilization in space, it bears a message,” Dr. Sagan said in a 1980 interview .

Each spacecraft carries a gold-plated phonograph record loaded with an array of sound recordings and images representing humanity’s richness, its diverse cultures and life on Earth.

“A gift across the cosmic ocean from one island of civilization to another,” Dr. Sagan said.

Orlando Mayorquin is a general assignment and breaking news reporter based in New York. More about Orlando Mayorquin

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

A new set of computer simulations, which take into account the effects of stars moving past our solar system, has effectively made it harder to predict Earth’s future and reconstruct its past.

Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust , discusses his next final frontier.

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

Voyager 1, the 46-year-old first craft in interstellar space which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth, may have gone dark .

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

'Star Trek: Voyager's' triumphant creation stars in crowdfunded documentary 'To the Journey'

Engage this new teaser for the upcoming doc project "To the Journey: Looking Back at Star Trek: Voyager."

These are grand times to be a "Star Trek" fan, as the rising tide of new "Trek" TV series, classic show anniversaries, concept art books, tie-in novels, video games and comics set in the Starfleet sphere are all contributing to a blossoming renaissance of interest.

Riding that surging swell is an upcoming documentary on the making of one of the most popular "Star Trek: The Next Generation" spinoffs, "Star Trek: Voyager." 

A new teaser video for "To the Journey: Looking Back at Star Trek: Voyager" was recently released to give followers of the pioneering series a hint of what's to come. The show, which ran from 1995 to 2001 on UPN, lasted for 172 episodes over seven seasons and depicted the USS Voyager's endeavors while traversing the galaxy's remote Delta Quadrant. 

You can check out our Star Trek streaming guide to see where to watch "Star Trek: Voyager" and any other Trek series that may catch your fancy. That includes " Star Trek: Discovery, " " Star T rek: Picard " and a preview for the May 5 release of " Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. "

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Star Trek: Voyager

"Voyager" represented milestones in "Star Trek" lore as it became the first series to feature a female commander, with Kate Mulgrew 's solid performance as Capt. Kathryn Janeway , as well as the only Asian male co-starring as a series regular at the time, with Garrett Wang (Ensign Kim). The new making-of retrospective highlights that "Voyager's" unique cast chemistry remains intact after 20 years.

Packed with fresh interview snippets with cast members Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Robert Beltran, Ethan Phillips, Tim Russ, Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew, in addition to "Voyager" executive producers Jeri Taylor and Rick Berman, this project's preview promises a definitive exploration of how this successful spinoff was created and has endured.

"To the Journey: Looking Back at Star Trek: Voyager" has been years in the making, as producer/director David Zappone first announced back in early 2020 that shooting would start aboard Star Trek: The Cruise. The COVID-19 pandemic put a swift but temporary halt to those plans, and filming picked up in late 2020. 

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Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

— Kirk vs Picard: Who is the best Star Trek captain?

— Could we really build Star Trek's USS Enterprise?

 — Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best

A crowdfunding effort provided more momentum in March 2021, when the campaign blasted through its goal of $150,000 less than a day after it launched, eventually collecting over $1.3 million — the most money ever pledged for a crowdfunded documentary.

"To the Journey" is currently moving into the final stages of production, and the documentary is slated to start appearing at fan events and on streaming services, and will become available for purchase in late 2022.

For more "Voyager" goodness, dive into our guide to the best episodes of Star Trek: Voyager !

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . 

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].

Jeff Spry

Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.

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Voyager 1 Launch

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft launched atop its Titan/Centaur-6 launch vehicle from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex in Florida on September 5, 1977, at 8:56 a.m. local time.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft launched atop its Titan/Centaur-6 launch vehicle from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex in Florida on September 5, 1977, at 8:56 a.m. local time.

Voyager is managed for NASA by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

For more information about Voyager, visit http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov .

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NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is talking nonsense. Its friends on Earth are worried

Nell Greenfieldboyce 2010

Nell Greenfieldboyce

voyager 6 launch date

This artist's impression shows one of the Voyager spacecraft moving through the darkness of space. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

This artist's impression shows one of the Voyager spacecraft moving through the darkness of space.

The last time Stamatios "Tom" Krimigis saw the Voyager 1 space probe in person, it was the summer of 1977, just before it launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Now Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles away, beyond what many consider to be the edge of the solar system. Yet the on-board instrument Krimigis is in charge of is still going strong.

"I am the most surprised person in the world," says Krimigis — after all, the spacecraft's original mission to Jupiter and Saturn was only supposed to last about four years.

These days, though, he's also feeling another emotion when he thinks of Voyager 1.

"Frankly, I'm very worried," he says.

Ever since mid-November, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending messages back to Earth that don't make any sense. It's as if the aging spacecraft has suffered some kind of stroke that's interfering with its ability to speak.

"It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner," says Suzanne Dodd of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has been the project manager for the Voyager interstellar mission since 2010. "It's a serious problem."

Instead of sending messages home in binary code, Voyager 1 is now just sending back alternating 1s and 0s. Dodd's team has tried the usual tricks to reset things — with no luck.

It looks like there's a problem with the onboard computer that takes data and packages it up to send back home. All of this computer technology is primitive compared to, say, the key fob that unlocks your car, says Dodd.

"The button you press to open the door of your car, that has more compute power than the Voyager spacecrafts do," she says. "It's remarkable that they keep flying, and that they've flown for 46-plus years."

voyager 6 launch date

Each of the Voyager probes carries an American flag and a copy of a golden record that can play greetings in many languages. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

Each of the Voyager probes carries an American flag and a copy of a golden record that can play greetings in many languages.

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, have outlasted many of those who designed and built them. So to try to fix Voyager 1's current woes, the dozen or so people on Dodd's team have had to pore over yellowed documents and old mimeographs.

"They're doing a lot of work to try and get into the heads of the original developers and figure out why they designed something the way they did and what we could possibly try that might give us some answers to what's going wrong with the spacecraft," says Dodd.

She says that they do have a list of possible fixes. As time goes on, they'll likely start sending commands to Voyager 1 that are more bold and risky.

"The things that we will do going forward are probably more challenging in the sense that you can't tell exactly if it's going to execute correctly — or if you're going to maybe do something you didn't want to do, inadvertently," says Dodd.

Linda Spilker , who serves as the Voyager mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that when she comes to work she sees "all of these circuit diagrams up on the wall with sticky notes attached. And these people are just having a great time trying to troubleshoot, you know, the 60's and 70's technology."

"I'm cautiously optimistic," she says. "There's a lot of creativity there."

Still, this is a painstaking process that could take weeks, or even months. Voyager 1 is so distant, it takes almost a whole day for a signal to travel out there, and then a whole day for its response to return.

"We'll keep trying," says Dodd, "and it won't be quick."

In the meantime, Voyager's 1 discombobulation is a bummer for researchers like Stella Ocker , an astronomer with Caltech and the Carnegie Observatories

"We haven't been getting science data since this anomaly started," says Ocker, "and what that means is that we don't know what the environment that the spacecraft is traveling through looks like."

After 35 Years, Voyager Nears Edge Of Solar System

After 35 Years, Voyager Nears Edge Of Solar System

That interstellar environment isn't just empty darkness, she says. It contains stuff like gas, dust, and cosmic rays. Only the twin Voyager probes are far out enough to sample this cosmic stew.

"The science that I'm really interested in doing is actually only possible with Voyager 1," says Ocker, because Voyager 2 — despite being generally healthy for its advanced age — can't take the particular measurements she needs for her research.

Even if NASA's experts and consultants somehow come up with a miraculous plan that can get Voyager 1 back to normal, its time is running out.

The two Voyager probes are powered by plutonium, but that power system will eventually run out of juice. Mission managers have turned off heaters and taken other measures to conserve power and extend the Voyager probes' lifespan.

"My motto for a long time was 50 years or bust," says Krimigis with a laugh, "but we're sort of approaching that."

In a couple of years, the ebbing power supply will force managers to start turning off science instruments, one by one. The very last instrument might keep going until around 2030 or so.

When the power runs out and the probes are lifeless, Krimigis says both of these legendary space probes will basically become "space junk."

"It pains me to say that," he says. While Krimigis has participated in space missions to every planet, he says the Voyager program has a special place in his heart.

Spilker points out that each spacecraft will keep moving outward, carrying its copy of a golden record that has recorded greetings in many languages, along with the sounds of Earth.

"The science mission will end. But a part of Voyager and a part of us will continue on in the space between the stars," says Spilker, noting that the golden records "may even outlast humanity as we know it."

Krimigis, though, doubts that any alien will ever stumble across a Voyager probe and have a listen.

"Space is empty," he says, "and the probability of Voyager ever running into a planet is probably slim to none."

It will take about 40,000 years for Voyager 1 to approach another star; it will come within 1.7 light years of what NASA calls "an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor" — also known as the Little Dipper.

If NASA greenlights this interstellar mission, it could last 100 years

If NASA greenlights this interstellar mission, it could last 100 years

Knowing that the Voyager probes are running out of time, scientists have been drawing up plans for a new mission that, if funded and launched by NASA, would send another probe even farther out into the space between stars.

"If it happens, it would launch in the 2030s," says Ocker, "and it would reach twice as far as Voyager 1 in just 50 years."

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NASA, California Institute of Technology, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Page Header Title

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

golden record

Where are they now.

  • frequently asked questions
  • Q&A with Ed Stone

The Voyager Planetary Mission

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.

To accomplish their two-planet mission, the spacecraft were built to last five years. But as the mission went on, and with the successful achievement of all its objectives, the additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, proved possible -- and irresistible to mission scientists and engineers at the Voyagers' home at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming was used to endow the Voyagers with greater capabilities than they possessed when they left the Earth. Their two-planet mission became four. Their five-year lifetimes stretched to 12 and more.

Eventually, between them, Voyager 1 and 2 would explore all the giant outer planets of our solar system, 48 of their moons, and the unique systems of rings and magnetic fields those planets possess.

Had the Voyager mission ended after the Jupiter and Saturn flybys alone, it still would have provided the material to rewrite astronomy textbooks. But having doubled their already ambitious itineraries, the Voyagers returned to Earth information over the years that has revolutionized the science of planetary astronomy, helping to resolve key questions while raising intriguing new ones about the origin and evolution of the planets in our solar system.

History of the Voyager Mission

The Voyager mission was designed to take advantage of a rare geometric arrangement of the outer planets in the late 1970s and the 1980s which allowed for a four-planet tour for a minimum of propellant and trip time. This layout of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which occurs about every 175 years, allows a spacecraft on a particular flight path to swing from one planet to the next without the need for large onboard propulsion systems. The flyby of each planet bends the spacecraft's flight path and increases its velocity enough to deliver it to the next destination. Using this "gravity assist" technique, first demonstrated with NASA's Mariner 10 Venus/Mercury mission in 1973-74, the flight time to Neptune was reduced from 30 years to 12.

While the four-planet mission was known to be possible, it was deemed to be too expensive to build a spacecraft that could go the distance, carry the instruments needed and last long enough to accomplish such a long mission. Thus, the Voyagers were funded to conduct intensive flyby studies of Jupiter and Saturn only. More than 10,000 trajectories were studied before choosing the two that would allow close flybys of Jupiter and its large moon Io, and Saturn and its large moon Titan; the chosen flight path for Voyager 2 also preserved the option to continue on to Uranus and Neptune.

From the NASA Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Voyager 2 was launched first, on August 20, 1977; Voyager 1 was launched on a faster, shorter trajectory on September 5, 1977. Both spacecraft were delivered to space aboard Titan-Centaur expendable rockets.

The prime Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn brought Voyager 1 to Jupiter on March 5, 1979, and Saturn on November 12, 1980, followed by Voyager 2 to Jupiter on July 9, 1979, and Saturn on August 25, 1981.

Voyager 1's trajectory, designed to send the spacecraft closely past the large moon Titan and behind Saturn's rings, bent the spacecraft's path inexorably northward out of the ecliptic plane -- the plane in which most of the planets orbit the Sun. Voyager 2 was aimed to fly by Saturn at a point that would automatically send the spacecraft in the direction of Uranus.

After Voyager 2's successful Saturn encounter, it was shown that Voyager 2 would likely be able to fly on to Uranus with all instruments operating. NASA provided additional funding to continue operating the two spacecraft and authorized JPL to conduct a Uranus flyby. Subsequently, NASA also authorized the Neptune leg of the mission, which was renamed the Voyager Neptune Interstellar Mission.

Voyager 2 encountered Uranus on January 24, 1986, returning detailed photos and other data on the planet, its moons, magnetic field and dark rings. Voyager 1, meanwhile, continues to press outward, conducting studies of interplanetary space. Eventually, its instruments may be the first of any spacecraft to sense the heliopause -- the boundary between the end of the Sun's magnetic influence and the beginning of interstellar space. (Voyager 1 entered Interstellar Space on August 25, 2012.)

Following Voyager 2's closest approach to Neptune on August 25, 1989, the spacecraft flew southward, below the ecliptic plane and onto a course that will take it, too, to interstellar space. Reflecting the Voyagers' new transplanetary destinations, the project is now known as the Voyager Interstellar Mission.

Voyager 1 is now leaving the solar system, rising above the ecliptic plane at an angle of about 35 degrees at a rate of about 520 million kilometers (about 320 million miles) a year. Voyager 2 is also headed out of the solar system, diving below the ecliptic plane at an angle of about 48 degrees and a rate of about 470 million kilometers (about 290 million miles) a year.

Both spacecraft will continue to study ultraviolet sources among the stars, and the fields and particles instruments aboard the Voyagers will continue to search for the boundary between the Sun's influence and interstellar space. The Voyagers are expected to return valuable data for two or three more decades. Communications will be maintained until the Voyagers' nuclear power sources can no longer supply enough electrical energy to power critical subsystems.

The cost of the Voyager 1 and 2 missions -- including launch, mission operations from launch through the Neptune encounter and the spacecraft's nuclear batteries (provided by the Department of Energy) -- is $865 million. NASA budgeted an additional $30 million to fund the Voyager Interstellar Mission for two years following the Neptune encounter.

Voyagers 1 and 2 are identical spacecraft. Each is equipped with instruments to conduct 10 different experiments. The instruments include television cameras, infrared and ultraviolet sensors, magnetometers, plasma detectors, and cosmic-ray and charged-particle sensors. In addition, the spacecraft radio is used to conduct experiments.

The Voyagers travel too far from the Sun to use solar panels; instead, they were equipped with power sources called radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). These devices, used on other deep space missions, convert the heat produced from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity to power the spacecraft instruments, computers, radio and other systems.

The spacecraft are controlled and their data returned through the Deep Space Network (DSN), a global spacecraft tracking system operated by JPL for NASA. DSN antenna complexes are located in California's Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and in Tidbinbilla, near Canberra, Australia.

The Voyager project manager for the Interstellar Mission is George P. Textor of JPL. The Voyager project scientist is Dr. Edward C. Stone of the California Institute of Technology. The assistant project scientist for the Jupiter flyby was Dr. Arthur L. Lane, followed by Dr. Ellis D. Miner for the Saturn, Uranus and Neptune encounters. Both are with JPL.

JUPITER Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Jupiter on March 5, 1979, and Voyager 2 followed with its closest approach occurring on July 9, 1979. The first spacecraft flew within 277,400 kilometers (172,368 miles) of the planet's cloud tops, and Voyager 2 came within 650,180 kilometers (404,003 miles).

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, with small amounts of methane, ammonia, water vapor, traces of other compounds and a core of melted rock and ice. Colorful latitudinal bands and atmospheric clouds and storms illustrate Jupiter's dynamic weather system. The giant planet is now known to possess 16 moons. The planet completes one orbit of the Sun each 11.8 years and its day is 9 hours, 55 minutes.

Although astronomers had studied Jupiter through telescopes on Earth for centuries, scientists were surprised by many of the Voyager findings.

The Great Red Spot was revealed as a complex storm moving in a counterclockwise direction. An array of other smaller storms and eddies were found throughout the banded clouds.

Discovery of active volcanism on the satellite Io was easily the greatest unexpected discovery at Jupiter. It was the first time active volcanoes had been seen on another body in the solar system. Together, the Voyagers observed the eruption of nine volcanoes on Io, and there is evidence that other eruptions occurred between the Voyager encounters.

Plumes from the volcanoes extend to more than 300 kilometers (190 miles) above the surface. The Voyagers observed material ejected at velocities up to a kilometer per second.

Io's volcanoes are apparently due to heating of the satellite by tidal pumping. Io is perturbed in its orbit by Europa and Ganymede, two other large satellites nearby, then pulled back again into its regular orbit by Jupiter. This tug-of-war results in tidal bulging as great as 100 meters (330 feet) on Io's surface, compared with typical tidal bulges on Earth of one meter (three feet).

It appears that volcanism on Io affects the entire jovian system, in that it is the primary source of matter that pervades Jupiter's magnetosphere -- the region of space surrounding the planet influenced by the jovian magnetic field. Sulfur, oxygen and sodium, apparently erupted by Io's many volcanoes and sputtered off the surface by impact of high-energy particles, were detected as far away as the outer edge of the magnetosphere millions of miles from the planet itself.

Europa displayed a large number of intersecting linear features in the low-resolution photos from Voyager 1. At first, scientists believed the features might be deep cracks, caused by crustal rifting or tectonic processes. The closer high-resolution photos from Voyager 2, however, left scientists puzzled: The features were so lacking in topographic relief that as one scientist described them, they "might have been painted on with a felt marker." There is a possibility that Europa may be internally active due to tidal heating at a level one-tenth or less than that of Io. Europa is thought to have a thin crust (less than 30 kilometers or 18 miles thick) of water ice, possibly floating on a 50-kilometer-deep (30-mile) ocean.

Ganymede turned out to be the largest moon in the solar system, with a diameter measuring 5,276 kilometers (3,280 miles). It showed two distinct types of terrain -- cratered and grooved -- suggesting to scientists that Ganymede's entire icy crust has been under tension from global tectonic processes.

Callisto has a very old, heavily cratered crust showing remnant rings of enormous impact craters. The largest craters have apparently been erased by the flow of the icy crust over geologic time. Almost no topographic relief is apparent in the ghost remnants of the immense impact basins, identifiable only by their light color and the surrounding subdued rings of concentric ridges.

A faint, dusty ring of material was found around Jupiter. Its outer edge is 129,000 kilometers (80,000 miles) from the center of the planet, and it extends inward about 30,000 kilometers (18,000 miles).

Two new, small satellites, Adrastea and Metis, were found orbiting just outside the ring. A third new satellite, Thebe, was discovered between the orbits of Amalthea and Io.

Jupiter's rings and moons exist within an intense radiation belt of electrons and ions trapped in the planet's magnetic field. These particles and fields comprise the jovian magnetosphere, or magnetic environment, which extends three to seven million kilometers toward the Sun, and stretches in a windsock shape at least as far as Saturn's orbit -- a distance of 750 million kilometers (460 million miles).

As the magnetosphere rotates with Jupiter, it sweeps past Io and strips away about 1,000 kilograms (one ton) of material per second. The material forms a torus, a doughnut-shaped cloud of ions that glow in the ultraviolet. Some of the torus's heavy ions migrate outward, and their pressure inflates the Jovian magnetosphere, while the more energetic sulfur and oxygen ions fall along the magnetic field into the planet's atmosphere, resulting in auroras.

Io acts as an electrical generator as it moves through Jupiter's magnetic field, developing 400,000 volts across its diameter and generating an electric current of 3 million amperes that flows along the magnetic field to the planet's ionosphere.

SATURN The Voyager 1 and 2 Saturn flybys occurred nine months apart, with the closest approaches falling on November 12 and August 25, 1981. Voyager 1 flew within 64,200 kilometers (40,000 miles) of the cloud tops, while Voyager 2 came within 41,000 kilometers (26,000 miles).

Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system. It takes 29.5 Earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun, and its day was clocked at 10 hours, 39 minutes. Saturn is known to have at least 17 moons and a complex ring system. Like Jupiter, Saturn is mostly hydrogen and helium. Its hazy yellow hue was found to be marked by broad atmospheric banding similar to but much fainter than that found on Jupiter. Close scrutiny by Voyager's imaging systems revealed long-lived ovals and other atmospheric features generally smaller than those on Jupiter.

Perhaps the greatest surprises and the most puzzles were found by the Voyagers in Saturn's rings. It is thought that the rings formed from larger moons that were shattered by impacts of comets and meteoroids. The resulting dust and boulder- to house-size particles have accumulated in a broad plane around the planet varying in density.

The irregular shapes of Saturn's eight smallest moons indicates that they too are fragments of larger bodies. Unexpected structure such as kinks and spokes were found in addition to thin rings and broad, diffuse rings not observed from Earth. Much of the elaborate structure of some of the rings is due to the gravitational effects of nearby satellites. This phenomenon is most obviously demonstrated by the relationship between the F-ring and two small moons that "shepherd" the ring material. The variation in the separation of the moons from the ring may the ring's kinked appearance. Shepherding moons were also found by Voyager 2 at Uranus.

Radial, spoke-like features in the broad B-ring were found by the Voyagers. The features are believed to be composed of fine, dust-size particles. The spokes were observed to form and dissipate in time-lapse images taken by the Voyagers. While electrostatic charging may create spokes by levitating dust particles above the ring, the exact cause of the formation of the spokes is not well understood.

Winds blow at extremely high speeds on Saturn -- up to 1,800 kilometers per hour (1,100 miles per hour). Their primarily easterly direction indicates that the winds are not confined to the top cloud layer but must extend at least 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) downward into the atmosphere. The characteristic temperature of the atmosphere is 95 kelvins.

Saturn holds a wide assortment of satellites in its orbit, ranging from Phoebe, a small moon that travels in a retrograde orbit and is probably a captured asteroid, to Titan, the planet-sized moon with a thick nitrogen-methane atmosphere. Titan's surface temperature and pressure are 94 kelvins (-292 Fahrenheit) and 1.5 atmospheres. Photochemistry converts some atmospheric methane to other organic molecules, such as ethane, that is thought to accumulate in lakes or oceans. Other more complex hydrocarbons form the haze particles that eventually fall to the surface, coating it with a thick layer of organic matter. The chemistry in Titan's atmosphere may strongly resemble that which occurred on Earth before life evolved.

The most active surface of any moon seen in the Saturn system was that of Enceladus. The bright surface of this moon, marked by faults and valleys, showed evidence of tectonically induced change. Voyager 1 found the moon Mimas scarred with a crater so huge that the impact that caused it nearly broke the satellite apart.

Saturn's magnetic field is smaller than Jupiter's, extending only one or two million kilometers. The axis of the field is almost perfectly aligned with the rotation axis of the planet.

URANUS In its first solo planetary flyby, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus on January 24, 1986, coming within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of the planet's cloud tops.

Uranus is the third largest planet in the solar system. It orbits the Sun at a distance of about 2.8 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) and completes one orbit every 84 years. The length of a day on Uranus as measured by Voyager 2 is 17 hours, 14 minutes.

Uranus is distinguished by the fact that it is tipped on its side. Its unusual position is thought to be the result of a collision with a planet-sized body early in the solar system's history. Given its odd orientation, with its polar regions exposed to sunlight or darkness for long periods, scientists were not sure what to expect at Uranus.

Voyager 2 found that one of the most striking influences of this sideways position is its effect on the tail of the magnetic field, which is itself tilted 60 degrees from the planet's axis of rotation. The magnetotail was shown to be twisted by the planet's rotation into a long corkscrew shape behind the planet.

The presence of a magnetic field at Uranus was not known until Voyager's arrival. The intensity of the field is roughly comparable to that of Earth's, though it varies much more from point to point because of its large offset from the center of Uranus. The peculiar orientation of the magnetic field suggests that the field is generated at an intermediate depth in the interior where the pressure is high enough for water to become electrically conducting.

Radiation belts at Uranus were found to be of an intensity similar to those at Saturn. The intensity of radiation within the belts is such that irradiation would quickly darken (within 100,000 years) any methane trapped in the icy surfaces of the inner moons and ring particles. This may have contributed to the darkened surfaces of the moons and ring particles, which are almost uniformly gray in color.

A high layer of haze was detected around the sunlit pole, which also was found to radiate large amounts of ultraviolet light, a phenomenon dubbed "dayglow." The average temperature is about 60 kelvins (-350 degrees Fahrenheit). Surprisingly, the illuminated and dark poles, and most of the planet, show nearly the same temperature at the cloud tops.

Voyager found 10 new moons, bringing the total number to 15. Most of the new moons are small, with the largest measuring about 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) in diameter.

The moon Miranda, innermost of the five large moons, was revealed to be one of the strangest bodies yet seen in the solar system. Detailed images from Voyager's flyby of the moon showed huge fault canyons as deep as 20 kilometers (12 miles), terraced layers, and a mixture of old and young surfaces. One theory holds that Miranda may be a reaggregration of material from an earlier time when the moon was fractured by an violent impact.

The five large moons appear to be ice-rock conglomerates like the satellites of Saturn. Titania is marked by huge fault systems and canyons indicating some degree of geologic, probably tectonic, activity in its history. Ariel has the brightest and possibly youngest surface of all the Uranian moons and also appears to have undergone geologic activity that led to many fault valleys and what seem to be extensive flows of icy material. Little geologic activity has occurred on Umbriel or Oberon, judging by their old and dark surfaces.

All nine previously known rings were studied by the spacecraft and showed the Uranian rings to be distinctly different from those at Jupiter and Saturn. The ring system may be relatively young and did not form at the same time as Uranus. Particles that make up the rings may be remnants of a moon that was broken by a high-velocity impact or torn up by gravitational effects.

NEPTUNE When Voyager flew within 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) of Neptune on August 25, 1989, the planet was the most distant member of the solar system from the Sun. (Pluto once again will become most distant in 1999.)

Neptune orbits the Sun every 165 years. It is the smallest of our solar system's gas giants. Neptune is now known to have eight moons, six of which were found by Voyager. The length of a Neptunian day has been determined to be 16 hours, 6.7 minutes.

Even though Neptune receives only three percent as much sunlight as Jupiter does, it is a dynamic planet and surprisingly showed several large, dark spots reminiscent of Jupiter's hurricane-like storms. The largest spot, dubbed the Great Dark Spot, is about the size of Earth and is similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. A small, irregularly shaped, eastward-moving cloud was observed "scooting" around Neptune every 16 hours or so; this "scooter," as Voyager scientists called it, could be a cloud plume rising above a deeper cloud deck.

Long, bright clouds, similar to cirrus clouds on Earth, were seen high in Neptune's atmosphere. At low northern latitudes, Voyager captured images of cloud streaks casting their shadows on cloud decks below.

The strongest winds on any planet were measured on Neptune. Most of the winds there blow westward, or opposite to the rotation of the planet. Near the Great Dark Spot, winds blow up to 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) an hour.

The magnetic field of Neptune, like that of Uranus, turned out to be highly tilted -- 47 degrees from the rotation axis and offset at least 0.55 radii (about 13,500 kilometers or 8,500 miles) from the physical center. Comparing the magnetic fields of the two planets, scientists think the extreme orientation may be characteristic of flows in the interiors of both Uranus and Neptune -- and not the result in Uranus's case of that planet's sideways orientation, or of any possible field reversals at either planet. Voyager's studies of radio waves caused by the magnetic field revealed the length of a Neptunian day. The spacecraft also detected auroras, but much weaker than those on Earth and other planets.

Triton, the largest of the moons of Neptune, was shown to be not only the most intriguing satellite of the Neptunian system, but one of the most interesting in all the solar system. It shows evidence of a remarkable geologic history, and Voyager 2 images showed active geyser-like eruptions spewing invisible nitrogen gas and dark dust particles several kilometers into the tenuous atmosphere. Triton's relatively high density and retrograde orbit offer strong evidence that Triton is not an original member of Neptune's family but is a captured object. If that is the case, tidal heating could have melted Triton in its originally eccentric orbit, and the moon might even have been liquid for as long as one billion years after its capture by Neptune.

An extremely thin atmosphere extends about 800 kilometer (500 miles) above Triton's surface. Nitrogen ice particles may form thin clouds a few kilometers above the surface. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is about 14 microbars, 1/70,000th the surface pressure on Earth. The surface temperature is about 38 kelvins (-391 degrees Fahrenheit) the coldest temperature of any body known in the solar system.

The new moons found at Neptune by Voyager are all small and remain close to Neptune's equatorial plane. Names for the new moons were selected from mythology's water deities by the International Astronomical Union, they are: Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Proteus.

Voyager 2 solved many of the questions scientists had about Neptune's rings. Searches for "ring arcs," or partial rings, showed that Neptune's rings actually are complete, but are so diffuse and the material in them so fine that they could not be fully resolved from Earth. From the outermost in, the rings have been designated Adams, Plateau, Le Verrier and Galle.

Interstellar Mission

The spacecraft are continuing to return data about interplanetary space and some of our stellar neighbors near the edges of the Milky Way.

As the Voyagers cruise gracefully in the solar wind, their fields, particles and waves instruments are studying the space around them. In May 1993, scientists concluded that the plasma wave experiment was picking up radio emissions that originate at the heliopause -- the outer edge of our solar system.

The heliopause is the outermost boundary of the solar wind, where the interstellar medium restricts the outward flow of the solar wind and confines it within a magnetic bubble called the heliosphere. The solar wind is made up of electrically charged atomic particles, composed primarily of ionized hydrogen, that stream outward from the Sun.

Exactly where the heliopause is has been one of the great unanswered questions in space physics. By studying the radio emissions, scientists now theorize the heliopause exists some 90 to 120 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. (One AU is equal to 150 million kilometers (93 million miles), or the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

The Voyagers have also become space-based ultraviolet observatories and their unique location in the universe gives astronomers the best vantage point they have ever had for looking at celestial objects that emit ultraviolet radiation.

The Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) is the only experiment on the scan platform that is still functioning. The scan platform is parked at a fixed position and is not being articulated. The Infrared Spectrometer and Radiometer (IRIS) heater was turned off to save power on Voyager 1 on December 7, 2011. On January 21, 2014 the Scan Platform Supplemental Heater was also turned off to conserve power. The IRIS heater and the Scan Platform Heater were used to keep UVS warm. The UVS temperature has dropped to below the measurement limits of the sensor; however, UVS is still operating. The scientist expect to continue to receive data from the UVS until 2016, at which time the instrument will be turned off to save power.

Yet there are several other fields and particle instruments that can continue to send back data as long as the spacecraft stay alive. They include: the cosmic ray subsystem, the low-energy charge particle instrument, the magnetometer, the plasma subsystem, the plasma wave subsystem and the planetary radio astronomy instrument. Barring any catastrophic events, JPL should be able to retrieve this information for at least the next 20 and perhaps even the next 30 years.

voyager 6 launch date

8 Alpha Quadrant Things Star Trek: Voyager Found In Delta Quadrant

  • Star Trek: Voyager finds familiar things from the Alpha Quadrant in the Delta Quadrant, sparking important questions and connections.
  • Encounter with Ferengi negotiators leads Voyager crew to stop their interference in a pre-warp civilization for profits.
  • Janeway and crew discover humans abducted by aliens in the 1930s living in the Delta Quadrant, including Amelia Earhart.

For a show with the conceit of being so far from home, Star Trek: Voyager found a surprising number of things in the Delta Quadrant that originated in the Alpha Quadrant, including several from Earth itself. The USS Voyager, commanded by Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), and Commander Chakotay's (Robert Beltran) Maquis raider Val Jean were both brought to the Delta Quadrant in 2371 by the Caretaker (Basil Langton). After Janeway destroyed the Caretaker's array to save the Ocampa , Voyager and the Val Jean were left without a ticket back to the Alpha Quadrant, and banded together to make the long journey.

Finding something familiar in an otherwise totally alien corner of the galaxy brought a sense of familiarity to the USS Voyager crew and viewers at home alike, but the presence of something from the Alpha Quadrant in the Delta Quadrant inevitably raised important questions , like how familiar people and objects traveled 70,000 light years from home in the first place, and whether the find could lead Captain Kathryn Janeway towards a quicker path home to Earth.

Star Trek: Voyagers 20 Best Episodes Ranked

A pair of ferengi negotiators, arridor and kol, star trek: voyager season 3, episode 5 "false profits".

The USS Voyager encounters a pair of Ferengi negotiators, Arridor (Dan Shor) and Kol (Leslie Jordan), who claim to be the prophesied Great Sages of the Takarians, a society with Bronze Age level technology. The Ferengi have no Prime Directive to deter them from interfering with the Takarians' development , so they're performing "miracles" with a standard replicator to reap the monetary benefits of the Takarians' worship. Voyager's crew know the Ferengi reputation well enough to know they're no Sages, so they must figure out how to put a stop to Arridor and Kol's grift.

"False Profits" serves as a Star Trek sequel episode to Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3, episode 8 "The Price", as Voyager catches up with Arridor and Kol (formerly played by J. R. Quinonez) seven years after their Delta Quadrant arrival. The Ferengi took a test flight through the supposedly stable wormhole near Barzan II, which was supposed to emerge in the Gamma Quadrant, but instead stranded the Ferengi in the Delta Quadrant, where they made the best of their situation as only Ferengi can.

Star Trek: Voyager Season 3, Episode 23 "Distant Origin"

"Distant Origin" opens on Forra Gegen (Henry Woronicz), a scientist who discovers that his people, the Voth, share certain genetic similarities with the humans aboard the USS Voyager. While this confirms Gegen's theory that the Voth are the descendants of a species brought to their homeworld millions of years ago , religious leader Minister Odala (Concetta Tomei) refuses to accept the truth. Even with Commander Chakotay present as a living specimen of humanity, Odala pushes Gegen to recant, because Gegen's theory goes against the Voth Doctrine that keeps Odala in power.

After meeting Gegen's assistant, Tova Veer (Christopher Liam Moore), Janeway and the Doctor use the holodeck as a research guide to extrapolate how hadrosaurs might look in the 24th century if they'd been able to evolve into a humanoid form with comparable intelligence. The result resembles Veer, so Janeway and the Doctor conclude, like Gegen, that the Voth evolved from hadrosaurs into a highly advanced species on Earth , then fled to the Delta Quadrant in spacefaring vessels instead of being wiped out with the other dinosaurs.

The Friendship One Probe

Star trek: voyager season 7, episode 21 "friendship one".

By Star Trek: Voyager season 7 , the USS Voyager is in regular contact with Starfleet Command, and Starfleet gives Voyager a mission to retrieve a 21st-century Earth probe, Friendship One . The probe proves difficult to find, but once discovered on an alien planet suffering devastating climate collapse, the implications of Friendship One's launch become clear. Besides the irreversible damage to the planet's climate, the inhabitants are all suffering from radiation sickness, and bear understandable hostility towards Earth, because the aliens believe humans orchestrated their destruction with the Friendship One probe.

The United Earth Space Probe Agency was one of the early names for the organization the USS Enterprise belongs to in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Charlie X".

Friendship One was launched in 2067 by the United Earth Space Probe Agency with the intention of making friends with whomever found it, as the name implies. Although Friendship One, the 400-year-old Earth probe, traveled for centuries carrying messages of peace, musical recordings, and ways to translate languages, the people who discovered Friendship One in the Delta Quadrant took a greater interest in the antimatter it used to travel across space. Without the proper knowledge of its use, antimatter proved devastating to the planet and its people, resulting in death and disease for generations.

Dreadnought, a Cardassian Missile

Star trek: voyager season 2, episode 17 "dreadnought".

The USS Voyager discovers a dangerously powerful, self-guided Cardassian missile in the Delta Quadrant, which Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) recognizes as one nicknamed "Dreadnought" . When B'Elanna was with the Maquis, Torres had actually reprogrammed the missile herself, with the intention of turning the Cardassians' own weapon against them. Without a Cardassian target in sight, the artificially intelligent Cardassian Dreadnought targets a heavily-populated Class-M planet , Rakosa V. B'Elanna determines she must be the one to keep Dreadnought from hurting anyone else, and boards the missile to convince it to stand down.

While no concrete reason is given for exactly how the Dreadnought wound up in the Delta Quadrant, its last known location in the Alpha Quadrant was the Badlands, the same rough patch of space where Voyager and the Val Jean, Chakotay's Maquis raider, fatefully met. Because of this, Torres theorizes that Dreadnought arrived in the Delta Quadrant the same way that Voyager and the Val Jean did , courtesy of the Caretaker.

Star Trek: Voyagers BElanna Is More Klingon Than TNGs Worf Ever Was

A klingon d-7 class cruiser, complete with klingons, star trek: voyager, season 7, episode 14 "prophecy".

The USS Voyager certainly never expected to find a Klingon ship in the Delta Quadrant, but more surprising is the fact that the crew of the Klingon D-7 Class Cruiser believes their savior, the prophesied kuvah'magh, is aboard Voyager . Janeway assures the Klingon captain, Kohlar (Wren T. Brown), that the Federation and Klingon Empire have been allies for the past 80 years, and offers Voyager's own half-Klingon, Lt. B'Elanna Torres, as proof their societies are working together now. The kuvah'magh is Torres' unborn daughter, who does save the Klingons, but not the way they expected.

Centuries ago, Kohlar's great-grandfather set off on a quest to find the kuvah'magh, and the Klingon D-7 Cruiser became a generation ship that is now crewed by the descendants of its original crew . The quest begun by Kohlar's great-grandfather brought Kohlar and his crew to the Delta Quadrant after four generations of searching. Whether B'Elanna's child is actually the kuvah'magh or not, Kohlar desperately wants the baby to be their savior, so that his people may finally rest.

Amelia Earhart

Star trek: voyager season 2, episode 1 "the 37s".

The discovery of a 1936 Ford truck, seemingly disconnected from any parent vehicle, leads the USS Voyager to a nearby Class-L planet, where they find eight humans who have been in cryo-stasis since they were abducted by aliens in the 1930s. Among them are one of Janeway's personal heroes, legendary American aviator Amelia Earhart (Sharon Lawrence) , who disappeared without a trace while attempting to fly around the world, and Earhart's navigator, Fred Noonan (David Graf). Earhart and the other preserved humans are known by the planet's inhabitants as "The 37s", and revered as sacred.

Originally thought to be aliens, the natives of the unnamed planet are the descendants of humans. A species called the Briori abducted the natives' ancestors, along with Earhart and the other 37s, from Earth centuries earlier , and took them to the Delta Quadrant. Once held as slaves, the humans who weren't in stasis revolted to free themselves from the Briori, and developed a thriving, Earth-like civilization in the Delta Quadrant. Voyager's crew consider staying with the humans in their little slice of home, while Janeway also offers a ride back to Earth to anyone who wants it, including Amelia Earhart.

The USS Equinox

Star trek: voyager season 5, episode 26 & season 6, episode 1 "equinox".

The crew of the USS Voyager believe they're the only Starfleet vessel in the Delta Quadrant until they find the USS Equinox, five years into their journey home. Captain Rudolph Ransom (John Savage) and the Equinox crew have had a harder time in the Delta Quadrant than Voyager, with more damage, fewer starting resources, and fewer opportunities to make friends along the way. Ransom's survival tactics include sacrificing innocent nucleogenic life forms for a more efficient form of fuel, which Janeway finds hard to stomach, and decides that Ransom needs to be held accountable for defying Federation ideals, regardless of how badly the Equinox is damaged.

Although Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) suggests that the Equinox might be in the Delta Quadrant on a rescue mission to find Voyager, the USS Equinox's specs don't fit the profile of a starship that would be assigned to a long-range mission. The explanation of how the Equinox arrived in the Delta Quadrant in the first place seems fairly simple, because Captain Ransom tells Janeway that the Equinox was also abducted by the Caretaker , just like Voyager, but the Equinox has only been in the Delta Quadrant for 2 years, and Janeway destroyed the Caretaker's array 5 years earlier.

Seven of Nine

Debuts in star trek: voyager season 4, episode 1 "scorpion, part 2".

When Captain Kathryn Janeway allies with the Borg in order to secure safe passage across Borg space, Janeway refuses the cursory assimilation that the Borg want to use to communicate with Janeway and Voyager's crew, and instead requests a speaker for the Borg, citing the existence of Locutus (Patrick Stewart) as precedent. Seven of Nine , Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, is selected as the Borg drone to act as liaison between the Collective and Voyager, likely because Seven of Nine had once been a member of Species 5168, like most of Voyager's crew -- in other words, human.

Voyager season 5, episodes 15 & 16, "Dark Frontier" provides even more detail of the Hansens' fateful journey.

After Seven's link with the Collective is severed, more information about Seven's human origin comes to light. In Voyager season 4, episode 6 "The Raven", when Voyager nears the Hansens' ship, the USS Raven, memories of Seven's early life surface, revealing that Seven had been six-year-old human Annika Hansen , the daughter of Magnus Hansen (Kirk Baily) and Erin Hansen (Laura Stepp), Federation scientists who were studying the Borg when they were assimilated. Voyager season 5, episodes 15 & 16, "Dark Frontier" provides even more detail of the Hansens' fateful journey, showing the Raven arriving in the Delta Quadrant by following a Borg Cube through a transwarp conduit.

10 Ways USS Voyager Changed In Star Treks Delta Quadrant

Star Trek: Voyager links back to the greater Star Trek universe with people and starships from the Alpha Quadrant. Connections to the familiar were especially important early on, because Voyager 's place in the Star Trek franchise was established and aided by the legitimacy these finds offered. Later, when the USS Voyager used the Hirogen communications array to communicate with Starfleet Command, links back to the Alpha Quadrant were plentiful again, not only to prove that the USS Voyager was closer to home, but to help Star Trek: Voyager maintain connections to Star Trek and carry the franchise in its final years.

Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Voyager

Cast Jennifer Lien, Garrett Wang, Tim Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo

Release Date May 23, 1995

Genres Sci-Fi, Adventure

Network UPN

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Michael Piller, Rick Berman

Showrunner Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Rating TV-PG

8 Alpha Quadrant Things Star Trek: Voyager Found In Delta Quadrant

ISDC 2024

Burevestnik: a Russian air-launched anti-satellite system

By bart hendrickx monday, april 27, 2020.

In September 2018, an aircraft photographer noticed something interesting while observing activity at the Gromov Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky near Moscow, sometimes called the “Russian Edwards Air Force Base.” What caught his attention was a MiG-31BM fighter jet with a large black missile suspended under its belly. While this specific aircraft had been seen before, the rocket was new. The pictures he posted on the Internet baffled observers: it seemed to be too big to be an air-to-air or an air-to-surface missile. It did appear to be the right size for an anti-satellite weapon.

The pictures brought back memories of a Soviet-era ASAT project called Kontakt, which comprised the MiG-31D aircraft and a missile of the MKB Fakel design bureau outfitted with a kinetic kill vehicle. Kontakt was the Soviet response to the American Air-Launched Miniature Vehicle or ASM-135A, which destroyed a US satellite in September 1985 after having been dropped from an F-15 fighter jet. Test flights of the MiG-31D with the missile were reportedly conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but without targeting satellites.

So it looked like the new project could well be a reincarnation of Kontakt, as was speculated in many articles in the weeks following the release of the pictures. Backing up that idea were at least two statements made by Russian officials. In August 2009, the commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force, Aleksandr Zelin, had declared that the MiG-31 was being upgraded to perform the same space defense tasks as in the Soviet days. About eight years later, in February 2017, a squadron commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Yevgeny Polyakov, was quoted as saying by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Zvezda TV channel that a new missile was being developed for the MiG-31BM “capable of destroying targets in near-space.”

Analysis of publicly accessible online Russian sources now leaves little doubt that the MiG-31BM and the rocket are part of a broader ASAT project called Burevestnik (“Stormy Petrel”). Most likely, the rocket will not carry a kinetic kill vehicle like its Soviet-era predecessor, but will serve as a launch vehicle for small interceptor satellites that can approach and disable enemy satellites.

Burevestnik, a popular name in Russian culture, was also the name given by popular vote to a nuclear-powered cruise missile (9M730) not long after it was unveiled by President Vladimir Putin during his State of the Union address in March 2018. This has no connection whatsoever to the ASAT project.

The Burevestnik satellites

Burevestnik has never been discussed in Russia’s state-controlled media or even in specialized Russian space publications, but details about the project have slowly leaked out in recent years, mainly via openly available tender documentation and contracts on Russia’s government procurement website. These showed that the project began on September 1, 2011, with a government contract awarded to the Design Bureau of Machine Building (NPK KBM), a weapon manufacturer based in Kolomna (about 100 kilometers southeast of Moscow) that seems to be the overall coordinator of the project. At the end of that same month, NPK KBM signed a contract with a Moscow-based organization called the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM or CNIIHM), which in turn subcontracted work on satellites called Burevestnik-M.

Another phase in the project began on December 1, 2015, when NPK KBM received another government contract under which CNIIHM subsequently performed work on satellites named Burevestnik-KA-M. The difference between Burevestnik-M and Burevestnik-KA-M is not known, but a PowerPoint presentation (in Russian) of a Russian solar panel and battery manufacturer (PAO Saturn) that somehow ended up online in May last year clearly identified them as two different satellites. The hush-hush nature of the project as well as the background of some of the contractors involved strongly pointed to an ASAT role, as was discussed in an earlier article here (see “Russia’s secret satellite builder” , The Space Review, May 9, 2019).

The Burevestnik rocket

What has emerged from further research in recent weeks is that the scope of the Burevestnik project is much broader than earlier believed. First, it turned out that another component of the project is a solid-fuel rocket. A rocket by the name Burevestnik first showed up in the annual report of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 2015, where it was said to be one of several rockets for which new types of solid propellant were being developed. No further details on it emerged in the following years.

Analysis of procurement documents now shows that the rocket has the code name “293” and is built by NPO Iskra, a manufacturer of solid-fuel rocket motors in Perm (roughly 1,400 kilometers east of Moscow). Contracts for “293” (some of which also mention the name Burevestnik) refer back to the same September 1, 2011, contract awarded to NPK KBM that is also seen in documents on the Burevestnik satellites, leaving no doubt that the two are part of the same project. NPO Perm was assigned to “293” by NPK KBM on the very same day. Some of the contracts for “293” are based on an earlier government contract dated August 7, 2009, suggesting the roots of the project may go back even further.

Available contracts for the “293” rocket going back to 2013 regularly mention parts called 14D812, 14D813, and 14S47, which presumably are the rocket’s individual stages. 14S47 fits in a series of indexes for upper stages of space launch vehicles, strongly suggesting it performs the same role. Procurement documents placed online by NPO Iskra in recent months also show that the company began working in December 2018 on another rocket called “328”. The parts ordered for this indicate that it is a modified version of the “293” rocket, possibly using the new solid propellants mentioned in the 2015 Academy of Sciences report. Two companies linked to that work in the report are also seen in one of the contracts for the “328” rocket.

The MiG carrier aircraft

A search for the “293” rocket on Russia’s government procurement website subsequently revealed that it is an air-launched rocket to be carried aloft by a modified version of the MiG-31 aircraft. A contract (in Russian) signed by the Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG (RSK MiG) in August last year is for work “to determine the safety of operating Object 08 with Product 293 under the influence of naturally and artificially produced electromagnetic fields.” This work was to be completed in four months and would involve both a mock-up and “live” version of the rocket.

This is unmistakable evidence that “293”, the solid-fuel rocket built by NPO Iskra as part of Burevestnik, is designed to be carried by a MiG aircraft described as Object 08. This almost certainly is the MiG-31BM aircraft with number “81” that was seen carrying the mysterious black rocket in September 2018. One other RSK MiG contract (in Russian) that can be positively linked to Burevestnik refers to the aircraft more specifically as “Object 08/1”, a further indication that it is indeed MiG-31BM nr. 81.

The documentation links this work to a government contract awarded to NPK KBM for Burevestnik on December 1, 2015, and another one subsequently concluded between NPK KBM and RSK MiG on December 17, 2015. Therefore, it is in the same sequence of contracts that initiated work on the Burevestnik-KA-M satellites. However, RSK MiG’s involvement with Burevestnik began earlier than that. According to court documents (in Russian) published online late last year, NPK KBM and RSK MiG signed an initial contract for Burevestnik (described as “Burevestnik-MiG”) as early as January 23, 2012. This was presumably in the same chain of contracts that started work on the Burevestnik-M satellites and the “293” rocket back in 2011.

Burevestnik’s explosive payload

Other recently uncovered procurement documentation may provide conclusive evidence that the Burevestnik satellites are indeed ASAT interceptors. One contract (in Russian) for Burevestnik was signed in June 2017 between an organization called the Krasnoarmeysk Scientific Research Institute of Mechanization (KNIIM) and a company called OOO Expotekhvzryv. KNIIM is an institute in Krasnoarmeysk (a name derived from the Russian word for “Red Army”), which is situated about 60 kilometers northeast of Moscow. It is a leading manufacturer of ammunition and explosives, as can be seen in this profile of the institute.

Expotekhvzryv, based in Moscow, specializes in industrial safety control of “dangerous objects” (the word vzryv in the company’s name means “explosion”). Under the deal with KNIIM, it was to perform what was literally described as “industrial safety control of an experimental container for special products” and complete that work before the end of June 2017. According to the documentation, the work involved detonating the container to study the effects on its surroundings and on the container itself. The contract is clearly related to the Burevestnik-KA-M satellites because the documentation links the work to the December 2015 government contract that initiated that phase of the Burevestnik project and a subsequent one inked between CNIIHM and KNIIM on September 1, 2016.

The most logical interpretation of this information is that KNIIM developed some type of explosive charge for the Burevestnik satellites and that the tests conducted by Expotekhvzryv were needed to ensure that this material is safe for storage and transportation. While KNIIM seems to be the manufacturer of this payload, it should be noted that CNIIHM itself probably also has the necessary expertise in the field. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a team at CNIIHM led by Kirill N. Shamshev devised two types of explosive charges that were carried by experimental interceptor satellites called IS (“Satellite Destroyer”). These were detonated when the satellites came in the vicinity of specially launched target satellites. According to its former website, CNIIHM has a “Center of Ammunition and Special Chemistry” and this may very well play a role in this work as well.

As is clear from several technical papers and patents, a number of Russian institutes (including CNIIHM) have also done research on non-destructive technology for co-orbital ASATs, mostly involving the use of finely dispersed particles that could presumably disable satellite sensors or cause other damage. Similar technology has also been studied to conceal satellites from potential enemy ASAT interceptors under a program known as Vual (see “Self-defense in space: protecting Russian spacecraft from ASAT attacks” , The Space Review, July 16, 2018). However, there are is no convincing proof that any of this work is connected to Burevestnik.

Possible on-orbit tests

It is perfectly possible that Burevestnik satellites have already been tested in orbit. Between 2013 and 2019, Russia launched six mysterious satellites from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome that showed similar in-orbit behavior and transmitted on identical radio frequencies, indicating they share a common platform. They were called Kosmos-2491, 2499, 2504, 2521, 2535, 2536, and 2543. All were launched as co-passengers with other payloads, the first three on the Rockot launch vehicle (now retired) and the later ones on the Soyuz-2.1v, the lightest rocket in the Soyuz launch vehicle family (without the first-stage strap-on boosters and carrying NK-33 engines inherited from the Soviet-era N-1 moon rocket.) All except the first one performed rendezvous and proximity operations with other objects launched on the same mission, either the rocket’s upper stage or other satellites.

Some of these satellites are likely part of a project called Nivelir, started in the same month as Burevestnik (September 2011) and also managed by CNIIHM. The Nivelir satellites are believed to be intended for on-orbit inspection of other satellites and are known to share at least two design features with the Burevestnik satellites, namely 4LI-20 lithium-ion batteries of PAO Saturn and MSKV84 fuel tanks of NIIMash, which likely feed K50-10.6 hydrazine monopropellant thrusters of OKB Fakel on both types of satellites. Because they seem to use a common bus, it is hard to tell which of the satellites belong to which program.

Two of the satellites (Kosmos-2521 and 2543) were deployed from larger “parent satellites” built by NPO Lavochkin (Kosmos-2519 and 2542). Having the military index 14F150, these are also part of the Nivelir project and themselves seem to be used for space situational awareness. Kosmos-2542 raised concern in US Defense Department circles earlier this year when it made several relatively close passes to the American reconnaissance satellite USA 245 in an apparent attempt to take detailed pictures of the satellite.

While most of the six satellites seem to have performed missions comparable to those of American and Chinese inspection satellites, two experiments conducted during these missions seem to have nothing to do with inspection. In October 2017, Kosmos-2521 itself deployed a small subsatellite (Kosmos-2523) that immediately lowered its perigee by 100 kilometers and has remained inert ever since without ever coming close to another satellite. Speaking to Time magazine last February, Gen. John Raymond, the commander of the U.S. Space Force, likened these satellites to Russian nesting dolls and described the subsatellite as a “high-speed projectile.” Possibly, Kosmos-2523 was another top-secret satellite of CNIIHM identified as Napryazheniye, the purpose of which is unclear.

Another puzzling event occurred last year during the mission of Kosmos-2535 and 2536, launched in July 2019 along with two other satellites (Kosmos-2537 and 2538) that are probably used for calibration of ground-based radars. About two weeks after launch, Kosmos-2535 and 2536 began a lengthy series of close encounters that continued until earlier this year. The first of those, in early August, was actually reported by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which described the two objects as an “inspection satellite” and a “registering satellite.” They were reportedly on a mission to study the effects of “artificial and natural space factors” on satellites and also to test technology to protect satellites and service them in orbit. More specifically, the equipment on the inspector satellite was designed to study the effects on the registering satellite of “space debris, electron and proton radiation of the Earth’s outer natural radiation belt, protons and heavy charged particles, solar and galactic cosmic rays.”

Then, in mid-October, objects labeled as “Kosmos-2535 debris” started gradually appearing in the catalog of space objects maintained by the United States Strategic Command. In all, 24 such objects were registered. The catalog does not disclose when exactly the satellite generated this debris, but orbital analysis has traced most of it back to a close encounter between Kosmos-2535 and 2536 in late September (which would mean the debris could have come from either satellite).

The debris wound up in widely scattered orbits with altitudes ranging from less than 400 to more than 1,000 kilometers, while the two satellites themselves have been circling the Earth in roughly circular orbits slightly over 600 kilometers above the Earth. This means it must have been created by some sort of energetic event. Both of the satellites did continue maneuvering afterwards, meaning that neither was rendered inoperable.

This could lead one to conclude that it was either a failed ASAT test or not an ASAT test at all. However, numerous other scenarios are possible as well, including one where the Russians elected to test an explosive charge without destroying the satellites in order to minimize the amount of debris and not attract undue attention to the mission. It could, for instance, have been ejected in a canister and detonated at a safe distance, with one or both of the satellites observing the event. It is also possible that one or both satellites carried protective material enabling them to survive the event and even sensors to detect possible impacts, like many of the target satellites used in the Soviet IS project. Such scenarios would still be in line with two of the mission objectives given in the official Russian statement on the mission, namely studying the effects of space debris and testing technology to protect satellites in orbit.

Future outlook

If Burevestnik has already been tested in orbit, it was launched as a co-passenger on a conventional ground-based rocket. However, this is likely to change in the future. As is clear from the evidence presented above, the satellites, the “293” rocket, and the MiG-31BM aircraft are part of one and the same project. Most likely, the air-launched “293” rocket will serve as a launch vehicle for future Burevestnik satellites. In Russian terminology, all these components would be described as belonging to the same “space complex,” a word used for the combination of the satellites, the launch vehicle, and all the ground-based infrastructure needed to support them. In some official documents, Burevestnik has been more specifically called “a space security complex,” a fitting term for an ASAT project (it has also been applied in one document to a project called Kalina, a ground-based laser system designed to blind or dazzle optical instruments of satellites). The index for the Burevestnik space complex is 14K168.

The idea that “293” is a satellite launch vehicle is corroborated by the fact that the index for one of its stages (14S47) is similar to that of some upper stages of space launch vehicles. Moreover, plans to use the MiG-31 as a satellite launch platform are not new. They were first put forward by the MiG design bureau in the late 1990s and culminated in a 2005 Russian/Kazakh proposal called Ishim to equip the aircraft with a three-stage solid-fuel rocket capable of placing 160-kilogram satellites into 300-kilometer orbits with a 46-degree inclination. With a maximum speed of Mach 2.8 and a service ceiling of more than 20 kilometers, the MiG-31 is an ideal platform for such missions.

With the Burevestnik satellites probably weighing around 100 kilograms or less, a rocket the size of “293” should be capable of placing them into orbit from a MiG-31, although potential targets would probably be limited to satellites in relatively low orbits, primarily reconnaissance satellites. The use of an air-launched rocket instead of a ground-based launch vehicle offers several advantages for ASAT missions. First, not being tied to a specific launch site, air-launched rockets can use a much broader variety of launch azimuths and, consequently, send satellites into a wide range of orbital inclinations. Second, they can be prepared for launch at short notice (certainly solid-fuel rockets like “293”) and away from the prying eyes of reconnaissance satellites, giving the enemy little warning time. By contrast, the Soyuz-2.1v, the lightest launch vehicle in Russia’s current rocket fleet, is a liquid-fuel launch vehicle that needs two days of launch preparations on a single available pad. In addition to that, the Soyuz-2.1v (with a payload capacity of 2.8 tons to low Earth orbit) would be far oversized for launching a single Burevestnik satellite. Both the “293” rocket and its apparent successor (“328”) could potentially also be used to launch other small military satellites on quick-response missions, a capability that the US military has been seeking for a long time without much success.

All this does raise the question why dedicated infrastructure for Burevestnik is being built at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. This infrastructure is identified in procurement documents as “Object 7511/4,” As can be inferred from recent procurement documents, a new contract for the construction work was awarded by the Ministry of Defense just last December, clearly showing it is not yet finished. One possible explanation is that Burevestnik flights using the MiG-31BM will be staged from Plesetsk’s airfield (known as “Pero”), benefiting from the cosmodrome’s infrastructure for storage and preparation of rockets and satellites. Another, much more remote possibility is that “293” has a two-stage air-launched version (consisting of the 14D813 and 14S47 stages) that can take off from a multitude of air bases and a three-stage ground-launched version (consisting of the 14D812, 14D813, and 14S47 stages) that will be based at Plesetsk. It is hard to tell whether the rocket seen in the photos taken at Zhukovsky has two or three stages. Similarly, America’s Pegasus air-launched rocket had a ground-based “sister rocket” (Taurus/Minotaur-C), which essentially consisted of a Pegasus mounted on top of the first stage of a Peacekeeper ICBM. However, there are no clear signs that any launch infrastructure for such a rocket is being built at Plesetsk.

Other ground-based infrastructure for Burevestnik, named “Object 7511/3,” is under construction near Pervomayskoye in the Tambov province, about 450 kilometers southeast of Moscow. This is the location of a military base (nr. 14272) primarily used for the long-term storage of rockets awaiting shipment to the launch site.

The control center for Burevestnik missions is likely situated right next to the headquarters of Russia’s space surveillance network in Noginsk-9 (also known as Dubrovo), a small town about 60 kilometers east of Moscow. Noginsk-9 was also home to the control center for the Soviet-era co-orbital ASAT missions. A facility in Noginsk-9 known as “Object 3006M” has been linked in building contracts to both Burevestnik and Nivelir. It will probably be fed with targeting data by a network of space surveillance radars and optical telescopes stationed across Russia. Autonomous satellite navigation equipment known to have been developed for Burevestnik satellites by MKB Kompas should also help guide the satellites to their targets relatively quickly. Even with 1970s technology, the Soviet-era IS interceptor satellites demonstrated the ability to reach their targets on the first orbit after launch.

All the construction work is a sign that Burevestnik is not merely seen as an experimental system, but one that Russia intends to place on operational stand-by. When that will occur is hard to tell. The Burevestnik project has been underway for almost a decade but, like many other Russian space projects, was probably hit hard by the Western-imposed sanctions that complicated the delivery of foreign-built electronic components for the Russian space industry. Despite Russia’s policy of “import substitution,” even highly classified Russian military satellites remain very reliant on Western electronics. This is illustrated by one 2016 contract for the delivery of electronic components for Burevestnik satellites, which listed a total of 457 foreign electronic components versus just 45 Russian-built components.

Still, it does look like one or more Burevestnik satellites have already been tested in space, with more such test flights (using the Soyuz-2.1v) possibly yet to come. As for the “293” rocket, the one seen in the September 2018 photos was presumably a mock-up, but one of the earlier quoted RKS MiG contracts signed in August 2019 strongly suggests that a “live” version is undergoing captive carry tests by now. A CNBC article published in September 2018 quoted “three sources with direct knowledge of a U.S. intelligence report” as saying that the MiG-31BM spotted shortly before was believed to be “a mock-up of an anti-satellite weapon that will be ready for warfare by 2022.”

Other Russian ASAT projects

As large in scope as Burevestnik appears to be, it is only one of several ASAT projects that Russia is currently working on. The most advanced of these is Nudol, a ground-launched direct-ascent ASAT missile built by OKB Novator that is believed to have made at least ten test flights from Plesetsk since 2014, without destroying targets in space. The latest of these took place on April 15, prompting an immediate response from the US Space Command’s Gen. John Raymond, who regards it as “further proof of Russia’s hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control proposals designed to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting their counterspace weapons programs.” Recently gathered evidence indicates that another, possibly more capable missile may be under development for Nudol at the Moscow-based MIT Corporation.

Other likely ASAT systems under development are ground-based and air-based systems to dazzle or blind satellite optical systems ( Kalina and Sokol-Eshelon ) and ground-based and space-based systems for electronic warfare (Tirada-2S and Ekipazh ). In November 2017, a Russian military official also disclosed the existence of a “mobile anti-satellite complex” called Rudolf, about which nothing is known. Another satellite under development at CNIIHM called Numizmat will probably carry a hard-to-detect ultrawide-band noise radar for proximity operations and may also have an ASAT-related role. An up-to-date overview of Russian ASAT systems is given in the latest edition of the Secure World Foundation’s annual report Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open-Source Assessment .

The co-existence of several ASAT projects indicates they are designed to fulfill complementary roles, possibly targeting different types of satellites in different types of orbits. Similarly, in the 1980s the Soviet Union worked on a plethora of ASAT systems , each of which had its own well-defined tasks in various possible war scenarios. The collapse of the Soviet Union prevented any of those from reaching operational status, but by all indications Russia now once again has a sustained program to develop a broad range of counterspace capabilities, whatever the motives for that may be.

For more details on Burevestnik and a complete list of sources, see this thread on the NASA Spaceflight Forum , which is updated with new information as it becomes available.

Bart Hendrickx is a longtime observer of the Russian space program.

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(GENERAL-24-06) 2024-25 FAFSA Student Aid Index Update and Timeline (Updated March 14, 2024)

Updates: On March 14, 2024, we updated the 2024-25 FAFSA Updates page. Each time we update the page, we will update this announcement and re-push it to our subscription email. In addition, you can bookmark the page and check it periodically.

Issue Alerts: On Feb. 23, 2024, we updated the 2024-25 FAFSA Issue Alerts page. Each time we update the page, we will update this announcement and re-push it to our subscription email. In addition, you can bookmark the page and check it periodically.

We would like to provide you with an important update regarding the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA ® ) process. This Electronic Announcement provides further details regarding aid eligibility and the post-processing experience for students, institutions, state higher education agencies, and scholarship organizations.

Since the form went live on Dec. 30, more than 3.1 million forms have been submitted. The Department continues to work to ensure students and their families have access to a stable and secure form.

As part of our continuing commitment to put students first, we will ensure students and their families receive all the aid they are entitled to receive. To account for inflationary adjustments as required under the law, the Department has updated the supporting tables used in the Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation, ensuring that students are benefitting from approximately an additional $1.8 billion in aid. These tables, which directly impact eligibility for need-based federal student aid, detail the allowances against income and assets reported by students and families on their FAFSA form. The revised tables are included in the final Student Aid Index (SAI) and Pell Grant Eligibility Guide . In the coming weeks, our teams will be updating the Federal Processing System (FPS) to include the updated tables. Based upon estimations for completing that work, the Department will begin transmitting batches of FAFSA information (ISIRs) to schools and state agencies in the first half of March, which will include the updated SAI tables. We anticipate catching up with the majority of ISIR transmissions to schools in the weeks following the beginning of ISIR delivery.

We anticipate that the 2024-25 FAFSA processing timeline will change as follows.

Post-Processing Experience for Students

Students will receive an email informing them that their FAFSA form has been fully processed and their FAFSA information has been sent to the schools they listed on their form.

Students who applied using the online FAFSA form will receive an email that they can access their FAFSA Submission Summary by logging in to StudentAid.gov using their account username and password.

The Department will send an email reminder to previous FAFSA applicants who have not yet submitted a 2024-25 FAFSA form.

Students will be able to make corrections to their FAFSA once their eligibility has been calculated and ISIR generated. Students may view their eligibility calculation by logging back into their Studentaid.gov account.

The Department will fully process paper applications in the weeks following.

Post-Processing Experience for Institutions, State Higher Ed Agencies, and Designated Scholarship Organizations

Institutions, state higher ed agencies, and designated scholarship organizations will begin receiving batches of FAFSA information (ISIRs) starting in the first half of March. The information transmitted to schools will include the updated SAI tables.

We are continuing to test several vendor built systems and we will provide regular progress updates to schools and stakeholders as we move forward.

As in previous years, when the Congressional appropriations process has completed and determined the 2024-25 Maximum Federal Pell Grant award amount, ISIRs will be re-processed to reflect that update.

Resources for Institutions, State Higher Education Agencies, and Other External Partners

The Department will continue to assist our external partners through webinars, resources, and updates on the Knowledge Center . We also welcome our partners to continue to submit questions related to the 2024-25 FAFSA launch using the Contact Customer Support form in FSA’s Partner Connect Help Center. To submit a question, please enter your name, email address, topic, and question. When submitting a question related to this Electronic Announcement, please select the topic “2024-25 FAFSA.”

Stay Informed

We will continue to update the “2024-25 FAFSA Updates” page and the key dates noted in this announcement in the 2024-25 FAFSA Roadmap . We encourage our partners to sign up for Knowledge Center Subscription emails to receive the latest news on a daily or weekly basis.

Last Modified: 03/15/2024

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Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024) finally gets an official announcement and launch date

Galaxy Tab S6 Lite 2024

  • Samsung has officially announced the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024).
  • The specs are mostly the same as the 2022 release, except for the SoC.
  • The tablet will launch on March 28.

Despite the silent launch in Romania, Samsung’s refreshed budget-friendly Android tablet was never officially announced. So as Spider-Man says, “Alright, people, let’s do this one last time.” The Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024) has been announced and it’s launching soon.

In a blog post shared today, Samsung officially revealed the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024). There will be two versions to choose from, which include Wi-Fi and LTE models.

As previous leaks suggested, Samsung is offering the tablet in three color options: Oxford Gray, Chiffon Pink, and Mint. The company says both models will also be compatible with the S Pen and other Galaxy devices.

This refresh is largely similar to the S6 Lite that launched back in 2022. As a result, you’ll be getting the same 60Hz 10.4-inch TFT display with a 2000 x 1200 resolution, 8MP rear and 5MP front cameras, 7,040mAh battery, and 15W charging support as before. You can also expect 4GB of RAM with your choice of 64GB or 128GB of storage.

The one area that has been changed, however, is the processor. Instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G that appeared in the 2022 model, the 2024 version comes with an Exynos 1280 chip and runs Android 14.

Although Samsung has finally given its refreshed tablet an official announcement, it still hasn’t provided a price. However, we do now know that the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024) will go on sale on March 28.

Shogun Episode 6 Release Date & Remaining Schedule on FX & Hulu

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in Shogun

Having passed the halfway mark of its run, Shogun will continue on FX and Hulu with the impending release of Episode 6. 

Adapting the beloved James Clavell novel of the same name, the hit period drama takes audiences back to feudal Japan. It follows the arrival of an Englishman named John Blackthorn as he becomes a pawn in the political landscape of a nation largely untouched by Western civilization.

Five episodes in, the series has covered a lot of ground, highlighting the arrival of Blackthorn in Japan, a plot for power by the enterprising Lord Toranaga, and even the start of an all-out war. 

[ Full Cast of Shogun - Every Main Character & Actor In FX Show (Photos) ] 

When Will Shogun Episode 6 Be Released?

Following the debut of Shogun Episode 5, fans turn their heads toward the release of the series' incoming sixth episode.

Shogun Episode 6 ("Ladies of the Willow World") will premiere at 3 a.m. ET on March 26 on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ in other regions like the U.K. before airing on FX at 10 p.m. ET later that day.

This is in line with the series' previous releases and will continue as the series nears its conclusion. 

The remaining Shogun release date schedule can be seen below:

  • Episode 6 - "Ladies of the Willow World:" Tuesday, March 26
  • Episode 7 - "A Stick of Time:" Tuesday, April 2
  • Episode 8 - "The Abyss of Life:" Tuesday, April 9
  • Episode 9 - "Crimson Sky:" Tuesday, April 16
  • Episode 10 - "A Dream of a Dream:" Tuesday, April 23

What Will Happen Next in Shogun?

Episode 5 of FX's Shogun miniseries was a big one. 

Following the dramatic (and bloody) end to Episode 4, the series' fifth episode came swinging, tightening the web that has slowly been woven over the past five episodes. 

The biggest revelation was the release of Lady Ochiba. Up to this point, Ochiba had been held as a political chess piece as Lord Toranaga started to make his play against the Lord Regents. 

However, as Tornaga raised his army, he released the Lady, allowing her to return to her home in Osaka. 

Lady Ochiba is likely set to play a massive part in Shogun 's next chapter, as Episode 5 closed with her going to the Regent Council upset that they had been outplayed by both the Spanish missionaries who have been secretly seeking to colonize Japan and Tornaga himself. 

It certainly looks like the series is positioning Ochiba as a new piece on the bureaucratic chessboard seen in Shogun . 

How she will play into the Regents' incoming conflict with the Spanish (and Toranaga as well) remains to be seen, but the Lady is out for blood, and someone is going to have to pay for Japan's leaders being duped. 

Shogun is streaming now on Hulu airs on FX on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET.

Read more about FX's Shogun series:

Will Shogun Season 2 Happen? Producers Address FX Series' Potential Future (Exclusive)

Shogun: Did Mariko Sleep With Anjin?

What Is Natto In Shogun? Meaning of Food In Show Explained

Shogun 2024 FX TV Series Vs. Book Differences Explained by Producer (Exclusive)

Shogun: What Is Crimson Sky? Meaning In the Show, Explained

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VLADIMIR NIKOLAEVICH MEGRE

Author of the series The Ringing Cedars of Russia

Little is known about Vladimir Megre's early background, apart from a few experiences he himself describes in the context of his writings. One of these occurred in the 1960s when over the course of a year the teen-aged Megre made periodic visits (as inconspicuously as possible) to a monk named Father Feodorit at the Trinity-Sergiev Monastery in the town of Sergiev Posad (then known as Zagorsk), just east of Moscow. These meetings (described in Chapter 24 of Book 2, The Ringing Cedars of Russia (pp. 119-31) left a lasting impression on the young Vladimir's consciousness, and can perhaps be taken as a prelude to his later spiritual transformation during his meetings, as he describes them, with Anastasia in the Siberian taiga.

We know that by the mid-1980s Megre was married with a daughter and living in Novosibirsk, where, like many other budding Russian capitalists, he took advantage of perestroika and the subsequent collapse of the communist system to launch into an entrepreneurial career. Even before perestroika he had shown his business acumen in finding ways to significantly increase the profits of a photographic collective. He went on to form a number of commercial co-operatives and by the late 1980s had leased a fleet of river steamers which plied the waters of the Ob River north of Novosibirsk. (see Chapter 1 of Book 1, Anastasia).

On one of these trips north in 1994, he encountered two elderly gentlemen who told him of a cedar tree (kedr in Russian, more commonly known as the Siberian pine in English) deep in the taiga forest that was making a 'ringing' or humming sound, which meant it was near the end of its centuries-old life and was ripe for cutting up and giving out pieces to those interested in its remarkable healing properties. He decided to return to the area the following year (1995) on his own to investigate. In place of the two elderly gentlemen he discovered a young woman in her twenties who said they were her grandfather and great-grandfather, and offered to take him to the cedar they had described. She turned out to be a recluse who lived all alone in the taiga, with no other company or facilities (including housing and food supply) than those provided by Nature.

But that was just the beginning. During the three days Megre spent with her in the taiga, she revealed to him not only the secrets of the ringing cedar, but many mysteries of Nature and the Universe - especially their role in the Divine order of things - that had been known to people in so-called ancient times but subsequently lost to mankind. Much of the earlier knowledge had been deliberately consigned to oblivion by so-called 'wise men' who felt their own sophisticated world-view threatened by the simple wisdom of their forebears.

At his new acquaintance's insistence he reluctantly abandoned his business career and set about writing a book about his taiga experiences (but only after he became penniless trying to set up a league of ethical entrepreneurs and only after his marriage failed, although he received help from a number of Moscow university students as well as his grown daughter Polina). The book, entitled Anastasia, was published in 1996 - largely thanks to the generosity of the manager of a print shop Megre had shown it to - and sold by the author himself in Moscow subway stations.

Then an incredible turn of events suddenly took place. A great number of those who purchased the book returned right after they finished reading it (or even before) to buy copies for their friends and neighbors, and the first print-run of 2,000 copies sold out in a very short time. A generous donor financed the next printing, before a recognized publisher caught wind of its success and launched it into mass production. (The Russian editions of the Ringing Cedars Series are now published by Dilya Publishers in Moscow & St-Petersburg.) And one copy of the first printing even ended up in the United States Library of Congress collection.

The success of Book 1 prompted the author to write a second volume, The Ringing Cedars of Russia, which offers, among other things, a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the story of how Anastasia came to be published, as well as a deeper exploration of the concepts revealed in the first book. Subsequent visits to Anastasia in the taiga - including conversations with the son she had conceived together with the author - engendered even more books, which now number eight in the original (the last one running into two volumes). By 1999, only three years after the first book appeared, Vladimir Megre had become modern Russia's most widely read author, with his writings selling in the millions.

At the end of Book 3, The Space of Love, may be found a thumbnail sketch of the "Series at a glance", as well as a brief description of the background to the series and profiles of the author, translator and editor.

It is interesting to note the change in the author's style over the course of the books. According to his own admission, before his taiga adventure this hard-nosed businessman had never written a word of prose or poetry before in his life, but he reluctantly launched into writing a book at the insistence of Anastasia. He admits his initial prose did not sound professional, which only aggravated his difficulty in getting his first book to press. This prose may well be described as 'choppy' and simplistic, but over the first few books - under the influence, he says, of Anastasia - his writing gradually developed into a style more and more polished and professional. By the latter part of Book 3, entitled The Space of Love, and throughout a good part of Book 4, Co-creation, his dialogues with the Siberian recluse take on the quality of poetic prose, including elements of met re and even rhyme. These features have been preserved as much as possible in the English translation.

John Woodsworth, Slavic Research Group, University of Ottawa

For more information on the book and their availability in English and other languages, see Publications section of this web-site.

IMAGES

  1. Voyager Mission Timeline

    voyager 6 launch date

  2. Voyager 1 Launch

    voyager 6 launch date

  3. Voyager 6

    voyager 6 launch date

  4. Earth Pre-Federation Database

    voyager 6 launch date

  5. 40 Years Out, NASA's Twin Voyager Probes Inspire Golden Record Revivals

    voyager 6 launch date

  6. The First Voyager (1967)

    voyager 6 launch date

VIDEO

  1. 3 MINUTES AGO: Voyager Just Turned Back On And Discovered Something Terrifying

  2. Voyager 1 story🌟✨🔥 #nasa #voyager1 #shortsfeed #shorts

  3. Voyager 1 is Sending Strange Signals #voyager1 #space #signals

  4. Is Voyager 1 still in contact #shorts #shortvideo #youtubeshorts #viral

  5. Voyager 1 Trmite Date CIUDATE Inapoi Catre NASA Dupa 45 Ani

  6. how did voyager 1 got alive and send data to earth

COMMENTS

  1. Voyager 6

    According to Star Trek Chronology, Voyager 6 was launched in 1999. According to Decker's line in the movie, however, it was launched "more than 300 years ago". This suggests a launch date sometime before or in the early 1970s. In the real world, the actual launches of the first (and only) two Voyager probes took place in 1977.

  2. Voyager

    Instrument Status. This is a real-time indicator of Voyagers' distance from Earth in astronomical units (AU) and either miles (mi) or kilometers (km). Note: Because Earth moves around the sun faster than Voyager 1 is speeding away from the inner solar system, the distance between Earth and the spacecraft actually decreases at certain times of year.

  3. Voyager program

    A poster of the planets and moons visited during the Voyager program. The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, to fly near them while collecting data for transmission ...

  4. Voyager

    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. ... Launch: Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan ...

  5. Voyager

    The Project Begins. "Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977," the name of the mission before it became Voyager, is approved by NASA, with day-to-day management by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The original plans commit only to flybys of Jupiter and Saturn and build upon the heritage of earlier Mariner spacecraft that flew by ...

  6. Voyager, NASA's Longest-Lived Mission, Logs 45 Years in Space

    Launched in 1977, NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft inspired the world with pioneering visits to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Their journey continues 45 years later as both probes explore interstellar space, the region outside the protective heliosphere created by our Sun. Researchers - some younger than the spacecraft - are now ...

  7. Voyager

    What's on the Golden Record. Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. Voyager 1 reached the interstellar boundary in 2012, while Voyager 2 (traveling slower and in a different direction than its twin) reached it ...

  8. NASA's New 'Voyager': 7 Things To Know About The 50-Year ...

    Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft entered interstellar space in 2012 and 2018, respectively. ... It could launch in 2030 and last for over 50 years. Slated to launch in the early 2030s ...

  9. Star Trek: Voyager

    Star Trek: Voyager is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor.It originally aired from January 16, 1995, to May 23, 2001, on UPN, with 172 episodes over seven seasons.It is the fifth series in the Star Trek franchise. Set in the 24th century, when Earth is part of a United Federation of Planets, it follows the adventures of the ...

  10. Voyager Program

    NASA to Launch Sounding Rockets into Moon's Shadow During Solar Eclipse. article 4 hours ago. 4 min read. Five Tips from NASA for Photographing a Total Solar Eclipse. ... NASA's Voyager Will Do More Science With New Power Strategy. Article. 7 Min Read. NASA Missions Study What May Be a 1-In-10,000-Year Gamma-ray Burst. Multimedia

  11. Voyager 1

    Heliocentric positions of the five interstellar probes (squares) and other bodies (circles) until 2020, with launch and flyby dates. Markers denote positions on 1 January of each year, with every fifth year labelled. Plot 1 is viewed from the north ecliptic pole, to scale. Plots 2 to 4 are third-angle projections at 20% scale. In the SVG file, hover over a trajectory or orbit to highlight it ...

  12. Voyager 1

    Launch Date. Sept. 5, 1977. Type. Flyby Spacecraft Target. Interstellar Space Status. Current About the mission. Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in August 2012 and is the most distant human-made object in existence. Launched just shortly after its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, in 1977, Voyager 1 explored the Jovian and Saturnian systems ...

  13. Voyager 1

    Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to cross the heliosphere, the boundary where the influences outside our solar system are stronger than those from our Sun. ... Launch Date and Time. Sep 5, 1977 / 12:56:01 UT. Key Dates. Mar 5, 1979: Jupiter flyby ... 6. Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer (MAG) 7. Plasma Spectrometer (PLS) 8. Low-Energy Charged ...

  14. 'Star Trek: Voyager' Documentary Gives Production Update; Releases

    After wrapping up a record-breaking $1.2 million crowd-funding campaign earlier this year, the documentary team set up a new studio to shoot more interviews in June. At the Las Vegas panel ...

  15. Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

    The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA's Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. NASA/JPL-Caltech. Voyager 1, meanwhile ...

  16. Voyager 1 sends back surprising response after 'poke' from NASA

    Meanwhile, Voyager 2 has traveled more than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the ...

  17. 'Star Trek: Voyager's' triumphant creation stars in crowdfunded

    "To the Journey: Looking Back at Star Trek: Voyager" has been years in the making, as producer/director David Zappone first announced back in early 2020 that shooting would start aboard Star Trek ...

  18. Voyager 1 Launch

    Voyager 1 Launch. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft launched atop its Titan/Centaur-6 launch vehicle from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex in Florida on September 5, 1977, at 8:56 a.m. local time. Voyager is managed for NASA by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology ...

  19. NASA is trying to fix Voyager 1, but the old spacecraft's days are

    Voyager 1 has been traveling through space since 1977, and some scientists hoped it could keep sending back science data for 50 years. ... "If it happens, it would launch in the 2030s," says Ocker ...

  20. Voyager

    The cost of the Voyager 1 and 2 missions -- including launch, mission operations from launch through the Neptune encounter and the spacecraft's nuclear batteries (provided by the Department of Energy) -- is $865 million. ... The length of a Neptunian day has been determined to be 16 hours, 6.7 minutes. Even though Neptune receives only three ...

  21. 8 Alpha Quadrant Things Star Trek: Voyager Found In Delta Quadrant

    In Voyager season 4, episode 6 "The Raven", when Voyager nears the Hansens' ship, ... Release Date May 23, 1995. Seasons 7. Genres Sci-Fi, Adventure. Network UPN. Streaming Service(s) Paramount+.

  22. Burevestnik: a Russian air-launched anti-satellite system

    The index for the Burevestnik space complex is 14K168. The idea that "293" is a satellite launch vehicle is corroborated by the fact that the index for one of its stages (14S47) is similar to that of some upper stages of space launch vehicles. Moreover, plans to use the MiG-31 as a satellite launch platform are not new.

  23. When Is the New iPad Pro, iPad Air Coming Out? Apple Plans Early May

    March 28, 2024 at 10:47 AM PDT. Listen. 2:24. Apple Inc. 's overseas suppliers have ramped up production of the company's long-anticipated new iPads and a launch is planned for early May ...

  24. 2024-25 FAFSA Student Aid Index Update and Timeline (Updated March 14

    The Department will continue to assist our external partners through webinars, resources, and updates on the Knowledge Center.We also welcome our partners to continue to submit questions related to the 2024-25 FAFSA launch using the Contact Customer Support form in FSA's Partner Connect Help Center. To submit a question, please enter your name, email address, topic, and question.

  25. Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024) finally gets an official announcement and

    TL;DR. Samsung has officially announced the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024). The specs are mostly the same as the 2022 release, except for the SoC. The tablet will launch on March 28. Despite the silent ...

  26. Shogun Episode 6 Release Date & Remaining Schedule on FX & Hulu

    This is in line with the series' previous releases and will continue as the series nears its conclusion. The remaining Shogun release date schedule can be seen below: Episode 6 - "Ladies of the Willow World:" Tuesday, March 26. Episode 7 - "A Stick of Time:" Tuesday, April 2. Episode 8 - "The Abyss of Life:" Tuesday, April 9.

  27. Timeline of Star Trek

    Voyager season 2 (1995-1996) 2373 50000-50999 First Contact (1996) Dominion War. Deep Space Nine season 5 (1996-1997) Voyager season 3 (1996-1997) 2374 51000-51999 Dominion War: Deep Space Nine season 6 (1997-1998) Voyager season 4 (1997-1998) 2375 52000-52999 Dominion War. Insurrection (1998) Deep Space Nine season 7 (1998-1999)

  28. Alexey Pichugin

    Date of arrest: July 19, 2003: Date of birth: July 25, 1962: Victims profile: 3 men and 2 women: Method of murder: Shooting: Location: Russia: Status: Sentenced to life in prison on August 6, 2007 photo gallery ... They will launch an appeal to the Russian Supreme Court and, if that fails, will consider taking the case to the European Court of ...

  29. Persona 6 Insider Leaks 2026 Release Date

    By Tyler Fischer - March 25, 2024 01:33 pm EDT. 0. Persona 6 fans holding out for a 2024 or 2025 release date may want to look away from a new report that claims the game will not be out this year ...

  30. Ringing Cedars of Russia

    Books to date: Anastasia (book 1) The Ringing Cedars of Russia (book 2) The Space of Love (book 3) Co-creation (book 4) Who are we? (book 5) The Book of Kin (book 6) The Energy of Life (book 7) The New Civilisation (book 8, part I) The Rites of Love (book 8, part II) Anasta (book 9)