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Rae Paoletta • Mar 03, 2022

The best space pictures from the Voyager 1 and 2 missions

Launched in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 missions provided an unprecedented glimpse into the outer solar system — a liminal space once left largely to the imagination. The spacecraft provided views of worlds we’d never seen before, and in some cases, haven’t seen much of since.

The Voyager probes were launched about two weeks apart and had different trajectories, like two tour guides at the same museum. Only Voyager 2 visited the ice giants — Uranus and Neptune — for example.

The Voyagers hold a unique position in the pantheon of space history because they’re still making it; even right now, Voyagers 1 and 2 are the only functioning spacecraft in interstellar space. Both hold a Golden Record that contains sights and sounds of Earth in case alien life were to find one of the spacecraft.

As the Voyager missions voyage on, it’s good to look back at how they captured our solar system before leaving it.

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NASA's Voyager probes have been traveling through space for nearly 46 years. Here are 18 groundbreaking photos from their incredible mission.

  • Nearly 46 years after their launch, Voyager 1 and 2 will likely soon reach the end of their scientific mission . 
  • NASA recently lost contact with Voyager 2 after sending it a bad command by mistake. 
  • Here are 18 pictures the probes took over the course of their forty-plus-year journey. 

Insider Today

The Voyager probes are pioneers of science, making it farther into space than any other manufactured object. But now, they face a terminal problem: their power is running out.

The twin probes were originally sent on a four-year mission to tour the solar system, but they exceeded all expectations and are still going nearly 46 years later. That makes them NASA's longest-lived mission.

Scientists are now doing their best to  keep the probes going for as long as possible. They recently found a clever hack to extend Voyager 2's life for another three years and plan to do the same with Voyager 1.

But these are old machines and NASA is constantly scrambling to fix mistakes. Last year, Voyager 1 started sending garbled data from the outside of the solar system. NASA ultimately figured out one of its computers had gone dead.

Voyager 2 is now in limbo , as the agency revealed Friday it had lost contact with the probe when someone sent a wrong command. It could be the end of Voyager 2's mission if NASA can't fix the mistake, which the agency probably won't be able to do before October.

As the probes are nearing the end of their scientific mission, here are 18 images from Voyager that changed science.

The Voyager probes were designed to visit Jupiter and Saturn.

voyager mission photos

The Voyager mission included two probes — Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 — which NASA launched in 1977 within a few months of each other.

NASA took advantage of a rare planet alignment to turbocharge their journeys into space.

NASA originally built the probes to last five years, but they have exceeded that lifespan many times .

As of August 20 and September 5, 2023, Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 will have been traveling for 46 years, respectively. 

This is what Voyager 1 saw on its approach to Jupiter.

voyager mission photos

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 reached Jupiter in 1979.

As they flew by the planet, they took about 50,000 pictures of Jupiter. These blew away scientists, as the quality of the pictures was much better than those taken from Earth, according to NASA.

These snaps  taught scientists important facts about the planet's atmosphere, magnetic forces, and geology that would have been difficult to decipher otherwise.

The probes discovered two new moons orbiting Jupiter: Thebe and Metis.

voyager mission photos

They also spotted a thin ring around Jupiter.

voyager mission photos

The probe captured this picture as it was looking back at the planet backlit by the Sun. 

Voyager 1 discovered volcanoes at the surface of Io, one of Jupiter's moons.

voyager mission photos

Next stop: Saturn.

voyager mission photos

In 1980 and 1981, the probes reached Saturn . The flyby gave scientists unprecedented insight into the planet's ring structure, atmosphere, and moons.

Voyager snapped Saturn's rings in more detail than ever before.

voyager mission photos

And showed every secret that Enceladus, Saturn's moon, had to offer.

voyager mission photos

Saturn, snapped as the probe flew away, was shown in a new light.

voyager mission photos

By 1986, Voyager 2 had made it to Uranus.

voyager mission photos

By 1986, Voyager 1 has finished its grand tour of the solar system, and few out towards space. But Voyager 2 kept on its exploring our nearest planets, passing 50,600 miles away from Uranus in January 1986. 

Voyager 2 discovered two extra rings around Uranus , revealing the planet had at least 11, not 9. 

Voyager 2 also spotted 11 previously unseen moons around Uranus.

voyager mission photos

Here is a picture of Miranda, Uranus's sixth-biggest moon.

Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to observe Neptune from a close distance.

voyager mission photos

In 1989, 12 years after its launch, Voyager 2 passed within 3,000 miles of Neptune. 

Here's Nepture taken by Voyager 2, in all its blue glory.

voyager mission photos

Voyager 2 took this unflattering pic of Triton's rough face.

voyager mission photos

It captured Triton, Neptune's moon in unprecedented detail. 

And snapped Triton's southern hemisphere.

voyager mission photos

As it flew by, Voyager 2 uncovered Neptune's rings.

voyager mission photos

As its parting gift, Voyager 2 took this beautiful picture of light grazing Neptune's south pole.

voyager mission photos

This is Voyager 2's last picture. Since it wouldn't come across another planet on its ongoing journey, NASA switched off its cameras after its flyby of Neptune to conserve energy for other instruments. 

Voyager 1 had one last trick up its sleeve.

voyager mission photos

As its last photographic hurrah in 1990, Voyager 1 took 60 images of the solar system from 4 billion miles away.

It gave us the Earth's longest selfie, dubbed the "pale blue dot."

voyager mission photos

This remains the longest-range selfie: a portrait of the Earth taken by a human-made probe from 4 billion miles away. 

After this picture, NASA switched off Voyager 1's cameras to save energy. NASA could switch the probes' cameras back on , but it is not a priority for the mission. 

Beyond the solar system

voyager mission photos

Though the probes are no longer sending pictures, they haven't stopped sending crucial information about space. 

In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made instrument to cross into interstellar space by crossing the boundary between our solar system and the rest of the universe, called the heliopause. 

Voyager 2 was second, crossing that threshold in 2018 . The probe revealed that there was yet another  layer outside of our heliosphere.

The probes keep sending back measurements from interstellar space, like weird hums likely coming from vibrations made by neighboring stars.

Even after their instruments are switched off, the probes' mission continues.

voyager mission photos

NASA is planning to switch more of the probes' instruments in the hope of extending their life to the 2030s.

But even after all their instruments become quiet, their mission will carry on. As they drift off, they will still be carrying a golden record that carries crucial information about humanity. If intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, they could use that information to reach out to us.

This article was originally published on June 6, 2022, and is being updated with the latest developments about Voyager 1 and 2. 

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Voyager, nasa’s longest-lived mission, logs 45 years in space, jet propulsion laboratory, beyond expectations, the long journey, more about the mission.

Engineers preparing the Voyager 2 spacecraft

Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager probes are NASA’s longest-operating mission and the only spacecraft ever to explore interstellar space.

NASA’s twin Voyager probes have become, in some ways, time capsules of their era: They each carry an eight-track tape player for recording data, they have about 3 million times less memory than modern cellphones, and they transmit data about 38,000 times slower than a 5G internet connection.

Yet the Voyagers remain on the cutting edge of space exploration. Managed and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, they are the only probes to ever explore interstellar space – the galactic ocean that our Sun and its planets travel through.

The Sun and the planets reside in the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun’s magnetic field and the outward flow of solar wind (charged particles from the Sun). Researchers – some of them younger than the two distant spacecraft – are combining Voyager’s observations with data from newer missions to get a more complete picture of our Sun and how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space.

“The heliophysics mission fleet provides invaluable insights into our Sun, from understanding the corona or the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, to examining the Sun’s impacts throughout the solar system, including here on Earth, in our atmosphere, and on into interstellar space,” said Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Over the last 45 years, the Voyager missions have been integral in providing this knowledge and have helped change our understanding of the Sun and its influence in ways no other spacecraft can.”

NASA’s Solar System Interactive lets users see where the Voyagers are right now relative to the planets, the Sun, and other spacecraft. Eyes on the Solar System . Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Voyagers are also ambassadors, each carrying a golden record containing images of life on Earth, diagrams of basic scientific principles, and audio that includes sounds from nature, greetings in multiple languages, and music. The gold-coated records serve as a cosmic “message in a bottle” for anyone who might encounter the space probes. At the rate gold decays in space and is eroded by cosmic radiation, the records will last more than a billion years. 

Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, quickly followed by Voyager 1 on Sept. 5. Both probes traveled to Jupiter and Saturn, with Voyager 1 moving faster and reaching them first. Together, the probes unveiled much about the solar system’s two largest planets and their moons. Voyager 2 also became the first and only spacecraft to fly close to Uranus (in 1986) and Neptune (in 1989), offering humanity remarkable views of – and insights into – these distant worlds.

This infographic highlights the mission’s major milestones

While Voyager 2 was conducting these flybys, Voyager 1 headed toward the boundary of the heliosphere. Upon exiting it in 2012 , Voyager 1 discovered that the heliosphere blocks 70% of cosmic rays, or energetic particles created by exploding stars. Voyager 2, after completing its planetary explorations, continued to the heliosphere boundary, exiting in 2018 . The twin spacecraft’s combined data from this region has challenged previous theories about the exact shape of the heliosphere.

“Today, as both Voyagers explore interstellar space, they are providing humanity with observations of uncharted territory,” said Linda Spilker, Voyager’s deputy project scientist at JPL. “This is the first time we’ve been able to directly study how a star, our Sun, interacts with the particles and magnetic fields outside our heliosphere, helping scientists understand the local neighborhood between the stars, upending some of the theories about this region, and providing key information for future missions.”

Over the years, the Voyager team has grown accustomed to surmounting challenges that come with operating such mature spacecraft, sometimes calling upon retired colleagues for their expertise or digging through documents written decades ago.

Each Voyager is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator containing plutonium, which gives off heat that is converted to electricity. As the plutonium decays, the heat output decreases and the Voyagers lose electricity. To compensate , the team turned off all nonessential systems and some once considered essential, including heaters that protect the still-operating instruments from the frigid temperatures of space. All five of the instruments that have had their heaters turned off since 2019 are still working, despite being well below the lowest temperatures they were ever tested at.

Recently, Voyager 1 began experiencing an issue that caused status information about one of its onboard systems to become garbled. Despite this, the system and spacecraft otherwise continue to operate normally, suggesting the problem is with the production of the status data, not the system itself. The probe is still sending back science observations while the engineering team tries to fix the problem or find a way to work around it.

“The Voyagers have continued to make amazing discoveries, inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers,” said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at JPL. “We don’t know how long the mission will continue, but we can be sure that the spacecraft will provide even more scientific surprises as they travel farther away from the Earth.”

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL built and operates the Voyager spacecraft. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/voyager

Calla Cofield Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 626-808-2469 [email protected]

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Interstellar Messengers

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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 in 2018.

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Dec. 12, 2023: Engineers are working to resolve an issue with one of Voyager 1's computers.

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Voyager, NASA’s Longest-Lived Mission, Logs 45 Years in Space

The Interstellar Mission

After completing the first in-depth reconnaissance of the outer planets, the twin Voyagers are on a new mission to chart the edge of interstellar space.

The mission objective of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) is to extend the NASA 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.

A labeled line drawing of the Voyager Spacecraft. Locations of instruments are shown.

The most distant human-made object.

Voyager 1 entered interstellar space on Aug. 25, 2012.. The spacecraft was 11.3 billion miles (18.3 billion kilometers, or 122 astronomical units) away from the sun at that time. It was 11.3 billion miles (18.2 billion kilometers, or 121 astronomical units) from Earth.

The only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune.

Voyager 2 took advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs once every 175 years to explore t all four giant planetary systems in our solar system - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

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46 Years Ago, a Rare Alignment of Our Planets Allowed For An Iconic Space Mission

With Voyager 1 on the fritz, it's a great time to look back at the 46-year space mission's origin story.

voyager mission photos

The summer of 1977 was a great time to be a space nerd. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was a summer blockbuster. NASA was testing its futuristic Space Shuttle in the Mojave Desert. And, on August 2 and September 5, Voyager 2 and 1, respectfully , blasted off from Florida on their way to tour the enigmatic giant worlds of the outer solar system. The summer of 1977 changed our view of outer space forever.

The twin Voyagers carried the same array of instruments — spectrometers, cosmic ray detectors, and cameras — to tell scientists on Earth about distant worlds; they also carried matching “Golden Records” with recordings of sounds, music, and voices to tell distant worlds about life on Earth.

Altogether, each Voyager carried slightly less computing power than a modern smartphone. By today’s standards, they're bare-bones machines, and in some senses, their electronics were outmoded even by the time they launched. But sometimes simplicity works: the Voyagers have outlived many of their original designers. And it's hard to imagine not knowing the things Voyagers 1 and 2 revealed about the outer reaches of our Solar System: that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a gargantuan hurricane, that Europa’s ice is cracked because of tides churning beneath it, that Io is volcanically active on a terrifying scale, or that Titan has hydrocarbon seas and rivers beneath its methane smog.

Thanks to the Voyagers, NASA knew it was worth launching the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn.

“I remember seeing the image of the moon Io for the first time and thinking that the Caltech students had engineered a brilliant stunt — they must have substituted a picture of a poorly made pizza for the picture of Io!” recalls Voyager program co-investigator Alan Cummings in a post for NASA. “All that orange and black on Io changed our thinking about the moons in the Solar System. I think most of us thought they would all look more or less like our own Moon. But, wow, how wrong was that!”

image of the edge of a planet in orange, with blue volcanic plumes, on a black background

This image from one of the Voyager spacecraft is one of the first glimpses of Io’s erupting volcanoes.

Two Long One-Way Trips

Voyager 1 swept past Jupiter in 1979, using the planet’s tremendous gravity to power a slingshot outward toward Saturn and its haze-shrouded moon Titan (mission planners had to choose between a flyby of Titan or Pluto, and they chose Titan). From there, the tug of Saturn’s gravity “bent the spacecraft's path inexorably northward out of the ecliptic plane.” Voyager 1 was on its way out of the Solar System.

Voyager 2 also flew past Jupiter for a gravity assist in 1979, then past Saturn in 1980, but its path also carried it past the Solar System’s two most distant worlds, “ice giants” Uranus and Neptune. To this day, Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft we’ve sent to either of the ice giants.

“The planet Uranus turned out to be a fuzzy blue tennis ball, with an atmosphere not at all as exciting as Jupiter or Saturn,” recalls Suzanne Dodd, now the Voyager program manager, in a post for NASA. “So initially, it felt a little disappointing, but then there was the moon Miranda. That was shocking – a jumble of different geologies on the same body. It was the jewel of the encounter.”

After flying past Neptune in 1989, Voyager 2 carried on its own way out of the Solar System, curving south (relative to Earth’s poles) while its sister headed north.

grayscale mosaic images of planets

Voyager 1 captured this mosaic portrait of 6 of the Solar System’s 8 planets (and the Sun) from above the plane of the planets’ orbits, 4 billion miles from home.

How The Planets Aligned

The trips were only possible because of a rare alignment of the planets. Our Solar System’s massive outermost worlds lumber slowly along wide, long orbits: Jupiter takes about 12 years to make a lap around the Sun, while Uranus takes 84; Neptune orbits the Sun in such a wide circle that its orbit takes a staggering 165 years to complete. But once every 175 years, the planets happen to pass the same point in their orbits at the same time, so that from Earth’s viewpoint they all line up in a roughly straight line.

Aerospace engineer Gary Flandro, working in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, realized that such an alignment was due to happen in the late 1970s and that NASA could take advantage of it to explore the outer Solar System. The outer planets’ rare alignment meant that a spacecraft could reach all four of them on a single curving trajectory, using each planet’s gravity to get a speed boost and help set the course for the next world. Each spacecraft could save fuel and reach its destinations in a fraction of the time.

Based on Flandro’s calculations, the original version of Voyager would have been a fleet of four spacecraft, dispatched in pairs to the outer worlds: two to Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, and two more to Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. But the price tag for that pair of missions would have been about $1 billion at the time (equivalent to a little over $5 billion today), and NASA’s planetary science missions were competing for funding against the newly-approved Space Shuttle program — part of a longstanding budget rivalry between crewed spaceflight and planetary science.

Eventually, the pared-down version involved two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. And NASA chose to overlook poor little Pluto in favor of Saturn’s moon Titan.

The planetary alignment also meant that in 1990, Voyager 1 could point its camera back toward Earth and capture a “family portrait” of our Solar System. That portrait included the now-famous Pale Blue Dot: a color image of Earth from 4 billion miles away, looking tiny and fragile amid the vastness of space.

Candice Handsen, now a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, and then part of the Voyager imaging team, recalls that her colleagues printed out Voyager 1’s wide-angle mosaic of the Solar System, with the more focused color images of individual planets as insets, and hung them along a wall in the Von Karman Auditorium at JPL.

“Jurrie [Van der Woude] said that he had to replace the picture of Earth rather often — people always wanted to touch it,” writes Handsen.

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Voyager 1 to Take Pictures of Solar System Planets

voyager mission photos

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its mission along with Voyager 2 to explore the outer planets, will use its cameras February 13-14 to take an unprecedented family portrait of most of the planets in our solar system.

The collection of images will be from a unique point-of-view -- looking down on the solar system from a position 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane in which the planets orbit the Sun. No other spacecraft has ever been in a position to attempt a similar series of photos of most of the planets.

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is now about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) from Earth. The Voyager spacecraft are controlled by and their data received at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"This is not just the first time, but perhaps the only time for decades that we'll be able to take a picture of the planets from outside the solar system," said Voyager Project Scientist Dr. Edward C. Stone of Caltech. No future space missions are planned that would fly a spacecraft so high above the ecliptic plane of the solar system, he said.

Starting shortly after 5 p.m. (PST) on Feb. 13 and continuing over the course of four hours, Voyager 1 will point its wide- and narrow-angle cameras at Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth and Venus. Mercury is too close to the Sun to be photographed by Voyager's cameras, and Pluto is too far away and too small to show up in images taken by the spacecraft. Beginning with the dimmest of the targets - Neptune -- and working toward the Sun, Voyager 1 will shutter about 64 images of the planets and the space between them.

The constellation Eridanus (The River), stretching behind the planets from Voyager 1's perspective, will provide the backdrop for the images.

Due to the schedules of several spacecraft being tracked by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), the images will be recorded on board Voyager 1 and played back to DSN receivers on Earth in late March. The Voyager imaging team estimates that processing the images to reveal as much detail as possible will take several weeks. Most of the planets will appear as relatively small dots (about one to four pixels, or picture elements, in the 800-by-800 pixel frame of one Voyager image).

The enormous scale of the subject matter makes it unlikely that the entire set of images can be mosaicked to produce for publication a single photograph showing all the planets. Even an image covering the planets out to Jupiter would easily fill a poster-sized photographic print. At the least, imaging team hopes to assemble a mosaicked image composed of the frames showing Earth, Venus and perhaps Mars together.

Voyager 1, rather than Voyager 2, received the solar system photo assignment largely because of Voyager 1's improved viewpoint of the planets.

Voyager 1 completed flybys of Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980, respectively. Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981, Uranus in 1986 and Neptune last August. Both are now on missions that will take the spacecraft to the boundary of our solar system and into interstellar space.

According to Voyager engineers and scientists, the only potential damage from pointing the cameras toward the Sun is that the shutter blades of the wide-angle camera might warp. There are no plans, however, to use Voyager 1's cameras after the solar system photo series is completed.

The Voyager mission is conducted by Caltech's JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications.

SlashGear

A Look At NASA's Groundbreaking Voyager 1 Mission - And Where The Probe Is Heading Next

A gencies such as NASA are responsible for giving us a more detailed picture of space, literally in the case of technology such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope (utilizing the tiniest SSDs ). The latter is currently orbiting the Sun one million miles from us, a fascinating case study in the way that we can bring the distant reaches of space (realms it's entirely unsafe and impractical for humans to venture to directly) to us.

Drones and similar machines, capable of exploring the most inhospitable environments imaginable, have been key to this. Humans have never been more than 248,655 miles into space (a feat achieved by Apollo 13 in 1970 on its journey 'around' the moon), but Voyager 1 has boldly gone far, far, far beyond that, offering us a privileged and unprecedented insight into the universe beyond our own.

This piece will explore the beginnings of the Voyager 1 project, its objectives, and how the mission has unfolded to date. It's also important to look at the future of Voyager 1 and where it's scheduled to go next.

Read more: 5 Of The Best Bug-Busting Gadgets To Keep Pests Out Of Your Home

The Concept Of Voyager 1

Jupiter and Saturn, the fifth- and sixth-furthest planets from the Sun, are approximately 601 million miles and one billion miles from the Earth respectively, at the furthest point in the planets' orbits. At their closest, these numbers shrink to a still-ludicrous 365 million miles and 746 million miles from our planet. With these being insurmountable journeys for even the most dedicated scientists, then, NASA needed an alternative way to get a closer look at these two gas giants.

Voyager 1, which set off on its journey on September 5, 1977, was designed with just that primary objective in mind: to reach both planets. A voyager in the truest sense of the word, it would gather remarkable information about those planets (and much more besides), and continue to provide such data for decades.

Voyager 1 was launched second, after Voyager 2, and is structurally just the same. The body of both probes consists largely of a 12-foot radio transmitter, and though they might look like rather humble craft, measuring at 28.2 feet long , these revolutionary probes have done some extraordinary work. Here's how it reached the first stop on its originally-planned adventure, Jupiter, and what it was able to learn on doing so.

When Voyager 1 Reached Jupiter

Monstrously large and difficult to miss as Jupiter may be, it wasn't until Voyager 1 that scientists were given an opportunity to study it up close and in painstaking detail, marking technological strides beyond Pioneer 10 and 11's own journeys earlier in the decade. The sheer length of the journey from Earth meant that it took the probe, capable of reaching speeds of more than 38,000 mph , almost a year and a half after launch to get within range to begin documenting the planet-gobbling gas giant .

From January to April 1979, Voyager's suite of scientific tools amassed readings about the planet as it passed by, and the snap-happy spacecraft collected around 19,000 images of it in the process. This bounty provided researchers a wealth of new information about Jupiter's composition, movement, atmosphere, and more.

A previously-unseen ring, rather less prominent than those sported by Saturn, was noted, theorized to have resulted from detritus left behind by numerous meteor impacts. The immense Great Red Spot, under the closest and most sophisticated watch in history, could be observed in terms of its impact on the wider planet's atmosphere, where winds swirl between and around each other.

A NASA statement, according to  Space , concluded that "possibly the most stunning of Voyager 1's discoveries was that Io has extremely active volcanoes," a unique feature in the solar system that results from the constant pressure of the moon's orbit of the planet. Even more revelations awaited when Voyager 1 reached Saturn.

Voyager 1's Study Of Saturn

It's no short hop from Jupiter to Saturn. In fact, it's a hop of around 403.3 million miles . This part of the journey, from the beginning of its Jupiter adventure to the beginning of its Saturn one, took around a year and a half to complete: It came into range of Saturn in August of 1980.

Voyager 1 noted some interesting similarities between the two gas giants. Truly monstrous storms raged here too, with the volatile and hydrogen-heavy conditions supporting winds of 1,100 mph . Voyager 1's in-depth case study provided a new understanding of the makeup of the planet, allowing science to look at even its most previously-well-documented elements anew.

Saturn, of course, is also ringed, a fact that makes its composition so iconic. What we did not know until the probe provided evidence, however, is that what we see isn't just one thick ring, but a complex structure of smaller rings (dubbed ringlets by NASA ), in layers.

Besides the two planets themselves, Voyager 1 had a particular interest in Saturn's moon Titan. From August to November 1980, this moon was also monitored by the probe, its atmosphere and relationship with Saturn investigated using ultraviolet and other technologies. With that, Voyager 1 had completed the journey it was primarily designed for, and an astonishing journey it was. The spacecraft was far from finished, however, as there were much further reaches yet to explore.

The Voyagers' Journey Beyond Saturn

Voyager 1 still had a surprising amount left in the metaphorical tank after its study of Saturn ended. The even-more-distant Uranus and Neptune didn't get the fly-by treatment as Jupiter and Saturn did, due to the logistics of the course it took to get the best look possible at Titan, but it passed by them nonetheless, and further still.

Its twin, Voyager 2, would investigate Uranus and Neptune more closely, discovering 11 new moons of the former up to February 1986 and observing Neptune three years later. Maintaining functionality of the spacecraft's instrumentation this far away required some complex work to keep NASA communication technology up to the task, but the work was a remarkable feat of human ingenuity. February 1998 marked an astonishing record for Voyager 1: still speeding away, it became the furthest-reaching man-made object ever.

It remained so, and continues to, with Guinness World Records officially declaring it to be the Most Remote Human-Made Object in October 2022. At the time, it was 23.631 billion km  from Earth. In fact, it's so distant that it comes somewhat closer and further from the planet as Earth orbits the Sun. Let's see where it's been on its great odyssey out of the Solar System, and where it may be heading.

The Most Incredible Leg Of Voyager 1's Journey, And Where It's Going Next

Having wrapped up its investigation of Saturn, it may have just become floating space junk, but that's far from the truth. In 2012, it exited the Heliosphere, essentially the area under the influence of the Sun's strongest magnetic field. As of that August, then, it has been passing through space outside of the Solar System itself, another first in human history.

As of February 6, 2024, NASA reports that Voyager 1, more than 46 years into its journey, is approximately 15,148,155,240 miles from us. Voyager 2, meanwhile, is a little behind at 12,677,967,494 miles. Both, however, are in the unprecedented territory of interstellar space. The Plasma Wave Subsystem, Low-Energy Charged Particles, Cosmic Ray Subsystem, and Magnetometer for both probes are still functional (as is Voyager 2's Plasma Science system), meaning that although their ultraviolet and radio functionalities are among the systems to have been deactivated to maintain fuel, they're still transmitting some information back to the planet.

NASA suggests that Voyager 1 will reach the beginnings of the Oort Cloud, an icy Solar System 'shell' half the distance to Alpha Centauri, in approximately 300 years. From there, it's on course towards a constellation called Ophiuchus. I How much longer its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will last remains a mystery, but Voyager 1 and 2 have had quite the extraordinary and pioneering journey to date.

Read the original article on SlashGear .

NASA space probe Voyager

Will NASA be able to return Mars samples to Earth? New audit raises doubts

Complexity, cost and scheduling are major issues, and MSR is shrouded in doubt.

illustration of a rover and a lander on the surface of mars, with a small helicopter, a rocket and a satellite in the sky above them.

NASA's bold plan to get pristine samples of Mars to Earth for analysis is facing major challenges, according to a new report.

Design, cost and scheduling are all significant obstacles, an audit report of NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program by the agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG) finds.

MSR aims to return Martian geological samples to Earth for scientific study. It involves landing on Mars to collect samples taken by the Perseverance rover and launching those samples to rendezvous with an orbiter, which will haul them to Earth. 

Related:  NASA's Mars Sample Return in jeopardy after US Senate questions budget

Perseverance is already on Mars, snagging and storing samples. But the program still needs to build a Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) and an Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), the latter being developed and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). MSR is one of the most technically complex, operationally demanding and ambitious robotic science missions ever undertaken by NASA, according to the OIG report.

The report notes design, architecture and schedule issues with the Capture Containment and Return System (CCRS). These design issues resulted in adding about $200 million to the budget and one year of lost schedule.

One major area of concern is life-cycle cost estimates for MSR. There is concern that, due to the number and significance of cost increase indicators so far, the $7.4 billion estimate is "premature and may be insufficient," the report finds. Now, the complexity of the MSR mission could drive costs to between $8 billion to $11 billion , the OIG report notes, citing a September 2023 Independent Review Board (IRB) report. Notably, a July 2020 estimate listed costs of $2.5 to $3 billion.

These new figures indicate significant financial challenges and uncertainties in the MSR Program's life-cycle costs. Issues include inflation, supply chain problems and increases in funding requests for specific program components.

The report also highlights the need for enhanced coordination between NASA and ESA. The OIG report offers recommendations to address these challenges. These include ensuring a stable CCRS design, incorporating program complexity into cost and schedule estimates (rather than focusing only on external factors), and reassessing large mission pre-formulation guidance. 

In a bigger-picture recommendation, the OIG report calls for NASA to "develop a corrective action plan that incorporates the lessons learned and recommendations from the Large Mission Study [completed in 2020] to improve the guidance and practices for pre-formulation of large missions."

NASA management concurred or partially concurred in its responses to the report. 

—   Perseverance Mars rover stashes final sample, completing Red Planet depot

 —  Perseverance rover collects Mars samples rich in 'organic matter' for future return to Earth

 —  NASA's troubled Mars sample-return mission has scientists seeing red

The MSR program has recently come under political pressure for its ever-expanding cost estimates, adding to doubt over the continuation of the program. NASA is currently reassessing the overall MSR architecture and its budget. The results could be released later this month.

NASA is also operating under a continuing resolution that freezes spending at 2023 budgetary limits until the spending for the new fiscal year is agreed upon by Congress. This has seen NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the main player in MSR, to lay off workers , further impacting the program.

MSR is, however, considered a mission of major scientific significance by many planetary scientists. China, meanwhile, is working on its own mission, Tianwen-3 , to collect samples from Mars, launching around the end of the decade.

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].

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Andrew Jones

Andrew is a freelance space journalist with a focus on reporting on China's rapidly growing space sector. He began writing for Space.com in 2019 and writes for SpaceNews, IEEE Spectrum, National Geographic, Sky & Telescope, New Scientist and others. Andrew first caught the space bug when, as a youngster, he saw Voyager images of other worlds in our solar system for the first time. Away from space, Andrew enjoys trail running in the forests of Finland. You can follow him on Twitter  @AJ_FI .

Ingenuity Mars helicopter snapped rotor blade during hard landing last month (video, photo)

Mars helicopter Ingenuity's final resting place named after 'Undying Lands' in 'Lord of the Rings'

Heaviest pair of black holes ever seen weighs 28 billion times more than the sun

  • steve_foston I have a suggestion - why not open this mission up to commercial space based companies participation through a fixed price contract rather than trying to develop the mission in-house by NASA? Maybe SpaceX or Blue Origin can do it cheaper Reply
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Odysseus lunar mission: See the best pictures from the lander's historic moon landing

Here are some photos of odysseus' *ahem* odyssey on the way to becoming the first commercially-built spacecraft to ever make it to the moon..

voyager mission photos

The Odysseus lunar lander's pioneering journey to the moon has not only left NASA scientists with invaluable data, but has gifted the rest of humanity with some eye-catching celestial photos.

It wasn't long after the spacecraft built and operated by Intuitive Machines in Houston entered orbit Feb. 15 that it began beaming back images to Earth of dazzling astral vistas. Even while Odysseus was on the verge of losing power after toppling over upon landing a week ago, the lander still was able to transmit images to flight controllers of the unexplored south pole region of the moon.

The unforeseen sideways landing hampered communications and hindered the spacecraft's ability to generate solar power, but still it defied the odds as it persisted. Intuitive Machines expected Odysseus would lose power Wednesday night when lunar nighttime set in, CEO Steve Altemus said at a Wednesday press conference.

The lander, nicknamed "Odie" by its creators, sent its last photo Thursday afternoon, an image captured Feb. 22 that "showcases the crescent Earth in the backdrop, a subtle reminder of humanity’s presence in the universe," Intuitive Machines posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Goodnight, Odie. We hope to hear from you again."

The team hopes to wake Odysseus back up in about three weeks when the sun returns for solar noon, whereby it reaches its highest point in the sky and provides some power-generating rays.

Here are some photos of Odysseus' *ahem* odyssey on the way to becoming the first commercially-built spacecraft to ever make it to the moon. It's lunar landing also signals America's return to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era came to an end in 1972 as NASA eyes future moon missions with its Artemis program .

Odysseus moon landing: Here's why NASA, Intuitive Machines, says the mission was a success

See photos of Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lunar lander

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

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Lunar landing photos: Intuitive Machines' Odysseus sends back first images from the moon

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  • Intuitive Machines' cargo moon lander Odysseus returned its first images from the surface.
  • Company executives believe the lander caught its landing gear sideways in the moon's surface while touching down and tipped over.
  • Despite resting on its side, the company's historic IM-1 mission is still operating on the moon.

In this article

Intuitive Machines' cargo lander, Odysseus, returned its first images from the moon's surface over the weekend, as the spacecraft settles in to its lunar destination.

The company's historic IM-1 mission is now operating on the moon after landing on Thursday, becoming the first privately developed spacecraft to soft land on the lunar surface.

Intuitive Machines initially reported Odysseus was standing upright. But in an update late Friday, company executives said they believe the spacecraft caught its landing gear sideways in the moon's surface while touching down and tipped over.

Despite resting on its side, Odysseus is still sending back data. Intuitive Machines expects Odysseus to operate until Tuesday morning, when its solar panels will no longer be exposed to the sun.

Intuitive Machines' stock fell 35% in Monday trading to close at $6.27 a share.

Sign up here to receive weekly editions of CNBC's Investing in Space newsletter .

The Odysseus lander carried 12 government and commercial payloads — six of which are for NASA under a $118 million contract through the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.

NASA leadership emphasized the IM-1 mission was still successful despite the spacecraft tipping over, calling the landing "a gigantic accomplishment."

One of the payloads, "EagleCam," is a small camera developed by Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University. Originally, EagleCam was to be ejected in the final moments of Odysseus' landing, to capture the first images of a moon landing from outside a spacecraft, but an issue with the lander's navigation system meant the camera did not deploy. Embry-Riddle's team said Intuitive Machines still plans to release EagleCam from the lander at a later time.

Here are some of the initial images from the landing:

Coming in for landing

On the surface, spotted from above.

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Despite sitting on its side, the Odysseus lunar lander was able to share pictures from the surface of the moon. NASA advisor Dr. Paul Sutter gives an update on the mission to NBC's Gadi Schwartz and also explains how a NASA satellite had a near miss with a dead Russian satellite in orbit. Feb. 29, 2024

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

  • The Contents
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Where are they now.

  • frequently asked questions
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IMAGES

  1. A look back at the Voyager missions through 20 incredible images from

    voyager mission photos

  2. Voyager 1 Launch

    voyager mission photos

  3. Voyager-1 spacecraft: 40 years of history and interstellar flight

    voyager mission photos

  4. The Best of Voyager: The Longest-Running Space Mission in History

    voyager mission photos

  5. In the Emptiness of Space 14 Billion Miles Away, Voyager I Detects “Hum

    voyager mission photos

  6. Voyager

    voyager mission photos

VIDEO

  1. Moon Voyager mission by Positive Vibecharge

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  3. Voyager 2: A Journey Beyond the Stars

  4. Images taken by Voyager Spacecraft

  5. 3 MINUTES AGO: Voyager 1 Just Turned Back And Made A Terrifying Discovery

  6. कहां तक पहुंचा voyager 1 और voyager 2 ll Voyager mission documentary in hindi

COMMENTS

  1. Voyager

    This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic.

  2. Images taken by the Voyager Mission

    Voyager Interstellar Mission: 3840x2160x3: PIA22924: Voyager 2: Hello Interstellar Space, Goodbye Heliosphere Full Resolution: TIFF (8.947 MB) JPEG (633.8 kB) 2018-12-10: Voyager Interstellar Mission: 1920x1080x3: PIA22915: Voyager 2 Spacecraft Instruments Full ...

  3. Voyager

    Each Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that the spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life forms from other planetary systems. Examine the images and sounds of planet earth. The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before starting their journey toward interstellar space.

  4. The best space pictures from the Voyager 1 and 2 missions

    Image: NASA / JPL / Ted Stryk. Saturn as seen by Voyager 1 The last picture from Voyager 1's approach to Saturn in which the entire planet and ring system can be seen in a single frame. Image: NASA/JPL/Björn Jónsson. Voyager 2's best view of Enceladus This was the Voyager mission's best view of Enceladus, captured by Voyager 2 on August 26 ...

  5. NASA Voyager Probes: 18 Best Pictures As 46-Year Journey ...

    NASA's Voyager probes have been traveling through space for nearly 46 years. Here are 18 groundbreaking photos from their incredible mission. Marianne Guenot. Updated. Aug 1, 2023, 4:01 AM PDT ...

  6. Voyager Image Gallery

    This photo of Jupiter was taken by NASA's Voyager 1 on the evening of March 1, 1979, from a distance of 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers). The photo shows Jupiter's Great Red Spot (top) and one of the white ovals. ... This graphic highlights some of the Voyager mission's key accomplishments. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Full image details.

  7. Voyager 1

    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 ...

  8. Images taken by the Voyager 1 Spacecraft

    Images taken by the Voyager 1 Spacecraft. Go to PIAxxxxx: Refine this list of images by: Target: Amalthea Callisto Dione Earth Enceladus Europa Ganymede Iapetus Io J Rings Jupiter Mimas Rhea S Rings Saturn Solar System Sun Tethys Titan Uranus. Mission: Voyager Voyager Interstellar Mission. Instrument: Imaging Science Subsystem Imaging Science ...

  9. Voyager: 15 incredible images of our solar system (gallery)

    last updated 22 September 2022. The twin probes have captured some remarkable images of our cosmic neighborhood. NASA's twin probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continue to explore the cosmos. Here ...

  10. Images taken by the Voyager 2 Spacecraft

    Voyager Interstellar Mission: 1280x720x3: PIA22566: Voyager Probes Heliosphere Chart Full Resolution: ... Ganymede - Close Up Photos Full Resolution: TIFF (1.036 MB) JPEG (232.3 kB) 2000-05-23: Tethys: Voyager: VG ISS - Narrow Angle: 800x800x1: PIA02276: Tethys Full Resolution ...

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

    Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager probes are NASA's longest-operating mission and the only spacecraft ever to explore interstellar space. NASA's twin Voyager probes have become, in some ways, time capsules of their era: They each carry an eight-track tape player for recording data, they have about 3 million times less memory than modern cellphones, and they transmit data about 38,000 ...

  12. Voyager: A History in Photos

    The Man Behind the Mission Voyager's Scientific Toolkit Buy the DVD Voyager: A History in Photos ... Voyager 1 took this photo of Jupiter and two of its satellites (Io, left, and Europa) on Feb ...

  13. 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 ...

  14. Voyager Mission Photos and Premium High Res Pictures

    Voyager 2, aboard Titan/Centaur-7, lfited off on August 20, 1977. A mission to the outer planet.. S Voyager 2 spacecraft launched atop its Titan/Centaur-7 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on August 20 at 10:29 a.m.... The crescent of Uranus as recorded by Voyager 2, on its way to Neptune.

  15. Voyager: Inside the world's greatest space mission

    Voyager in deep space (Credit: Science Photo Library) In 1977, two spacecraft started a mission that has redefined our knowledge of the Solar System - and will soon become our ambassadors on a ...

  16. Voyager program

    The Voyager program's discoveries during the primary phase of its mission, including new close-up color photos of the major planets, were regularly documented by print and electronic media outlets. Among the best-known of these is an image of the Earth as a Pale Blue Dot , taken in 1990 by Voyager 1 , and popularized by Carl Sagan,

  17. Voyager

    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 in 2018. Mission Type.

  18. Voyager

    Videos about Voyager 1 and 2. Look, listen and learn from the scientists and engineers that have dedicated their lives to this historic mission. ... Voyager Images from the Odysseys (NASA Space Photos) Reflections on the Pale Blue Dot. Voyager 1 Experiences Three "Tsunami Waves" in Interstellar Space.

  19. 46 Years Ago, a Rare Alignment of Our Planets Allowed For An ...

    Two Long One-Way Trips. Voyager 1 swept past Jupiter in 1979, using the planet's tremendous gravity to power a slingshot outward toward Saturn and its haze-shrouded moon Titan (mission planners ...

  20. Voyager 1 to Take Pictures of Solar System Planets

    NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its mission along with Voyager 2 to explore the outer planets, will use its cameras February 13-14 to take an unprecedented family portrait of most of the planets in our solar system. The collection of images will be from a unique point-of-view -- looking down on the solar system from a position 32 ...

  21. A Look At NASA's Groundbreaking Voyager 1 Mission

    From January to April 1979, Voyager's suite of scientific tools amassed readings about the planet as it passed by, and the snap-happy spacecraft collected around 19,000 images of it in the process ...

  22. Three new moons discovered orbiting Uranus and Neptune

    NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft captured these views of Uranus (left) and Neptune (right) during its flybys of the planets in the 1980s.

  23. Will NASA be able to return Mars samples to Earth? New audit raises

    Now, the complexity of the MSR mission could drive costs to between $8 billion to $11 billion, the OIG report notes, citing a September 2023 Independent Review Board (IRB) report. Notably, a July ...

  24. Odysseus lunar mission: See the best pictures from the lander's

    Odysseus lunar mission: See the best pictures from the lander's historic moon landing Here are some photos of Odysseus' *ahem* odyssey on the way to becoming the first commercially-built ...

  25. Moon landing photos: First images from Intuitive Machines' Odysseus

    Lunar landing photos: Intuitive Machines' Odysseus sends back first images from the moon Published Mon, Feb 26 2024 10:17 AM EST Updated Mon, Feb 26 2024 4:15 PM EST Michael Sheetz @in ...

  26. Rover sends back new images from moon mission

    NASA advisor Dr. Paul Sutter gives an update on the mission to NBC's Gadi Schwartz and also explains how a NASA satellite had a near miss with a dead Russian satellite in orbit. Feb. 29, 2024

  27. 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 ...