The Voyager Milestone!

Milestones. These tell us about how farther we go. How much we have achieved. And how much more to go! And there are some milestones beyond imagination. One such milestone- the 36 year old Voyager-1 has recently achieved. Its breaks its own. It ventures where no Earth object has flown.  It is indeed a moment of awe and pride for the whole team behind it! Kudos to them! (Launched by NASA, September 1977).

A small spacecraft of few metres dimensions, high gain antennas, few kilobytes of memory and made of decades old technology, it has travelled far and wide. Literally. Voyager started off in 1970s, as a humble spacecraft to venture into the unknown, mainly to study Jupiter and Saturn. It gave us the snapshots of outer planets, discovered new satellites, added to our knowledge about the planetary atmospheres and magnetic fields, revealed active volcanism on Io, and sent back wonderful close-up of Saturn rings and Titan. Voyager gave us a colourful representation of Jupiter, Saturn and their satellites Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, Mimas, Tethys, as never before. Voyager gave us questions, which were much later answered (and still being) by Galileo, Cassini. 

Voyager stands true to its name. It sails through space near and far, ventures like a true traveller, unaware of the path and obstacles, yet determined. Voyager has reached newer milestones year by year, bit by bit. On Feb. 14, 1990, Voyager 1 took the famous series of pictures of the Sun and the planets-'The Potrait of the Solar System' (PIA00451 is the mosaic, can be viewed at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=PIA00451 ). 

We always think of wonderful moments that people witnessed back in the Apollo era of 1960's and be hopeful of such wonders in our lifetime. And this one is indeed a special moment humanity is witnessing. Voyager at heliopause. About 18 billion kilometres from the Sun. Go voyager! We hope to receive intermittent news from you.

And just some food for thought! Where will it go now? How farther it can go? Till when will we be able to sense its signals? Will the aliens find it? What kind of surprises will it encounter?