40 years ago Voyager twin spacecraft left Earth to embark on the adventure of revealing many of the hidden secrets of the planets around us. The ships, when they began their mission, were the first human objects to reach the abyss of interstellar space.
But time does not seem an impediment to these ships. For 40 years they have been in space, but the mission is still going. The ships travel the space at more than 50 000 kilometers per hour.
40 years later, Voyagers continue to communicate with Earth
Speaking to The Atlantic magazine, project director -Suzanne Dodd- of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed that many people still ask her what she means when she says the mission is still underway. It is not easy to understand that, despite having passed from Neptune, the ships continued to function.
After giving humanity the first glances to the neighboring planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the ships continued their journey towards the darkest part of the solar system, towards the limits with the unknown.
Voyager 1 managed to leave the system 5 years ago, although the second ship is still in the process of doing so. He is running out of energy but still has a mission to complete. The ships are currently more than 13 billion kilometers from Earth.
However, distance is not an impediment to them. Neither is an impediment the passage of time. The spacecraft, although it takes them considerable time, still communicate with their home, sending weak signals with important information through radio waves that are analyzed once they arrive at the bases of NASA, which detects them through a large collection of antennas space.
The data of the ships takes between 19 and 16 hours to arrive at the Earth. In an age as advanced as ours, this time seems excessive, but taking into account that the ships were launched in 1977, that they continue to work is even astonishing.
Jeff Berner has worked for more than 30 years on the mission. For him, the fact that the signals still reach the Earth, even if it is with enough weakness, shows how well the ships were built. The power of the ship transmitters is similar to that of the lamp inside a refrigerator, but it is powerful enough for NASA to hear when it has information to send.
That little "pale blue dot" called home
NASA researchers have indicated that the power of the ship generators is becoming weaker. The ships are losing strength every day, which will soon result in them being turned off. The ships will eventually have to rest forever.
Director Suzanne Dodd said that the ships will probably no longer work from 2020, or perhaps about 2030. "One day we will be looking for the signal and we will not hear it any more." The situation undoubtedly causes a great deal of anxiety for everyone. After 40 years, no one wants the ships to go out, but they know there is no alternative. The farewell, probably, will be the saddest part.
The ships, meanwhile, will continue to send reports of magnetic fields or charged particles, through the circuit of information they send with their weak power to NASA's huge detectors in space. The ships are not aware of the little time they have left, fortunately they are just a set of circuits and metals that have no feelings.
On the other hand, the ships will not send more photos. The camera was turned off to save memory. Photos are not needed now. In the interstellar vacuum where the first ship is sailing there are no humans, there is her sister companion, with whom she shared the journey for 40 years, everything is dark, she is completely alone, "there is nothing to take photos "Said Suzanne Dodd, the team's manager. She is completely alone, but still communicates with the Earth.
But not everything is lost: although we do not have new photos, we can always remember that famous photo that was taken by these ships where the Earth can be seen as a little "pale blue point", a photo that taught us so much about the insignificant thing that we can be humans in the immensity of space. The ships, from their distance, can still teach us much.
What do you think about the Voyager mission, after 40 years floating in space? Are you sad that they are soon going out or are you glad that they get their well-deserved rest?
