Today's Article

“We have 2lift-off of the Titan Centaur carrying the first of two Voyager spacecraft to extend man's senses farther into the 3solar system than ever before.”

From a scientific 4standpoint, what's critical about Voyager today is the record of data that is taking from Earth, right? Out through the outer 5heliosheath, across the 6heliopause, and as far into 7interstellar space as we can make that data last. Because we can see the changes in the data, changes in the environment as we travel further and further away. 

They were 8identical 9at launch. Different things have failed on the spacecraft differently. So if you think of twins, one has lost its 10hearing and needs some 11hearing aids, and another one has lost a bit of some 12sense of touch. But for aging spacecraft, 46 years now, they're actually very healthy.

Linda Spilker, Voyager Project Scientiest, NASA: Voyager has 13instruments remaining on and operating that can measure things like the 14magnetic field, the 15electrons, 16protons, and the 17particles that are around the spacecraft. A lot going on in a place where you can't really see the particles, but still a lot that we can measure and learn about the environment outside this bubble that's 18generated by the 19solar wind.

Suzanne Dodd: We've turned off many instruments, most obviously the instruments that were designed to really look at the planets. Those we turned off after the 20Neptune encounter in order to 21repurpose the memory for the interstellar mission.

Linda Spilker: When we turned the instrument heaters off and they got much colder, they had to 22recalibrate. But 23detectors often like being colder, that their 24signal-to-noise improves. And so in a certain sense, we got a benefit out of turning off the heaters, that the instruments were actually, in some cases, slightly more sensitive.