Voyager 2
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets. It was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with Uranus and Neptune. The probe has been in contact with Earth for 43 years, 3 months, and 12 days, and will remain so for another 43 years and 3 months. Voyager will orbit the Sun on November 5, 2018, at a distance of 122 AU from the Sun.
About Voyager 2 in brief
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets. It was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with Uranus and Neptune. It is the fourth of five spacecraft to achieve the Solar escape velocity, which will allow it to leave the Solar System. Its primary mission ended with the exploration of the Neptunian system on October 2, 1989, after having visited the Jovian system in 1979. Voyager 2 is now in its extended mission to study Interstellar Space and has been operating for 43 years, 3 months and 12 days as of December 3, 2020. It remains in contact through the NASA Deep Space Network. Communications are conducted over the S-band and X-band providing data rates as high as 115. 2 kilobits per second at the distance of Jupiter, and then ever-decreasing as the distance increased, because of the inverse-square law. The spacecraft also included 11 scientific instruments to study celestial objects as it traveled through space. Built with the intent for eventual interstellar travel, Voyager 2 included a large, 3. 7m parabolic, high-gain antenna to transceive data via the Deepspace Network on the Earth. It has begun to provide the first direct measurements of the density and temperature of the interstellar plasma. Voyager 1 had reached the interstellar medium in 2012, and Voyager 2 joined it in December 2014.
The mission is expected to continue at least until at least 2020 and have already done so so far. The Voyager 2 mission is scheduled to end in 2022, and the Voyager 1 mission will end in 2023. The Voyagers are scheduled to leave Earth’s orbit in 2028, and in 2029, the Voyagers will leave the solar system in 2031. The probes are expected to remain in contact for at least 20 more years, if not longer, until the end of the Voyager program in 2034. Voyager is the only spacecraft to have visited either of these two ice giant planets, and is the first to do so on a mission that was intended to explore the entire solar system. It will also be the first spacecraft to orbit the sun. Voyager has been the only probe to orbit both the Sun and the Earth, and to visit both the Earth and the moon. The probe has been in contact with Earth for 43 years, 3 months, and 12 days, and will remain so for another 43 years and 3 months. Voyager will orbit the Sun on November 5, 2018, at a distance of 122 AU from the Sun, moving at a velocity of 15. 341 kms relative to the Sun. On November 2, 2020, when a series of instructions was transmitted, subsequently executed and relayed back with a successful communication message, the probe left the heliosphere, and entered the interstellarmedium. Voyager’s mission will be extended to study interstellar space.
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This page is based on the article Voyager 2 published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
