Trapped under its crust of ice is another dark ocean, and perhaps living creatures. It slid past two-faced Iapetus, with light and dark sides. Voyager probed the methane skies of Titan. Braided, kinked and patrolled by tiny moonlets. Its broad rings dissolved into thousands of grooves, like a phonograph record. Two years after Jupiter, the Voyagers approached Saturn, jewel of the solar system. And eggshell-smooth Europa, an icy shell around a hidden ocean. Volcanoes spouting sulphur on Jupiter’s moon Io, a tormented world twisted and pulled by gravity. Voyager saw swirls within swirls in Jupiter’s banded jet streams. Every image sent back to Earth was another lesson on nature’s ability to surprise. At each planetfall, fuzzy dots bloomed into worlds. But Voyager 2 kept trekking, spiraling outward on a grand tour of the outer planets, toward distant Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 turned upward, leaving the plane of the planets and heading toward interstellar space.
We have ignition and we have liftoff!” Taking advantage of a rare planetary alignment, the twin Voyager spacecraft raced outward toward Jupiter, then used the giant planet’s gravity to slingshot on to Saturn. Transcript Voyager’s 40th Anniversary Long after they have stopped communicating with Earth, the twin Voyager spacecraft will forever drift among the stars.įorty years ago, in August and September of 1977, a band of humans launched a pair of robots to explore the solar system and probe the infinite darkness beyond.
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