Voyager I is a spacecraft that visited Jupiter and Saturn in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is currently the farthest man-made object from Earth, located in the heliosheath. Powered by radioisotope thermal generators, it will shut down in 2020. Voyager I provided the first high-resolution images of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and observed volcanic activity on Jupiter’s moon Io. It also visited Saturn and made observations of its rings and moons, especially Titan. Voyager II completed the Planetary Grand Tour, going beyond Saturn to visit Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager I is a 733 kg spacecraft that visited Jupiter and Saturn in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Currently, it is the farthest man-made object from Earth, at just over 100 AU (Earth-Sun lengths) distant, or about 13 light-hours. It is currently located in a part of the outer solar system called the heliosheath, where the Sun’s solar wind is compressed and made turbulent by its interaction with the interstellar medium. Voyager I is located in the Kuiper belt region, a massive asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Powered by radioisotope thermal generators, Voyager I will have enough energy to operate its instruments until about 2020, at which point it will shut down. Scientists hope that it will pass completely out of the heliosheath at this point, giving them their first readings of the interstellar medium.
Voyager I has a unique history. It was launched on September 5, 1977 and provided the first high-resolution images of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, including Callisto, Io, Titan, Ganymede and many others. It launched just a month after Voyager II, another interstellar probe that visited the gas giants. But because Voyager I benefited most from gravity assist, it is moving much faster than Voyager II and will continue to do so for centuries, if not millennia.
In January 1979, Voyager I passed just 349,000 kilometers (217,000 miles) from Jupiter’s center. Its key observation was volcanic activity on Jupiter’s moon Io, which had not been observed by ground-based telescopes or by two other spacecraft that had visited Jupiter before, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Io orbits very close to Jupiter and its geology is very active due to its proximity to Jupiter’s powerful magnetic fields.
In November 1980, Voyager I visited Saturn, its closest approach on November 12, when it came within 124,000 kilometers (77,000 miles) of Saturn’s cloud tops. He has made observations of Saturn’s rings and moons, especially Titan, which has its own atmosphere. Scientists chose to have Voyager I come up close to Titan to observe it, which knocked it out of the plane of the elliptical, making Titan the last solar system body it would approach. Its sister probe, Voyager II, has completed the Planetary Grand Tour, going beyond Saturn to visit Uranus and Neptune.
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