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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
Automatic interplanetary stations Voyager. History of invention and production
Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us Voyager (English voyager, from French voyageur - "traveler") is the name of two American spacecraft launched in 1977, as well as a project to explore the outer planets of the solar system with the participation of vehicles of this series. In total, two vehicles of the Voyager series were created and sent into space: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. The vehicles were created at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA. The project is considered one of the most successful and productive in the history of interplanetary research - both Voyagers transmitted high-quality images of Jupiter and Saturn for the first time, and Voyager 2 reached Uranus and Neptune for the first time. The Voyagers were the third and fourth spacecraft whose flight plan provided for a flight outside the solar system (the first two were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11). Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft in history to reach the boundaries of the solar system and go beyond it. The Voyager series vehicles are highly autonomous robots equipped with scientific instruments for exploring the outer planets, as well as their own power plants, rocket engines, computers, radio communication and control systems. The total weight of each device is about 721 kg.
In the late 1960s, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) decided to conduct the Grand Tour experiment, the idea of which was as follows. Usually a spacecraft can reach one planet. But sometimes, once every few decades, the planets of the solar system seem to line up one after another, and the flight path can be drawn past several at once. A similar situation should have developed in the late 1970s - early 1980s, and the Americans set out to inspect all the planets, starting with Mars, in one flight. To do this, they decided to use the so-called gravitational maneuver, when the spacecraft catches up with the planet and it "pulls" it, accelerating and turning. But there were not enough funds for the "Big Tour"; we had to limit ourselves to the giant planets. The Voyager program cost nine hundred million dollars over five years of development and twelve years of operational work.
In August-September 1977, two automatic interplanetary stations "Voyager" were launched, each weighing 798 kilograms. They are set up the same way. The most conspicuous part of the Voyagers is the 3,66-meter diameter cup of a highly directional antenna, which provides communication with the Earth. On the rear side of the antenna there is a sealed compartment for service instruments, which has the shape of a decahedral prism. It contains radio systems, control equipment with an on-board electronic computer, steering motors, power supply converters; radiators of the thermal control system are mounted on three sides of the compartment. The station is supplied with electricity by three radioisotope generators mounted on one of the three rods. The power of the generators at the beginning of the flight reached 431 watts. Scientific instruments are located on the other two rods. Four magnetometers are installed on one of them, on the other, on a turntable, two television cameras with tele- and wide-angle lenses, ultraviolet and infrared range spectrometers, detectors of cosmic radiation, charged particles and much more. The stations will someday go beyond the solar system and may be discovered by extraterrestrial civilizations. Therefore, a container was installed on the devices with a record of the address of Kurt Waldheim, then the UN Secretary General, greetings in 60 languages, sounds and noises of the Earth with a total duration of 110 minutes and 115 images. Voyager 1 launched on September 5, 1977. From December 10 of the same year to September 8 of the next, he walked through the asteroid belt and on March 5, 1979 approached Jupiter, on November 12, 1980 - with Saturn. Voyager 2 was launched earlier - on August 20, 1974, but on a different, slower trajectory. It reached Jupiter on July 9, 1979, and on August 26, 1981, Voyager 2 followed its predecessor at a distance of 101 kilometers from Saturn. The station's instruments made it possible to clarify the nature of some of the phenomena first detected by Voyager 1 and Pioneer 11. So, the resolution in the images of the rings of Saturn was brought up to 10 kilometers (instead of 70 kilometers at the first meeting), and the finest structures from which the rings are woven were revealed. On the day of closest approach, Voyager 2 photographed the Knotty and Eccentric F Ring. Images with a resolution of a few kilometers revealed 4 components that make up the ring. It was possible to distinguish strands intertwined in different places, and in others stretching in parallel. Condensations and knots were found at certain intervals of several thousand kilometers. Voyager 2 also provided additional information about Saturn's moons. The station passed Titan, Rhea and Tethys. In the region of the orbits of Rhea and Dione, he discovered a plasma toroid, heated to the highest temperature observed anywhere in the solar system. The plasma turned out to be three hundred times hotter than the solar corona, and twice as hot as Jupiter's surroundings. Having successfully met with Saturn, the stations completed the "minimum program" of the Voyager project. The first apparatus after the passage of Saturn "soared" above the plane of the ecliptic, and it was no longer destined to meet planets on its way. But Voyager 2 was deflected by Saturn's gravitational field into a trajectory that would allow it to reach Uranus and Neptune. The "activists" of the program were ready to overcome all financial and technical problems in order to implement the idea of the "Big Tour" project. The "throw" to Uranus was officially approved by NASA in January 1981. In December 1985, difficulties arose with navigation, which made it necessary to recalculate the mass of Uranus approaching the station so that the calculated trajectory would again coincide with the real one. On December 30, the station discovered a previously unknown satellite of Uranus, located between the orbit of Miranda and the outer boundary of the rings. Until the moment of maximum approach to the Urals, 10 new satellites were discovered. Their diameters were 40-80 kilometers, with the exception of the first, 160-kilometer satellite. On January 14, 1986, when Voyager was at a distance of 12,9 million kilometers from the target, a series of images of the disk of Uranus was taken for four hours, in which, for the first time in the history of planetary exploration, details of the atmosphere were seen - a crescent cloud shone near the planet's limb. On January 17, a long-lens camera from 9,1 million kilometers away showed a giant planet that looked like a green-blue ball. Having passed Uranus, the station successfully “taxied out” onto the flight path to Neptune, and now few people doubted the upcoming success. Assessing the state of the station, experts made adjustments to the details of the upcoming rendezvous. In the first days of December 1986, NASA announced that the Voyager path would be laid further than expected from Neptune and, accordingly, from its satellite Triton. The danger of radiation belts, fragments of unknown sizes that make up rings, magnetic fields and other similar troubles forced the supposed point of Neptune to be pushed back to a distance of 29200 kilometers, and Triton - to 40000 kilometers. For this purpose, a trajectory correction was scheduled for March 13, 1987. During 1987, Voyager's on-board computer software was once again replaced with the expectation of even lower illumination and extended exposure time when photographing. Special measures have been taken to improve the stability of the turntable with scientific instruments. It was decided to slow down the movement of the platform to prevent blurring of images. As before the meeting with Uranus, testing of the new mode of operation took place on Voyager 1. The diameter of the main antennas of NASA's Deep Space Communications Station has been increased from 64 meters to 70 meters. In turn, the antennas of the US National Science Foundation, Australian and Japanese radio telescopes were combined into a single complex with NASA tracking stations. Since January 1989, being at a distance of 310 million kilometers from the target, Voyager 2 began shooting Neptune. Unlike the featureless disk of Uranus, cloud formations were already visible in images of Neptune with a resolution of only about six thousand kilometers. On April 3, 1989, the station's cameras revealed a structure in Neptune's atmosphere of the same shape and relative size as Jupiter's Great Red Spot. After re-analyzing the images, scientists were convinced that signs of this atmospheric phenomenon have been present in photographs since at least January 23, 1989. Subsequently, it received the name of the Great Dark Spot.
On June 5, simultaneously with the start of instrument calibration, Voyager began a special imaging session during which an image of the planet's disk was transmitted every fifth part of a revolution around its axis. In mid-June, photographs were transmitted to Earth, which revealed the first unknown satellite of Neptune, which received a temporary name in 1989. In early August, the discovery of four new satellites was already announced. All of them were recorded in a photograph taken on July 30. The new satellites were dark shapeless blocks ranging in size from 50 to 400 kilometers. Then two more satellites with a diameter of 50 and 90 kilometers were discovered. On August 6, studies of Neptune's heat balance and high-resolution imaging of the planet's disk began. The following discoveries were related to the rings of Neptune. Pictures from the station, taken more than a week before closest approach to the planet, initially confirmed the existence of open arcs around Neptune. However, the closer the station was to the target, the more fully the filaments of arcs appeared on the images, eventually turning into rings of different densities in different areas. In total, four rings of Neptune have been identified. On the night of August 24, while going around the north pole of Neptune, Voyager 2 passed at the minimum distance from the planet - 4895 kilometers from the upper boundary of the cloud layer. Just two hours earlier, the station took the best photographs of Neptune's atmosphere. 4 hours and 15 minutes after the meeting with Neptune, Voyager 2, under the influence of the planet's gravitational field, was at a distance of 38600 kilometers from Triton, Neptune's largest satellite. An unknown world of ridges and faults filled with ice-like viscous lava, basins and lakes of liquid mud appeared before the eyes of earthlings. The diameter of the satellite turned out to be 2730 kilometers. On October 9, the discovery of an active geyser on Triton was announced. An image taken on August 24 from a distance of 99920 kilometers showed an ejection of dark matter that shot up to a height of eight kilometers. The substance, according to scientists, was nitrogen with impurities of organic molecules, giving it a dark color. The Voyager data made it possible to clarify the diameter of another known satellite of Neptune, the Nereid. Its diameter was 340 kilometers. During the encounter with Neptune, Voyager 2 was working almost to the limit of its capabilities. In total, about 80 different maneuvers were performed, including 9 smooth turns of the platform with scientific instruments. The duration of the exposure during shooting reached ten minutes, and every time it was possible to avoid blurring the image. After the passage of the Neptune family, the station "dived" under the plane of the ecliptic and at an angle of fifty degrees began to move away from the solar system in the direction of the star Ross 248, which it will apparently reach in 42000. The planetary portion of the Voyager mission ended, and their imaging systems were turned off after the final series of photographs. Nevertheless, the resources of the electrical systems of both Voyagers will allow for quite a long time to transmit scientific information about the state of the now interstellar medium. During this time, more than one hundred thousand images and other information about all the giant planets and their surroundings have been received on Earth. The scientific information obtained by Voyagers was available not only to scientists around the world, but to the entire international community. The pictures of the planets taken by the stations made the cover of popular magazines, introducing humanity to the most remote corners of the solar system. Author: Musskiy S.A.
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Comments on the article: Yura With respect to the Voyager series spacecraft, this is one of the many marvelous, delightful and epoch-making moments in the history of mankind. Many thanks to the organizers and workers of this page, your work expands the horizons of the reader. I hope that such enlightenment will awaken in young inquisitive minds a thirst for science and technology to contribute to the knowledge of the surrounding world. [up]
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