<p>Where does this rank on the list of human achievements? The Voyager I space probe has finally made it out of the solar system and into interstellar space.</p>
<p>Voyager 2, of course, was the one that went to the outer planets, but both of these things amazed me growing up. Seeing the images they sent back from Uranus and Neptune, knowing that it was the first time anything had ever been there – and might ever be there – filled me with a sense of wonder. I consumed books about these things.
Now, 36 years after launch, they’re still zipping away from us and still sending back data and making discoveries about things humans might never get a chance to learn about again. All with early 1970s technology that was a bit defective.
The next closest thing we have in the hopper right now is the New Horizons mission to Pluto (less than two years from its flyby), which we can only hope teaches a tenth of what these wonderful machines have taught us about space.</p>
<p>I thought this was pretty cool. I remember when it was launched. I think we forget how amazing this all is- to go to outer space! I guess I still get caught up in the Final Frontier stuff…</p>
<p>I think this ranks very high on the list of human achievements. Not as high as the moon landing, but pretty close behind it. I like that it was launched the same year the original “Star Wars” came out. It is a great achievement not so much due to technical difficulty (although given what they had to work with at the time, it is something!), but more due to the scope and broad vision and audacity to think we could send something out into interstellar space and have it report back to us.</p>
<p>I remember hearing somewhere that they’ll eventually zip around back like a comet, and return to Earth, in something like a million years. Is that true? Would they hold together that long? </p>
<p>I just love the image of them charging off with all that lovely information they have imprinted on the sides into deep space.</p>
<p>amazing that they have been going for so long… just amazing. Not sure there is another word for it… maybe “super cool”</p>
<p>greenwitch, if they come back in a million years, I guess (1) we would probably be able to “catch” them by then, but I wonder if we would have any tech to get the data off of it?</p>
<p>is it even collecting data? or just transmitting?</p>
<p>Yes, it still has instruments collecting data. It started with 11 instruments to collect data, and five are still working. The other six either broke or were disabled on purpose. The instruments still working are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ultraviolet Spectrometer</li>
<li>Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer</li>
<li>Low Energy Charged Particle Instrument</li>
<li>Cosmic Ray System</li>
<li>Plasma Wave System</li>
</ul>
<p>By around 2025 there won’t be enough power to run any of these. :(</p>
It is a great achievement not so much due to technical difficulty (although given what they had to work with at the time, it is something!), but more due to the scope and broad vision and audacity to think we could send something out into interstellar space and have it report back to us.</p>