Humans have been sending things into space for 50 years. Pioneer 10 is one of five spaceships that have reached the edges of our solar system or are close to it.
Most of the probes have exceeded their original mission plans and are still going strong. The original plan was to explore our neighboring planets, but now they're blazing a trail out of the solar system, providing astronomer with unique views in space.
45 years of operations is how long the Voyager missions have been operating. The two spaceships have contributed immensely to the understanding of the solar system.
The images were captured by the twin probes.
They are looking at where the sun's influence ends and other stars begin. The boundary where the sun's flow of particles ceases to be the most important influence is known as the heliopause.
"Voyager 1 has been in space for a decade, and it's still going strong," Linda Spilker, a planetary scientist at JPL, told Space.com.
The mission team had a hiccup this year when it began to send garbled information. A bad piece of computer hardware was found to be the cause of the problem.
These types of incidents are expected with an aging vehicle. As the probes' radioactive generators grow increasingly inefficient, the power supply onboard is being actively managed by the team. In order to keep the scientific instruments on board warm in the harsh, cold environment of space, mission personnel turned off the heaters.
The cameras may have been turned off decades ago, but the other instruments are still collecting data from the sun at a distance. The constant stream of charged particles flowing off the sun takes a long time to travel so distant observations allow scientists to see how the sun changes
There have been many surprises at the edges of the solar system. It would make sense that as you move away from the center of the solar system, the sun's atmosphere becomes less dense and more dense. Astronomers don't know what to make of that one.
Even after all this time, we still see the sun's influence in space. I'm looking forward to the 50thanniversary of Voyager.
The Pioneer spacecraft are considered to be pioneers in space history. Pioneer 10 lost communications back in 2003 and Pioneer 11 hasn't spoken in over 20 years.
Even if we don't send them commands or fire their rockets anymore, they are still on their way to the solar system. The laws of physics say that a spaceship won't stop unless something changes its course.
The youngest sibling of these missions has just launched. After completing a flyby of dwarf planet Pluto in 2015, this probe is going to reach the heliopause around 2040.
After completing its primary mission, it was able to complete a flyby of the smaller Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth. When an extended mission hadn't been approved, the craft was put into hibernation mode. The team is excited about moving into the 2nd mission. The KEM2 started on October 1st.
The team is getting ready for new observations. The team is prepared to use New Horizons as a powerhouse observatory in the distant solar system, providing a viewpoint we can't achieve here on Earth.
Bonnie Burrati is a planetary scientist at JPL and is looking forward to seeing the chunks of ice and rock beyond Neptune. She said that the unique position in the outer solar system provided new angles of view. Astronomers can use different views to figure out how rough the objects' surfaces are.
The Southwest Research Institute in Colorado has a planetary scientist who wants to use the spacecraft to look at the ice giants. Since we can't see Neptune and Uranus from that angle, scientists are able to learn about how light scatters through the planets' atmospheres. As NASA prepares for a new mission to visit Uranus, planetary scientists are eager for more information about these planets.
The "Kuiper cliff" is where scientists think there are less largeKBOs. Bryan Holler, an astronomer at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute, told Space.com that debris disks extend far from their host stars. Would aliens see the same thing if they looked at our solar system?
The next extended mission will go beyond the scope of planetary science. The mission will provide better-than-ever measurements of the background of light and Cosmic rays in space, trace the distributions of dust throughout our solar system, and obtain crucial information on the sun's influence. The solar system's structure can be mapped out with the help of the three far out satellites.
There are signs that the spaceship will have enough power to last through the 2040s and possibly beyond.
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