Voyager I & Distant Earth

News that NASA's Voyager I spacecraft is still within our solar system (just), after some 35 years of travel at unimaginable speed, is truly mind-blowing.

Since last summer the spacecraft has been exploring uncharted territory where the effects of interstellar space, the space between stars, can be felt. Scientists don't know how wide this new found region in the solar system is or how much farther Voyager I has to travel to break to the other side. "It could actually be anytime or it could be several more years," said chief scientist Ed Stone of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission.


What an achievement though ! When held against 21st century drone strikes and cyber-snooping doesn't it show how far we have fallen into disrepute since 1977 when Voyagers I and II were launched? It reminds me of Pilgrim's Progress....but in reverse: from Celestial City to City of Destruction!



From NASA's website

(Voyager I has come up before in posts, in 2007 and 2012.)



Harking back to my old "Music Monday" habit, a piece of music occurs to me in relation to the above.

Songs of Distant Earth, Mike Oldfield's album released in 1994, based on Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction novel The Songs of Distant Earth, which I'm currently reading. The whole of Mike Oldfield's album, almost an hour long, is available on YouTube, as well as some shorter versions. Here's a 5 minute taster comprising two sections The Chamber and Hibernaculum

Arthur C. Clarke's novel is set in the far distant future: the 39th century, some 200 years after Earth's sun had "gone nova". Mankind had had a thousand years' warning of coming destruction, and had sent seed ships out into space in the direction of what appeared to be hospitable systems and planets. These ships contained seeds to rebuild mankind - human and domestic animal embryos, and the bacteria necessary for human survival. Early life would be shepherded by robots. Vast distances involved would take hundreds, maybe thousands, of years to cover. After the seed ships were launched, and during the following century or two discoveries were made enabling faster space travel, close to 20% of the speed of light. By the time Earth's destruction was imminent, a million humans, in hibernation, in a state of the art spaceship named Magellan, were able to escape the devastation. Their ultimate destination was a planet named Sagan Two.

The Magellan's route passed close to a planet named Thalassa, one of the destinations of an earlier seed ship. Colonization of Thalassa had been initially reported to Earth, but then all contact had been lost. The Magellan, needing to re-ice its deflector after collisons with space dust, decided to investigate the possibility of using water from Thalassa's vast oceans. The planet being mostly ocean with just three large islands where the colony of humans could have survived. Humans had survived - and flourished - in what appeared to be an idyllic existence. The Magellan's arrival upset the serene lifestyle of Thalassans. Magellan crew mingled with the Thalassan population, became involved in various ways with those who, though of the same species, fellow-humans, had never known life on Earth, and had felt little in the way of challenge or stress, throughout their lives. The people aboard Magellan, now out of hibernation, inevitably carried horrendous memories of Earth's last years.

Culture clash!

How could humanity thrive without the existence of challenge, one wonders. Human history has been filled with challenges and struggles from its outset, first against the elements, the search for food, wild animals, and of course struggle against one another, individually and communally. If the "struggle gene" were bred out of the species over several hundreds of years what would happen?
Thalassans?

I shall not get into the astrological argument which hovers here, I've strayed far enough from Voyager One already.

Now Voyager......so far away

Still a tad hungover from Prometheus (see Thursday's post) I needed a reminder of some real-world space-related wonderment:

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722 kilogram (1,592 lb) space probe launched by NASA in 1977, to study the outer Solar System and interstellar medium. The spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. At a distance of 120 astronomical units (1.8x1010 km) as of February 2012, it is the farthest man-made object from Earth. Voyager 1 is now in the heliosheath, which is the outermost layer of the heliosphere. It will most likely be the first probe to leave the Solar System.

Being a part of the Voyager program with its sister craft Voyager 2, the spacecraft is in extended mission, tasked with locating and studying the boundaries of the Solar System, including the Kuiper belt, the heliosphere and interstellar space. The primary mission ended November 20, 1980, after encountering the Jovian system in 1979 and the Saturnian system in 1980. It was the first probe to provide detailed images of the two largest planets and their moons. (Wikipedia)

So...while we happily contemplate our astrological maps, Voyagers I and II are still out there exploring the real thing.

From the New York Times of 5 September 2007 "The Mix Tape of the Gods" by Timothy Ferris
Excerpt ~~

"If all continues to go well, Voyager should pierce the heliosphere’s outer skin by around 2015. It will then depart into the void of interstellar space, where it is destined to wander among the stars forever. Mindful of this mind-boggling fact, the astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake persuaded NASA to attach a gold-plated phonograph record to each of the Voyager spacecraft. Containing photographs, natural sounds of Earth and 90 minutes of music from all over our world, the record was intended to preserve something of human culture beyond what an intelligent extraterrestrial, encountering the craft at some far-distant time and place, might infer from the spacecraft itself.

The information etched into the grooves of the Voyager record is expected to last at least one billion years. That’s a long time: A billion years ago, life on Earth was first venturing forth from the seas......................................

Contemplation of Voyager’s billion-year future among the stars may make us feel small and the span of our history seem insignificant. Yet the very existence of the two spacecraft and the gold records they carry suggests that there is something in the human spirit able to confront vast sweeps of space and time that we can only dimly comprehend."

Mind-boggling

While we contemplate our astrological maps, Voyagers I and II are out there exploring the real thing.

Here's a fascinating article from the New York Times of 5 September to boggle sleepy Sunday minds.

"The Mix Tape of the Gods" by Timothy Ferris

Excerpt

"If all continues to go well, Voyager should pierce the heliosphere’s outer skin by around 2015. It will then depart into the void of interstellar space, where it is destined to wander among the stars forever. Mindful of this mind-boggling fact, the astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake persuaded NASA to attach a gold-plated phonograph record to each of the Voyager spacecraft. Containing photographs, natural sounds of Earth and 90 minutes of music from all over our world, the record was intended to preserve something of human culture beyond what an intelligent extraterrestrial, encountering the craft at some far-distant time and place, might infer from the spacecraft itself.

The information etched into the grooves of the Voyager record is expected to last at least one billion years. That’s a long time: A billion years ago, life on Earth was first venturing forth from the seas......................................

Contemplation of Voyager’s billion-year future among the stars may make us feel small and the span of our history seem insignificant. Yet the very existence of the two spacecraft and the gold records they carry suggests that there is something in the human spirit able to confront vast sweeps of space and time that we can only dimly comprehend."