what did voyager 2 discover on saturn

News | August 23, 2016

​35 years on, voyager's legacy continues at saturn.

Up-close views from the Voyagers, like this one from Voyager 2, showed Saturn and its rings as never before . Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Saturn, with its alluring rings and numerous moons, has long fascinated stargazers and scientists. After an initial flyby of Pioneer 11 in 1979, humanity got a second, much closer look at this complex planetary system in the early 1980s through the eyes of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft.

Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn 35 years ago -- on Aug. 25, 1981. What the Voyagers revealed at the planet was so phenomenal that, just one year later, a joint American and European working group began discussing a mission that would carry on Voyager's legacy at Saturn. That mission -- named Cassini -- has been studying the Saturn system since 2004. Cassini has followed up on many of Voyager's discoveries, and has deepened our understanding of what some might call a "mini solar system."

"Saturn, like all of the planets the Voyagers visited, was full of exciting discoveries and surprises," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "By giving us unprecedented views of the Saturn system, Voyager gave us plenty of reasons to go back for a closer look."

Many Mysterious Moons

Voyager's Saturn flybys provided a thrilling look at the planet's moons -- a diverse menagerie of worlds, each with unique character and charm. Voyager's images transformed the moons from points of light to fully realized places. Dramatic landscapes on Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus and other moons tantalized scientists with features hinting at tortured pasts.

"The stars of the Saturn system are the moons, which surprised all of us on both the Voyager and Cassini missions," said Linda Spilker, project scientist for Cassini at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. Spilker also served on the Voyager science team.

One of the key findings of the Voyagers' visits to Saturn was that the planet's moons had evidence of past geological activity and that Enceladus -- the brightest, most reflective planetary body scientists had ever seen -- could still be active.

Cassini set out to delve deeper into the nature of these moons, and found that, indeed, icy Enceladus has geysers erupting to this day. Cassini also confirmed that Enceladus is the source of Saturn's E ring, which was suggested by Voyager. But while Voyager images of wispy terrain hinted at ice volcanoes on Dione, Cassini found this feathery coating was actually a system of bright canyons.

…Especially Titan

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, was a high-priority target for the Voyager mission. Gerard Kuiper, for whom the Kuiper Belt is named, had discovered in 1944 that Titan had an atmosphere containing methane. Observations from both Voyagers showed that Titan's atmosphere was primarily composed of nitrogen, with a few percent methane and smaller amounts of other complex hydrocarbons, such as ethane, propane and acetylene. No other moon in the solar system has a dense atmosphere.

Mission planners mapped out a path through the Saturn system that provided the gravitational boost needed to send Voyager 2 onward to Uranus . But because of intense interest in Titan's atmosphere, the giant moon was the higher priority. In fact, the team would have directed Voyager 2 much closer to Titan if Voyager 1 had not been successful in observing it.

"To fly close to Titan, Voyager 2 would have swung upward out of the plane of the planets, and couldn't have gone on to visit any others," Stone said. "It was fortunate that Voyager 1's observations of Titan went flawlessly, so that Voyager 2 could continue traveling to Uranus and Neptune."

To the Voyagers, Titan appeared as a featureless orange ball because of dense haze in its atmosphere. Seeing through this haze was a chief goal of the Cassini mission. Cassini carried cameras with infrared vision that could see through the haze, a radar that could map the surface in detail, and the European Huygens probe, which landed on the moon's frigid surface on Jan. 14, 2005. We now know, thanks to Cassini, that smoggy Titan has methane lakes and flooded canyons .

New Shapes and Sizes

Voyager discovered four new moons and sharpened our view of some that were previously known. The spacecraft also revealed how the gravitational pull of these satellites causes ripples in Saturn's rings, much like the wake of a ship on the sea. There were also surprising gaps in the rings, some caused by moons embedded within them.

Voyager also revealed an immense hexagonal feature in the clouds that surrounded Saturn's north pole, which Cassini found was still going strong a quarter century later. Additionally, Voyager measured the wind speeds, temperature and density of Saturn's atmosphere. With Voyager's measurements as a starting point, Cassini further explored how Saturn's atmosphere changes with the seasons.

Lingering Mysteries of Saturn and Beyond

While both missions have vastly improved our understanding of Saturn, its rings and moons, there are still mysteries galore. For example, the exact length of Saturn's day continues to elude researchers. The Voyagers measured it to be a period of 10.66 hours, but Cassini has measured two different, changing periods in the north and south.

Voyager also made the first up-close observations of Saturn's rings, discovering new thin and faint rings, along with the ghostly features called spokes. But despite more than a decade of observations with Cassini, scientists are still unsure about the age of the rings -- they could be hundreds of millions of years old, or several billion. Cassini, in turn, has prompted new questions of its own, such as whether the ocean worlds Enceladus and Titan could be habitable.

"The twin Voyagers rewrote the textbooks on Saturn, its rings and moons, and we couldn't wait to go back with Cassini," Spilker said. "New mysteries uncovered by Cassini will await the next missions to follow in the footsteps of Voyager."

Voyager 2’s mission of discovery continues to this day. It is now part of the Heliophysics System Observatory, a collection of missions that explore our space environment, and which contribute to protecting future missions on their journeys. Voyager now explores what's known as the interstellar boundary region, where material blowing out from the sun encounters similar winds from other stars.

The two Voyager spacecraft, as well as Cassini, were built by JPL, which continues to operate the three missions. JPL is a division of Caltech. For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/voyager

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

Elizabeth Landau Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-354-6425 [email protected]

Written by Elizabeth Landau and Preston Dyches

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Interstellar Mission

The Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has been in operation since 1977 and is the only spacecraft to have ever visited Uranus and Neptune, has made its way to interstellar space, where its twin spacecraft, Voyager 1, has resided since August 2012.

Mission Statistics

Launch Date

Aug. 20, 1977

About the mission

The Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has been in operation since 1977 and is the only spacecraft to have ever visited Uranus and Neptune, has made its way to interstellar space, where its twin spacecraft, Voyager 1, has resided since August 2012. During its travels through the outer solar system, Voyager 2 visited all four gas giant planets, and also discovered and photographed many of the planets' moons.

The spacecraft's flyby of Neptune in 1989 set it on a course below the elliptic plane that eventually took it to interstellar space on November 5, 2018. In 1998, engineers switched off the spacecraft's nonessential instruments to conserve power. Data from at least some of the six instruments still in operation should be received until at least 2025.

Instruments

• Imaging system
• Infrared interferometer spectrometer
• Ultraviolet spectrometer
• Triaxial fluxgate magnetometer
• Plasma spectrometer
• Low-energy charged particles detectors
• Cosmic Ray System (CRS)
• Photopolarimeter System (PPS)
• Plasma Wave System (PWS)

Mission Highlights

Nov. 5, 2018

Interactive 3D model of Voyager 2.View the full interactive experience at Eyes on the Solar System .

In 1981, Voyager 2's visit to Saturn completely changed the hunt for aliens

The hunt for habitable worlds owes a debt to this moment in planetary science history.

Forty years ago, NASA scientist Linda Spilker started sleeping at the office. It was her first job out of college, but she wasn’t camping out because she was over-worked and chained to her desk. Instead, she was waiting for an exquisite moment in human history: The first time Voyager 2 would fly by Saturn and its moons, and, critically, the images it would return to Earth of the distinctive ringed planet.

“I’d bring my sleeping bag into my office, and I’d have like a timeline of when the pictures would come back to the Earth,” she recalls for Inverse . “A lot of people did this, so you could sometimes go into somebody’s office, and you might see a pair of feet sticking out from under the desk.”

Voyager 2’s flyby wasn’t the first time a spacecraft gave scientists a close-up view of the gas giant and its moons — that privilege went to its sister spacecraft Voyager 1, which entered the Saturn system on November 12, 1980.

But the flyby, which took place on August 26, 1981, provided scientists here on Earth with important observations that, combined with those of Voyager 1, have informed every NASA mission to the Saturn system since.

“We could go in and tweak the designs and the observations for Voyager 2.”

NASA’s Cassini, Huygens, and, importantly, the upcoming Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan to search for signs of life all owe a debt to this moment in history.

What Voyager 2 discovered around Saturn — When Spilker graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics and went to work for NASA in 1977, they gave her a choice of missions., including a brand new mission set to launch that year — Voyager.

“When they told me that Voyager was headed to Jupiter and Saturn, and possibly onto Uranus, and Neptune, I said, ‘Sign me up,’” she says.

Spilker watched Voyager 2 launch in August of 1977 and then settled into her role on the science team for both space probes until they reached the Saturn system. Voyager 1 made it on November 12, 1980, and just a little shy of one year later, Voyager 2 entered the Saturn system on August 26, 1981.

“The first flyby was unique in that we found so many interesting new things. We got to see the detailed structure, for instance, in Saturn’s rings,” Spilker says. With these data in hand, the scientists on the ground could plan for the next flyby — and what they wanted to find.

“We could go in and tweak the designs and the observations for Voyager 2,” Spilker says.

Voyager 2 took a closer look at Saturn’s rings, particularly the narrow, outermost “F” ring.

“We saw a lot of changes in that ring, in particular, these sorts of kinks and braids that we could see in that ring,” Spilker says.

Saturn’s rings as imaged by Voyager 2.

Voyager 2 revealed that Saturn’s rings are anything but “bland sheets of material,” but rather intricate, detailed, and dynamic structures. Spilker would later use Voyager 2’s stellar and radio occultation data — measurements of how starlight and radio waves were influenced by the rings while passing through them — to complete her Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics.

“The way the waves damp out tell you something about the surface mass density and about the densities of particles,” she says.

“We saw evidence of tectonic fractures, softened craters.”

“I was always a big fan of the rings after having used so much ring data for my thesis.”

Identifying habitable worlds — Less visually beautiful, but perhaps more intellectually curious, were the observations collected by Voyager 2 of two of Saturn’s moons, Titan and Enceladus. These data would inform both later NASA missions and the scientific search for alien life.

Enceladus is now known to harbor a global liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust, making it a prime candidate target to search for extraterrestrial life. But before the Voyager craft made it to Saturn, scientists were not even sure the small, 500-kilometer diameter world was geologically active — a key ingredient for life.

“What was really astonishing was to see Enceladus and just how bright and pristine this world looked,” Spilker says.

“We saw evidence of tectonic fractures, softened craters,” she recalls.

Saturn’s moon Enceladus as captured by Voyager 2.

NASA’s 2005 Cassini mission conducted multiple flybys of the little moon and took images of geysers erupting from Enceladus’s southern polar region. Cassini even flew through the geysers’ plumes, sampling what is believed to be water spewing up from the subsurface ocean.

Meanwhile, the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, remained obscured by haze during the Voyager missions. But the data Voyager 1 and 2 collected was then used to better equip the Cassini spacecraft and the Huygens lander , which separated from Cassini to land on Titan on January 14, 2005.

Saturn’s largest moon Titan as imaged by Voyager 2.

Together, they revealed a world of hydrocarbon lakes and water ice. Titan, scientists confirmed, was another intriguing candidate for hosting extraterrestrial life.

“All the things we learned with Voyager informed us and helped us build the Huygens probe,” Spilker says. She would know, as she joined the Cassini team in 1988.

“Had we not had that information from Voyager, it might have been much harder to put together.”

How Voyager 2 still influences NASA missions to Saturn —  Voyager to Cassini and Huygens — each science mission informs the next, according to Planetary Scientist Elizabeth Turtle . Turtle is the primary investigator on the upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan set to launch in the mid-2030s.

“Titan has been doing prebiotic chemistry experiments for us.”

“Each mission provides information that is the basis for future missions,” she says. “But each mission also raises questions, and those become the questions the next missions try to tackle.”

One of the big mysteries about Titan following the Voyager mission’s flyby was what lay on the moon’s surface. Cassini and Huygens answered that question, making observations that revealed a dense atmosphere rich in complex carbon molecules and a surface made of water ice. Turtle says these could include the ingredients necessary for the chemical reactions that could lead to the genesis of life.

Dragonfly on Titan, as imagined by an artist.

Now it’s Dragonfly’s turn to answer the follow-up question as to whether or not those ingredients are indicative of signs of life on Titan.

An octocopter drone, Dragonfly will fly from place to place to sample the surface of Titan.

“Titan has been doing prebiotic chemistry experiments for us,” Turtle says. “What dragonfly is designed to do is to get there and pick up the results of those experiments and tell us whether there are biologically relevant compounds on the surface of Titan.”

How Voyager 2 keeps on keeping on — As for Voyager and Spilker, they have both left planetary science far behind. Earlier this year, Spilker rejoined the Voyager 2 mission as its deputy project scientist. Only now, instead of studying Saturn's rings, she’s studying the interstellar medium 150 astronomical units from the Sun: Voyager 2 officially left the Solar System on November 5, 2018.

“I think the goal is to keep taking as much science data for as long as we can,” Spilker says of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is now in its 44th year of operations.

“It’s gonna be a long time until we ever get another mission as far from the Sun as Voyager.”

Spilker recalls a statement made by Richard Laeser, then the Voyager project manager, after the Saturn flyby. “Voyager is in its post-retirement years,” Laeser said, and “is very healthy for its age.”

“I just had to chuckle,” Spilker says, “Because that was in 1985, and here we are in 2021, and the Voyagers — both of them are still going strong.”

• Space Science

Voyager 2: An iconic spacecraft that's still exploring 45 years on

The interstellar vagabond continues to explore the cosmos along with its twin, Voyager 1.

Voyager 2 as the backup

Jupiter and saturn flyby, uranus and neptune flyby, voyager 2's interstellar adventure, voyager 2's legacy, additional information.

Voyager 2, was the first of two twin probes NASA sent to investigate the outer planets of our solar system. 

The probe was launched aboard a Titan IIIE-Centaur from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 41 (previously Launch Complex 41) on Aug. 20, 1977, its twin spacecraft Voyager 1 was launched about two weeks later on Sept. 5. NASA planned for the Voyager spacecraft to take advantage of an alignment of the outer planets that takes place only every 176 years. The alignment would allow both probes to swing from one planet to the next, with a gravity boost to help them along the way.

While Voyager 1 focused on Jupiter and Saturn , Voyager 2 visited both those planets and also ventured to Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2's mission to those last two planets would be humanity's only visit in the 20th century.

Related: Celebrate 45 years of Voyager with these amazing images of our solar system (gallery)

Voyager 2 is now traveling through interstellar space. As of early November 2018, NASA announced that Voyager 2 had crossed the outer edge of our solar system ( Voyager 1 crossed the boundary into interstellar space in 2012. ) Voyager 2 is now approximately 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) away from Earth and counting!  

Although there was not enough money in Voyager 2's budget to guarantee it would still work when flying past Uranus and Neptune, its trajectory was designed to go past those planets anyway. If the spacecraft were still working after Saturn, NASA could try to take pictures of the other planets.

Voyager 2 was ready as a backup for Voyager 1. If Voyager 1 failed when taking pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, NASA was prepared to alter Voyager 2's path to follow Voyager 1's trajectory. It would cut off the Uranus and Neptune option, but still, preserve the possibility of capturing images.

The backup plan was never executed, though, because Voyager 1 went on to make many discoveries at Jupiter and Saturn, working well enough for NASA to carry out its original plans for Voyager 2.

Voyager 2 reached Jupiter in 1979, two years after launching from Cape Canaveral. Since Voyager 1 had just gone through the system four months earlier, Voyager 2's arrival allowed NASA to take valuable comparison shots of Jupiter and its moons. It captured changes in the Great Red Spot and also resolved some of the moon's surfaces in greater detail.

Voyager 2 took pictures of many of Jupiter's satellites. Among its most spectacular findings were pictures from the icy moon Europa . Voyager 2 snapped detailed photos of the icy moon's cracks from 128,000 miles (205,996 km) away and revealed no change in elevation anywhere on the moon's surface.

Proving that moons are abundant around the outer planets, Voyager 2 happened to image Adrastea, a small moon of Jupiter, only months after Voyager 1 found two other Jupiter moons, Thebe and Metis. Adrastea is exceptionally small, only about 19 miles (30.5 kilometers) in diameter at the smallest estimate.

Next in line was Saturn. Voyager 2  became the third spacecraft to visit Saturn when it arrived at its closest point to the ringed planet on Aug. 26, 1981, and took hundreds of pictures of the planet, its moons and its rings . Suspecting that Saturn might be circled by many ringlets, scientists conducted an experiment. They watched the star Delta Scorpii for nearly two and a half hours as it passed through the plane of the rings. As expected, the star's flickering light revealed ringlets as small as 330 feet (100 meters) in diameter. 

Voyager 2's made its closest approach to Uranus on Jan. 24, 1986, becoming the first spacecraft to visit the ice giant. The probe made several observations of the planet, noting that the south pole was facing the sun and that its atmosphere is about 85% hydrogen and 15% helium. 

Additionally, Voyager 2 discovered rings around Uranus, 10 new moons and a magnetic field that, oddly, was 55 degrees off the planet's axis. Astronomers are still puzzling over Uranus' orientation today.

Voyager 2's pictures of the moon Miranda revealed it to be perhaps the strangest moon in the solar system. Its jumbled-up surface appears as though it was pushed together and broken apart several times.

The spacecraft then made it to Neptune , reaching the closest point on Aug. 25, 1989. It skimmed about 3,000 miles from the top of the planet's atmosphere and spotted five new moons as well as four rings around the planet. Remarkably, Voyager 2 is currently the only human-made object to have flown by the intriguing ice giant, according to NASA .

On November 5, 2018, Voyager 2 crossed the heliopause — the boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space. At this stage, the probe was 119 astronomical units from the sun. (One AU is the average Earth-sun distance, which is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.) Voyager 1 made the crossing at nearly the same distance, 121.6 AU.

According to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) , Voyager 2 has enough fuel to keep its instruments running until at least 2025. By then, the spacecraft will be approximately 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion kilometers) away from the sun. 

But Voyager 2 is destined to roam the Milky Way long after its instruments have stopped working.

In about 40,000 years Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248, according to NASA JPL. The cosmic vagabond will continue its journey through interstellar space and pass 4.3 light-years, (25 trillion miles) from Sirius in about 296,000 years. 

Voyager 2's observations paved the way for later missions. The Cassini spacecraft, which was at Saturn between 2004 and 2017, tracked down evidence of liquid water at the planet's icy moons several decades after the Voyagers initially revealed the possible presence of water. Cassini also mapped the moon, Titan , after the Voyagers took pictures of its thick atmosphere.

Voyager 2's images of Uranus and Neptune also serve as a baseline for current observations of those giant planets. In 2014, astronomers were surprised to see giant storms on Uranus — a big change from when Voyager 2 flew by the planet in 1986. 

To see where Voyager 2 is now you can check out the mission status with resources from NASA . Learn more about the iconic spacecraft with the National Air and Space Museum .  

Bibliography

NASA. In depth: Voyager 2. NASA. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from www.solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-2/in-depth/

NASA. Voyager - mission status. NASA. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from www.voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

NASA. Voyager - the interstellar mission. NASA. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from www. voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar-mission

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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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Saturn and its moons from Voyager 2

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The Deep Space Station 43 radio antenna, located at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia, keeps open the line of communication between humans and probes during NASA missions.

For more than 50 years, Deep Space Station 43 has been an invaluable tool for space probes as they explore our solar system and push into the beyond. The DSS-43 radio antenna, located at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex , near Canberra, Australia, keeps open the line of communication between humans and probes during NASA missions.

Today more than 40 percent of all data retrieved by celestial explorers, including Voyagers , New Horizons , and the Mars Curiosity rover , comes through DSS-43.

“As Australia’s largest antenna, DSS-43 has provided two-way communication with dozens of robotic spacecraft,” IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer said during a ceremony where the antenna was recognized as an IEEE Milestone . It has supported missions, Kramer noted, “from the Apollo program and NASA’s Mars exploration rovers such as Spirit and Opportunity to the Voyagers’ grand tour of the solar system.

“In fact,” she said, “it is the only antenna remaining on Earth capable of communicating with Voyager 2 .”

Why NASA needed DSS-43

Maintaining two-way contact with spacecraft hurtling billions of kilometers away across the solar system is no mean feat. Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory , in Pasadena, Calif., knew that communication with distant space probes would require a dish antenna with unprecedented accuracy. In 1964 they built DSS-42—DSS-43’s predecessor—to support NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft as it performed the first-ever successful flyby of Mars in July 1965. The antenna had a 26-meter-diameter dish. Along with two other antennas at JPL and in Spain, DSS-42 obtained the first close-up images of Mars. DSS-42 was retired in 2000.

NASA engineers predicted that to carry out missions beyond Mars, the space agency needed more sensitive antennas. So in 1969 they began work on DSS-43, which has a 64-meter-diameter dish.

DSS-43 was brought online in December 1972—just in time to receive video and audio transmissions sent by Apollo 17 from the surface of the moon. It had greater reach and sensitivity than DSS-42 even after 42’s dish was upgraded in the early 1980s.

The gap between the two antennas’ capabilities widened in 1987, when DSS-43 was equipped with a 70-meter dish in anticipation of Voyager 2’s 1989 encounter with the planet Neptune.

DSS-43 has been indispensable in maintaining contact with the deep-space probe ever since.

The dish’s size isn’t its only remarkable feature. The dish’s manufacturer took great pains to ensure that its surface had no bumps or rough spots. The smoother the dish surface, the better it is at focusing incident waves onto the signal detector so there’s a higher signal-to-noise ratio.

DSS-43 boasts a pointing accuracy of 0.005 degrees (18 arc seconds)—which is important for ensuring that it is pointed directly at the receiver on a distant spacecraft. Voyager 2 broadcasts using a 23-watt radio. But by the time the signals traverse the multibillion-kilometer distance from the heliopause to Earth, their power has faded to a level 20 billion times weaker than what is needed to run a digital watch. Capturing every bit of the incident signals is crucial to gathering useful information from the transmissions.

The antenna has a transmitter capable of 400 kilowatts, with a beam width of 0.0038 degrees. Without the 1987 upgrade, signals sent from DSS-43 to a spacecraft venturing outside the solar system likely never would reach their target.

NASA’s Deep Space Network

The Canberra Deep Space Complex, where DSS-43 resides, is one of three such tracking stations operated by JPL. The other two are DSS-11 at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, Calif., and DSS-63 at the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Robledo de Chavela, Spain. Together, the facilities make up the Deep Space Network, which is the most sensitive scientific telecommunications system on the planet, according to NASA. At any given time, the network is tracking dozens of spacecraft carrying out scientific missions. The three facilities are spaced about 120 degrees longitude apart. The strategic placement ensures that as the Earth rotates, at least one of the antennas has a line of sight to an object being tracked, at least for those close to the plane of the solar system.

But DSS-43 is the only member of the trio that can maintain contact with Voyager 2 . Ever since its flyby of Neptune’s moon Triton in 1989, Voyager 2 has been on a trajectory below the plane of the planets, so that it no longer has a line of sight with any radio antennas in the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere.

To ensure that DSS-43 can still place the longest of long-distance calls, the antenna underwent a round of updates in 2020. A new X-band cone was installed. DSS-43 transmits radio signals in the X (8 to 12 gigahertz) and S (2 to 4 GHz) bands; it can receive signals in the X, S, L (1 to 2 GHz), and K (12 to 40 GHz) bands. The dish’s pointing accuracy also was tested and recertified.

Once the updates were completed, test commands were sent to Voyager 2. After about 37 hours, DSS-43 received a response from the space probe confirming it had received the call, and it executed the test commands with no issues.

DSS-43 is still relaying signals between Earth and Voyager 2, which passed the heliopause in 2018 and is now some 20 billion km from Earth.

Other important missions

DSS-43 has played a vital role in missions closer to Earth as well, including NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. When the space agency sent Curiosity , a golf cart–size rover, to explore the Gale crater and Mount Sharp on Mars in 2011, DSS-43 tracked Curiosity as it made its nail-biting seven-minute descent into Mars’s atmosphere. It took roughly 20 minutes for radio signals to traverse the 320-million km distance between Mars and Earth, and then DSS-43 delivered the good news: The rover had landed safely and was operational.

“NASA plans to send future generations of astronauts from the Moon to Mars, and DSS-43 will play an important role as part of NASA’s Deep Space Network,” says Ambarish Natu , an IEEE senior member who is a past chair of the IEEE Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Section.

DSS-43 was honored with an IEEE Milestone in March during a ceremony held at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.

“This is the second IEEE Milestone recognition given in Australia, and the first for ACT,” Lance Fung , IEEE Region 10 director, said during the ceremony. A plaque recognizing the technology is now displayed at the complex. It reads:

First operational in 1972 and later upgraded in 1987, Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43) is a steerable parabolic antenna that supported the Apollo 17 lunar mission, Viking Mars landers, Pioneer and Mariner planetary probes, and Voyager’s encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Planning for many robotic and human missions to explore the solar system and beyond has included DSS-43 for critical communications and tracking in NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Administered by the IEEE History Center and supported by donors, the Milestone program recognizes outstanding technical developments around the world. The IEEE Australian Capital Territory Section sponsored the nomination.

• Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years ›
• The Story Behind Pixar’s RenderMan CGI Software ›
• Deep Space Station 43 - Canberra Deep Space Communication ... ›

Willie Jones is an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum . In addition to editing and planning daily coverage, he manages several of Spectrum 's newsletters and contributes regularly to the monthly Big Picture section that appears in the print edition.

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35 years on, voyager's legacy continues at saturn.

Saturn, with its alluring rings and numerous moons, has long fascinated stargazers and scientists. After an initial flyby of Pioneer 11 in 1979, humanity got a second, much closer look at this complex planetary system in the early 1980s through the eyes of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft.

Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn 35 years ago -- on Aug. 25, 1981. What the Voyagers revealed at the planet was so phenomenal that, just one year later, a joint American and European working group began discussing a mission that would carry on Voyager's legacy at Saturn. That mission -- named Cassini -- has been studying the Saturn system since 2004. Cassini has followed up on many of Voyager's discoveries, and has deepened our understanding of what some might call a "mini solar system."

"Saturn, like all of the planets the Voyagers visited, was full of exciting discoveries and surprises," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "By giving us unprecedented views of the Saturn system, Voyager gave us plenty of reasons to go back for a closer look."

Many Mysterious Moons

Voyager's Saturn flybys provided a thrilling look at the planet's moons -- a diverse menagerie of worlds, each with unique character and charm. Voyager's images transformed the moons from points of light to fully realized places. Dramatic landscapes on Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus and other moons tantalized scientists with features hinting at tortured pasts.

"The stars of the Saturn system are the moons, which surprised all of us on both the Voyager and Cassini missions," said Linda Spilker, project scientist for Cassini at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. Spilker also served on the Voyager science team.

One of the key findings of the Voyagers' visits to Saturn was that the planet's moons had evidence of past geological activity and that Enceladus -- the brightest, most reflective planetary body scientists had ever seen -- could still be active.

Cassini set out to delve deeper into the nature of these moons, and found that, indeed, icy Enceladus has geysers erupting to this day. Cassini also confirmed that Enceladus is the source of Saturn's E ring, which was suggested by Voyager. But while Voyager images of wispy terrain hinted at ice volcanoes on Dione, Cassini found this feathery coating was actually a system of bright canyons.

...Especially Titan

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, was a high-priority target for the Voyager mission. Gerard Kuiper, for whom the Kuiper Belt is named, had discovered in 1944 that Titan had an atmosphere containing methane. Observations from both Voyagers showed that Titan's atmosphere was primarily composed of nitrogen, with a few percent methane and smaller amounts of other complex hydrocarbons, such as ethane, propane and acetylene. No other moon in the solar system has a dense atmosphere.

Mission planners mapped out a path through the Saturn system that provided the gravitational boost needed to send Voyager 2 onward to Uranus . But because of intense interest in Titan's atmosphere, the giant moon was the higher priority. In fact, the team would have directed Voyager 2 much closer to Titan if Voyager 1 had not been successful in observing it.

"To fly close to Titan, Voyager 2 would have swung upward out of the plane of the planets, and couldn't have gone on to visit any others," Stone said. "It was fortunate that Voyager 1's observations of Titan went flawlessly, so that Voyager 2 could continue traveling to Uranus and Neptune."

To the Voyagers, Titan appeared as a featureless orange ball because of dense haze in its atmosphere. Seeing through this haze was a chief goal of the Cassini mission. Cassini carried cameras with infrared vision that could see through the haze, a radar that could map the surface in detail, and the European Huygens probe, which landed on the moon's frigid surface on Jan. 14, 2005. We now know, thanks to Cassini, that smoggy Titan has methane lakes and flooded canyons .

New Shapes and Sizes

Voyager discovered four new moons and sharpened our view of some that were previously known. The spacecraft also revealed how the gravitational pull of these satellites causes ripples in Saturn's rings, much like the wake of a ship on the sea. There were also surprising gaps in the rings, some caused by moons embedded within them.

Voyager also revealed an immense hexagonal feature in the clouds that surrounded Saturn's north pole, which Cassini found was still going strong a quarter century later. Additionally, Voyager measured the wind speeds, temperature and density of Saturn's atmosphere. With Voyager's measurements as a starting point, Cassini further explored how Saturn's atmosphere changes with the seasons.

Lingering Mysteries of Saturn and Beyond

While both missions have vastly improved our understanding of Saturn, its rings and moons, there are still mysteries galore. For example, the exact length of Saturn's day continues to elude researchers. The Voyagers measured it to be a period of 10.66 hours, but Cassini has measured two different, changing periods in the north and south.

Voyager also made the first up-close observations of Saturn's rings, discovering new thin and faint rings, along with the ghostly features called spokes. But despite more than a decade of observations with Cassini, scientists are still unsure about the age of the rings -- they could be hundreds of millions of years old, or several billion. Cassini, in turn, has prompted new questions of its own, such as whether the ocean worlds Enceladus and Titan could be habitable.

"The twin Voyagers rewrote the textbooks on Saturn, its rings and moons, and we couldn't wait to go back with Cassini," Spilker said. "New mysteries uncovered by Cassini will await the next missions to follow in the footsteps of Voyager."

Voyager 2's mission of discovery continues to this day. It is now part of the Heliophysics System Observatory, a collection of missions that explore our space environment, and which contribute to protecting future missions on their journeys. Voyager now explores what's known as the interstellar boundary region, where material blowing out from the sun encounters similar winds from other stars.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

Written by: Elizabeth Landau and Preston Dyches

NEWS RELEASE: 2016-217

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

How NASA Repaired Voyager 1 From 15 Billion Miles Away

Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting , building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations.

Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal from Voyager 1. The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) , one of the probe's three computers.

“In the minutes leading up to when we were going to see a signal, you could have heard a pin drop in the room,” said Linda Spilker, project scientist for NASA's two Voyager spacecraft at JPL. “It was quiet. People were looking very serious. They were looking at their computer screens. Each of the subsystem (engineers) had pages up that they were looking at, to watch as they would be populated.”

Finally, a Breakthrough

Launched nearly 47 years ago, Voyager 1 is flying on an outbound trajectory more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to cover that distance at the speed of light. This means it takes nearly two days for engineers to uplink a command to Voyager 1 and get a response.

In November, Voyager 1 suddenly stopped transmitting its usual stream of data containing information about the spacecraft's health and measurements from its scientific instruments. Instead, the spacecraft's datastream was entirely unintelligible. Because the telemetry was unreadable, experts on the ground could not easily tell what went wrong. They hypothesized the source of the problem might be in the memory bank of the FDS.

There was a breakthrough last month when engineers sent up a novel command to “poke” Voyager 1's FDS to send back a readout of its memory. This readout allowed engineers to pinpoint the location of the problem in the FDS memory . The FDS is responsible for packaging engineering and scientific data for transmission to Earth.

After a few weeks, NASA was ready to uplink a solution to get the FDS to resume packing engineering data. This datastream includes information on the status of the spacecraft—things like power levels and temperature measurements. This command went up to Voyager 1 through one of NASA's large Deep Space Network antennae on Thursday.

Then, the wait for a response. Spilker, who started working on Voyager right out of college in 1977, was in the room when Voyager 1's signal reached Earth on Saturday.

“When the time came to get the signal, we could clearly see all of a sudden, boom, we had data, and there were tears and smiles and high fives,” she told Ars. “Everyone was very happy and very excited to see that, hey, we're back in communication again with Voyager 1. We're going to see the status of the spacecraft, the health of the spacecraft, for the first time in five months.”

Matt Jancer

David Nield

Throughout the five months of troubleshooting, Voyager's ground team continued to receive signals indicating the spacecraft was still alive. But until Saturday, they lacked insight into specific details about the status of Voyager 1.

“It’s pretty much just the way we left it,” Spilker said. “We're still in the initial phases of analyzing all of the channels and looking at their trends. Some of the temperatures went down a little bit with this period of time that's gone on, but we're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for. And that's always good news.”

Relocating Code

Through their investigation, Voyager's ground team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory had stopped working, probably due to either a cosmic ray hit or a failure of aging hardware. This affected some of the computer's software code.

“That took out a section of memory,” Spilker said. “What they have to do is relocate that code into a different portion of the memory, and then make sure that anything that uses those codes, those subroutines, know to go to the new location of memory, for access and to run it.”

Only about 3 percent of the FDS memory was corrupted by the bad chip, so engineers needed to transplant that code into another part of the memory bank. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety, NASA said.

So the Voyager team divided the code into sections for storage in different places in the FDS. This wasn't just a copy-and-paste job. Engineers needed to modify some of the code to make sure it will all work together. “Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well,” NASA said in a statement.

Newer NASA missions have hardware and software simulators on the ground, where engineers can test new procedures to make sure they do no harm when they uplink commands to the real spacecraft. Due to its age, Voyager doesn't have any ground simulators, and much of the mission's original design documentation remains in paper form and hasn't been digitized.

“It was really eyes-only to look at the code,” Spilker said. “So we had to triple check. Everybody was looking through and making sure we had all of the links coming together.”

This was just the first step in restoring Voyager 1 to full functionality. “We were pretty sure it would work, but until it actually happened, we didn't know 100 percent for sure,” Spilker said.

“The reason we didn’t do everything in one step is that there was a very limited amount of memory we could find quickly, so we prioritized one data mode (the engineering data mode), and relocated only the code to restore that mode,” said Jeff Mellstrom, a JPL engineer who leads the Voyager 1 “tiger team” tasked with overcoming this problem.

“The next step, to relocate the remaining three actively used science data modes, is essentially the same,” Mellstrom said in a written response to Ars. “The main difference is the available memory constraint is now even tighter. We have ideas where we could relocate the code, but we haven’t yet fully assessed the options or made a decision. These are the first steps we will start this week.”

It could take “a few weeks” to go through the sections of code responsible for packaging Voyager 1's science data in the FDS, Spilker said.

That will be the key payoff, Spilker said. Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, are the only operating probes flying in the interstellar medium, the diffuse gas between the stars. Their prime missions are long over. Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980, then got a gravitational boost toward the outer edge of the Solar System. Voyager 2 took a slower trajectory and encountered Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

For the past couple of decades, NASA has devoted Voyager's instruments to studying cosmic rays, the magnetic field, and the plasma environment in interstellar space. They're not taking pictures anymore. Both probes have traveled beyond the heliopause, where the flow of particles emanating from the Sun runs into the interstellar medium.

But any scientific data collected by Voyager 1 since November 14 has been lost. The spacecraft does not have the ability to store science data onboard. Voyager 2 has remained operational during the outage of Voyager 1.

Scientists are eager to get their hands on Voyager 1's science data again. “With the results we got on Saturday, we have new confidence that we can put together the pieces we need to now get back the science data,” Spilker said.

“One thing I'm particularly excited about—there's this feature in the Voyager 1 data. We nicknamed it Pressure Front 2,” Spilker said. “Pressure Front 2 is a jump in both the density of the plasma around the spacecraft and the magnetic field. It's lasted for three-and-a-half years.”

“We'd like to see, is this still there?” she continued. “It's different from what we've seen in the past, and we're trying to figure out, is it some influence coming from the Sun, or is it actually something coming from interstellar space that's creating this feature? So we'd like to see it again, get more data, and be able to study it more carefully.”

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica .

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NASA back in communication with Voyager I, now 15 billion miles away | The Sky Guy

A fter five months NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is once again returning usable data to Earth. Voyager 1 stopped sending usable data in November last year though NASA scientists knew it was receiving data from them.

The space craft is the most distant manmade object in space having entered interstellar space 22 years ago. Voyager 1, and its twin Voyager 2, were launched 46 years ago.

According to NASA: “In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.

“The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth.

When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.”

Morning sky: Mercury, Mars and Saturn will be visible in the east before sunrise. Mercury rises around 6 a.m. and will enter the Sun’s glare by the end of the month. Mars rises around 5 a.m. in early May and around 4 a.m. at month’s end. Saturn rises around 4:30 a.m. at the beginning of May and around 2:30 a.m. by end of month. Watch the Moon pass a couple of bright stars and planets, see below for dates.

Evening sky: Brilliant Jupiter has entered the Sun’s glare. Watch the Moon pass a couple of bright stars and planets, see below for dates.

1st: Last quarter Moon.

3rd: Moon, Saturn, and Mars form a big line in the east in the early morning sky.

4th : Crescent Moon between Saturn and Mars in the early morning sky.

4th : Tallahassee Astronomical Society’s free planetarium show, “May Skies over Tallahassee,” at the Downtown Digital Dome Theatre and Planetarium at the Challenger Learning Center (not recommended for children under 5). Doors close at 10 a.m. sharp.

5th : Crescent Moon between Mars and Mercury in the early morning sky.

8th : New Moon.

12th: Crescent Moon near bright star Pollux in Gemini in the early evening sky.

15th: First quarter Moon near bright star Regulus in Leo in the evening sky.

18th: Moon occults bright star Beta Virginis beginning at 1:53 a.m. and ends at 2:50 a.m.

23rd: Full Moon near bright star Antares in Scorpius in the evening sky.

31st: Moon near Saturn in morning sky.

Check out TAS’s events calendar at tallystargazers.org .

Ken Kopczynski is a former president of the Tallahassee Astronomical Society, a local group of amateur astronomers .

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: NASA back in communication with Voyager I, now 15 billion miles away | The Sky Guy

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NASA's Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth

For the first time since November, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft's three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it's sent to Earth.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory—including some of the FDS computer's software code—isn't working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft's engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22.5 hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22.5 hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification had worked: For the first time in five months, they were able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago, the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

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