Voyager 1 et Voyager 2
* Réalisation d’une maquette en briques Lego
de la sonde de la NASA Voyager 1 et 2. Echelle 1 :70.
Voyager 1 et Voyager 2 ont été lancées le 5
septembre et le 20 août 1977.
Elles sont toujours actives !
En 2024, Voyager 1 est à 24 milliards
de kilomètres de la Terre, soit 163 fois la distance Terre-Soleil (163
U.A. - 163 Unités Astronomiques)
Voyager 2 est à 20 milliards de
kilomètres de la Terre, soit 136 fois la distance Terre-Soleil (136
U.A.)
POUR ALLER PLUS LOIN :
Le site de la NASA :
Sur le site
rebrickable.com, création (« MOC ») de JonHull :
The American Voyager 1 (Mariner
77A, Mariner Jupiter/Saturn A) was launched on 5 September 1977, after the launch of Voyager 2, using
a Titan IIIE rocket with a Centaur upper stage. However,
Voyager 1 almost never made
it as the Titan booster suffered
a hardware problem causing
a premature shutdown.
The Centaur stage detected this
and compensated for it, ending its planned
burn with only 4 seconds of fuel left.
Voyager 1 was initially planned as Mariner 11, but became
a separate NASA program when
the design of the probe differed markedly
from those of the Mariner
program. Voyager 1’s ‘grand tour’ of the universe
was first to Jupiter, with its closest approach
on 5 March 1979, observing its
moons Amalthea, Io and
Europa the same day, and Ganymede and Callisto the following
day. Voyager 1 sent back around
18,000 images of Jupiter and its moons.
Voyager then proceeded to
Saturn, with its closest approach on 12 November 1980, observing its moons Titan and Tetyhs that day,
and Mimas, Enceladus, Rhea and Hyperion the following day. Voyager 1
sent back around 16,000 images of Saturn, its rings and its moons.
After the end of its
initial mission to Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 was
sent on a course through the Solar System to send back images of the planets
relative to one another (the ‘Family Portrait’ of 14 February 1990 taken approximately 6 billion km (3.7 billion miles) from Earth). Voyager 1 was then directed
out of the Solar System and by July 2022 was 23.4
billion km (14.5 billion miles) from Earth.
Voyager 2 (Mariner 77B, Mariner Jupiter/Saturn B) was
launched on 20 August 1977, with
a ‘grand tour’ first to Jupiter, making its closest approach
on 8 July 1979. After observing
Jupiter and its moons, it was off to Saturn, making its first observation of Saturn’s moons on 22 August
1981. Taking a different
course to Voyager 1, Voyager 2 observed Saturn and 16
of its moons in the following fortnight.
After Saturn, Voyager 2 headed
to Uranus, reaching the planet
and observing its moons Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon on 24 January 1986. The final planet
for Voyager 2 was Neptune, which
it reached on 25 August
1989, observing the planet
and its moons Galatea, Larissa, Proteus and Triton, ending
its initial mission. Like Voyager 1, Voyager 2 was then directed
out of the Solar System. Voyager 2 obtained a similar amount of images of
Jupiter and Saturn as Voyager 1, but also sent back approximately 8,000 images of Uranus and its moons, and 10,000 images of
Neptune and its moons, massively expanding our knowledge of these planets.
The Voyager probes were identical
consisting of a decahedral
instrument frame of 1.8m (5.9ft) diameter by 0.46m
(1.5ft) high, with a 3.66m (12ft) parabolic
high-gain antenna (dish) mounted on top. A boom of 2.5m (8.2ft) contained
scientific instruments ending
in a scan platform with imaging
and spectroscopic instruments. Magnetometers were on a second
boom that was 13m (42.7ft)
long. Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) were on a third boom. There
were also two whip antennae of 10m (32.8ft)
each.