The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram (1,592 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for 33 years, 3 months, and 11 days, the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. Currently in extended mission, the spacecraft is 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 20th, 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.
Conceived in the 1960s, a Grand Tour proposal to study the outer planets, prompted NASA to begin work on a mission in the early 1970s. The development of the interplanetary probes coincided with an alignment of the planets, making possible a mission to the outer Solar System by taking advantage of, the then-new technique, gravity assist.
Utilizing gravity assists would enable a single probe to visit the four gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) while requiring a minimal amount of propellant and a shorter transit duration between planets. Originally, Voyager 1 was planned as Mariner 11 of the Mariner program however, due to congressional budget cuts, the mission was scaled back to be a flyby of Jupiter and Saturn, and renamed the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn probes. As the program progressed, the name was later changed to Voyager as the probe designs began to differ greatly from previous Mariner missions.
As of November 12, 2010, Voyager 1 was about 115.251 AU (17.242 billion km, or 10.712 billion miles) or 0.002 of a light-year from the Sun. Radio signals traveling at the speed of light between Voyager 1 and Earth take more than 16 hours to cross the distance between the two. (To compare, Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun, is about 4.2 light-years distant = 265 thousand AU) Voyager 1's current relative velocity is 17.07 km/s, or 61,452 kilometres per hour (38,185 mph). This calculates as 3.6 AU per year, about 10% faster than Voyager 2.
NASA extrapolated the location and heliocentric coordinates of both Voyager space probes up to 2015. On November 19, 2015, Voyager 1 will be approximately 133.15 Astronomical Units from the Sun.
Voyager 1 is not heading towards any particular star, but in about 40,000 years it will pass within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis. That star is generally moving towards our Solar System at about 119 kilometers per second. As of May 2008, Voyager 1 is at 12.45° declination and 17.125 hours right ascension, placing it in the constellation Ophiuchus as observed from the Earth. NASA continues its daily tracking of Voyager 1 with its Deep Space Network. This network measures both the elevation and azimuth angles of the incoming radio waves from Voyager 1, and it also measures the distance from the Earth to Voyager 1.
On March 31, 2006, the amateur radio operators from AMSAT in Germany tracked and received radio waves from Voyager 1 using the 20-meter (66 ft) dish at Bochum with a long integration technique. Retrieved data was checked and verified against data from the Deep Space Network station at Madrid, Spain. This is believed to be the first such tracking of Voyager 1.
On December 13, 2010, it was confirmed that Voyager 1 passed the reach of the solar wind emanating from the Sun. Since June 2010, detection of solar wind has been consistently at zero. On this date, the spacecraft was approximately 17.3 billion km (10.8 billion miles) from the Sun.
Source:wikipedia
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