#voyager program

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I'm glad the Voyager probes launched when Jimmy Carter was president, because if Ronald Reagan had been in charge at the time his message to aliens would have been all about God and Jesus and faith in one almighty creator. Carter was just as relgious as Reagan in his personal life, but his administration was much more secular, and I respect that.

We are now 340 million out of 8 billion, and we are not much closer to solving the same problems we faced nearly 50 years ago.

[tolbachik-art]

Just a small warmup painting of Neptune, and a mostly made up Triton!

Just for some insight, my upcoming pieces I'll be working are: on a flag for a friend's youtube series, a late birthday piece for my friend (pen broke Literally in the middle of it), a piece I promised for a friend, and *then* I can get into some of my other personal pieces I've had on backlog!

Thanks again for your continued patience!

As always, there will be an image ID in the alt text, and in the reblogs.

[carsickcrow]

voyager 1 spacecraft from my sketchbook the other day. i love her :)

[fseffect]

Voyager 3 Miku

Yes she'll be playing Johnny B Goode :p

[undefeatednils]

The apparent end of Voyager 1

I'm no expert on space exploration, but I don't see enough people talk about the apparent "death" of Voyager 1,

According to a CNN article ("Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth") dated yesterday Voyager 1 seems to be malfunctioning since November 14. It's unclear if NASA will be able to continue communicating with the probe sent out 46 years ago and which is now 24 billion kilometers (approx. 162 times the distance between Earth and the Sun) away from us.

The two Voyager probes have been longshots, have delivered more data than what was expected, and these two icons of space exploration seem to be nearing the end of their functioning existence.

It seems likely than in ten or fifteen years the two probes will silently drift through the void of space, carrying their golden records, hoping that someone finds them before they collide with something...

It reminds me of the end of Opportunity, the little Mars Rover that gave us insights into Mars for an incredible fifteen years. "My battery is low and it's getting dark." Voyager 1 now is growing silent. If the data it sends were in words, I'm sure it would mutter something similar to itself right now.

[sepdet]

jupiter will kill you with radiation, venus will broil you, saturn will crush you, and uranus will freeze you… but dayum, neptune, you scary

[featheredcritter]

i'm gonna watch Cosmos again

[mckitterick]

The Farthest - Voyager in Space

Just a quick note to strongly recommend this moving, inspirational show about the Voyager program that sent two brave little spacecraft from 1977 Earth on incredibly complex and world-changing missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, then into interstellar space.

The people they interview who worked on the missions are overtly passionate about what they accomplished, and how the mission now for these spacecraft is to represent humankind to anyone who might find them over the next couple billion years with the Golden Record:

Of course the imagery is gorgeous, too. 

It's on Netflix now, and here's the PBS page: X

If you want to better understand what's so exciting about space exploration - and why I wanted to become an astronomer - I highly recommend this show.