Voyager mission begining to pay off.

[Hank]

Hello- This news in today. The ride seems to be getting rougher for Voyager as the effects of the rest of the universe begin to make themselves known.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered the solar system's final frontier. It is entering a vast, turbulent expanse, where the sun's influence ends and the solar wind crashes into the thin gas between stars.
"Voyager 1 has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space," said Dr. Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which built and operates Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2.
In November 2003, the Voyager team announced it was seeing events unlike any in the mission's then 26-year history. The team believed the unusual events indicated Voyager 1 was approaching a strange region of space, likely the beginning of this new frontier called the termination shock region. There was considerable controversy over whether Voyager 1 had indeed encountered the termination shock or was just getting close.
The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between the stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from a speed that ranges from 700,000 to 1.5 million mph and becomes denser and hotter. The consensus of the team is Voyager 1, at approximately 8.7 billion miles from the sun, has at last entered the heliosheath, the region beyond the termination shock.
Predicting the location of the termination shock was hard, because the precise conditions in interstellar space are unknown. Also, changes in the speed and pressure of the solar wind cause the termination shock to expand, contract and ripple.
The most persuasive evidence that Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock is its measurement of a sudden increase in the strength of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind, combined with an inferred decrease in its speed. This happens whenever the solar wind slows down.
In December 2004, the Voyager 1 dual magnetometers observed the magnetic field strength suddenly increasing by a factor of approximately 2 1/2, as expected when the solar wind slows down. The magnetic field has remained at these high levels since December. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., built the magnetometers.
Voyager 1 also observed an increase in the number of high-speed electrically charged electrons and ions and a burst of plasma wave noise before the shock. This would be expected if Voyager 1 passed the termination shock. The shock naturally accelerates electrically charged particles that bounce back and forth between the fast and slow winds on opposite sides of the shock, and these particles can generate plasma waves.
"Voyager's observations over the past few years show the termination shock is far more complicated than anyone thought," said Dr. Eric Christian, Discipline Scientist for the Sun-Solar System Connection research program at NASA Headquarters, Washington.
The result is being presented today at a press conference in the Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, during the 2005 Joint Assembly meeting of Earth and space science organizations.

I'll wager a lot of the folks involved in this program are retired, some have may already passed on. It must be with some amount of satisfaction to look at this work and the fruit it begins to bear. Regards, Hank

[Hank]

Hello, Ben- Beginning to pay off. What conditions are on the outskirts of this little planetary conglomerate are the real meat to me. Can it be traversed? There are worlds out there with water and it might be wise to think forward to them. It's just the pioneer in me. A genetic condition.

The loss of signal from Voyager I will signal to us a catastrophic failure. This is the event I hope dearly does not occur.

Bush and the rest of them be damned. I want to leave them here. Behind.

Regards, Hank

[Hank]

Hello- I've found a link that will keep you posted on the Voyager I mission. Viktor has links to several other ongoing projects.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/wee ... /index.htm

Regards, Hank

[Hank]

Hello, Sportsfan- Still more on the current expansion of knowledge of what is out there. Gliese 876 joins the handfull of planets beyond our Solar System that is described by scientists as 'Earth-Like'.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/14/151714.php

Regards, Hank

[Jim Berquist]

Just think about It..!!!

Voyager had less computing power on it the I have in my lap!!

Maybe something like a ZX81.....8 bit?

We landed on the Moon with less the that of a ZX81...

It seem's that we could have been better off back in the 70's with less??

To many people working on the same project inpacted the little marianer into Mars....

Someone was working in metric and other in SAE messures!!!!

BOOM .....they put breaks on about 1 hour before inpact...

But we did get there!!!

We have a problem right now!!!

Most people are working on computers and havn't a clue how they work without a program to program them!!!

I'm runing mswindow xp....try copying that in BASIC......

My first computer had a whole 1K of ram and tape drive....

This peace of junk has 128k ram a mere 11 gig hard drive and 32bit processor....

Where will it END???

Somehow we will get there!

Some goofie kid about 16 years old will put together the right combo of conponents and wipe out about 7 or 8 city blocks and be remembered for solving the energy problem......


Some times I wish I was 16 Years old........NOT!!!!!!!!