Voyager Encounters Jupiter

Voyager Encounters Jupiter

In March 1979 Voyager 1 swept past Jupiter, photographing both the giant planet and five of its moons. Four months later, a companion spacecraft, Voyager 2, made a similar encounter. Now, with Jupiter receding behind them, both spacecraft are headed toward the outer reaches of our solar system. In November 1980, Voyager 1 will fly past Saturn. Voyager 2, traveling at slower speeds, will reach the same way station in August 1981. Beyond there, the itinerary is less certain. In January 1986, eight years after its departure from Earth, Voyager 2 may sail within range of Uranus, taking closeup pictures of that distant planet for the first time. Long after they have exhausted their fuel supplies and their radios have fallen silent, both spacecraft will continue their traverse through space and beyond our solar system, on an endless journey. Preliminary results of the Voyager encounters with Jupiter are presented in this booklet. As you examine the pictures, you will be participating in a revolutionary journey of exploration. Living in a society where many accomplishments and products are billed as extraordinary, stupendous, once in a lifetime, or unique, we sometimes lose our perspective. Conditioned to hyperbole, we fail to recognize those advances that are truly exceptional. We need a historians vantage point to identify the events that can literally change the course of civilization. So it is that every student of history recognizes the importance of the Renaissance, an extraordinary time when man looked outward, reaching beyond the traditions of the past to study his place in the natural world. The results were apparent in art, architecture, and literature, in new philosophic and governmental systems, and in the staggering scientific revolution exemplified by Galileos first examination of the heavens with a telescope, and in his stubborn support of the heretical assertion that the Earth was not the center of the solar system. Historians writing a hundred or two hundred years from now may well look on the latter part of the twentieth century as another turning point in civilization. For the first time, we explored beyond Earthfirst the Moon, then the neighboring planets, and finally the outermost planets, the very fringe of our solar system. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55975
Author: United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Release Date: Nov 16, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English