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NASA's Voyager 1 probe forever changed our view of Jupiter: Space photo of the week
Live Science • • general
Key Points:
- On November 18, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft will reach a distance of 16.09 billion miles (25.89 billion kilometers) from Earth, marking a milestone where light takes 24 hours to travel between the probe and our planet.
- Voyager 1's legacy includes its 1979 close encounter with Jupiter, where it captured thousands of images and created a time-lapse movie revealing the planet's dynamic atmosphere and discovered Jupiter's faint ring system for the first time.
- The probe also witnessed the first volcanic eruption on a moon beyond Earth, observing activity on Jupiter's moon Io, which demonstrated that moons can be geologically active.
- Voyager 1 has been in interstellar space since 2012, continuing to study radiation and magnetic fields with its remaining instruments, but is expected to lose power entirely by the 2030s.
- The detailed observations by Voyager 1 transformed our understanding of the outer planets, inspiring future missions such as China's planned lander to Jupiter's moon Callisto.
