Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, identical in every detail, were launched within 15 days of each other in the summer of 1977. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechĪs it turned out, NASA would build two space vehicles to take advantage of that once-in-more-than-a-lifetime opportunity. The spacecraft lifted off on August 20, 1977. READY FOR LAUNCH: Voyager 2 undergoes testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before its flight ( left). To reach the planets while the lineup lasted, a spacecraft would have to be launched by the mid-1970s. There was just one catch: the alignment happened only once every 176 years. Flandro calculated that the repeated gravity assists, as they are called, would cut the flight time between Earth and Neptune from 30 years to 12. This coincidence meant that a space vehicle could get a speed boost from the gravitational pull of each giant planet it passed, as if being tugged along by an invisible cord that snapped at the last second, flinging the probe on its way. Using a favorite precision tool of 20th-century engineers-a pencil-he charted the orbital paths of those giant planets and discovered something intriguing: in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all four would be strung like pearls on a celestial necklace in a long arc with Earth. Flandro, who was working part-time at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., had been tasked with finding the most efficient way to send a space probe to Jupiter or perhaps even out to Saturn, Uranus or Neptune. It was 1965, and the era of space exploration was barely underway-the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, only eight years earlier. The first person to call attention to it was an aeronautics doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology named Gary Flandro. For a while the rare planetary set piece unfolded largely unnoticed. Some 60 years ago they were slowly wheeling into an array that had last occurred during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson in the early years of the 19th century.
In this case, the stars were actually planets-the four largest in the solar system. + Vietnamese - The message translated to English is "Sincerely send you our friendly greetings.If the stars hadn't aligned, two of the most remarkable spacecraft ever launched never would have gotten off the ground. + Spanish - The message translated to English is "Hello and greetings to all." + Russian - The message translated to English is "Greetings! I Welcome You!" Please come here to visit when you have time." + Mandarin Chinese - The message translated to English is "Hope everyone's well. + Hittite - The message translated to English is "Hail." + English - "Hello from the children of planet Earth." This ranges from natural sounds, like storms and volcanoes, to human-made noises such as trains, airplane and rocket take-offs, animals, tools being used, and a mother kissing a child.īelow are just a few of the sites and sounds on the records.
Greetings in 54 different human languages and greetings from humpback whales. This includes drawings and images that convey information about our solar system, images of people doing various activities and a variety of planets and animals, as well as scenes from around the world. Aboard each spacecraft is a golden record, a collection of sites, sounds and greetings from Earth. NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft launched in August and September 1977.
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