About forty years ago, a daring mission was attempted. A mission that would change the understanding of the planet and in its wake, all its inhabitants.
Voyager planetary mission consisted of two spacecrafts sent from our planet in 1977. It was an ingenious attempt which resulted in crossing of all the big giants - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune through a single launch. It is a truly an interstellar mission as it crossed solar system in 2012. This great event required extraordinary men to focus their effort toward one goal. But first it was Michael Minovitch who calculated the trajectories during his spare time in Ph.D. It became his obsession to calculate the best flight path which would allow the spacecraft to use gravitational tug of the planets and use it to accelerate the speed of the spacecraft. In fact, he used brand new IBM computer to simulate his flight trajectories. Then it was Gary Flandro, who found out that one special trajectory would be available in 1977. It was a small window of time in 1970s, which would not have repeated in 176 years. Either visit all the giant planets in 12 years mission now or wait for so many years. As daring and insatiably curious our species is, the mission was hard ignore. Carl Sagan effort to popularise the mission was significant as he designed a disc with all the exotic recordings of planet on a solid disc to be found by alien life, if any. It captured the public's imagination, which kept the funding going. At last mission succeeded with data still pouring in from 20 billion kilometres.
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| Voyager spacecraft is the farthest man made object. |
Voyager planetary mission consisted of two spacecrafts sent from our planet in 1977. It was an ingenious attempt which resulted in crossing of all the big giants - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune through a single launch. It is a truly an interstellar mission as it crossed solar system in 2012. This great event required extraordinary men to focus their effort toward one goal. But first it was Michael Minovitch who calculated the trajectories during his spare time in Ph.D. It became his obsession to calculate the best flight path which would allow the spacecraft to use gravitational tug of the planets and use it to accelerate the speed of the spacecraft. In fact, he used brand new IBM computer to simulate his flight trajectories. Then it was Gary Flandro, who found out that one special trajectory would be available in 1977. It was a small window of time in 1970s, which would not have repeated in 176 years. Either visit all the giant planets in 12 years mission now or wait for so many years. As daring and insatiably curious our species is, the mission was hard ignore. Carl Sagan effort to popularise the mission was significant as he designed a disc with all the exotic recordings of planet on a solid disc to be found by alien life, if any. It captured the public's imagination, which kept the funding going. At last mission succeeded with data still pouring in from 20 billion kilometres.
How the species with such a humble origin able to plan and execute missions which would have been impossible few hundred of years ago? Who knows what we will achieve few hundred of years from now? Science and mathematics are at heart of these adventures. More than that, it is ability of our species to co-operate at massive level. No doubt this is the best time to be in science but more than that it is to appreciate efforts of everyone who joins us in this cosmic quest for knowledge. For uncovering the mechanics of nature we need creativity and craft of every human. Knowledge unites us.
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