We had the opportunity to get a close flyby with Voyager 2, because of the planetary alignment when The Voyager probes launched in 1977, the four giant outer planets were all aligned on the same side of the sun, so we could go from one to the next to the next. It was a really great opportunity.

Suzanne Dodd

Categorized in : Top News

We need to develop an orbiter for each of those planets, at Uranus, the five major moons are very different. They have unique geological history, so we need to understand how they were formed or captured. Uranus has a rotational pole that is tipped on its side more than the Earth, so we need an understanding of why that happened. At Neptune, there are a great amount of features in atmosphere similar to Jupiter and Saturn. And Neptune's moon Triton is of interest because of the methane geysers on it.

top-news

I describe Voyager as a grandparent of the missions that have flo... by Suzanne Dodd

I describe Voyager as a grandparent of the missions that have flown since.

top-news

A mystery like this is sort of par for the course at this stage of the Voyager mission, the spacecraft are both almost 45 years old, which is far beyond what the mission planners anticipated. We’re also in interstellar space – a high-radiation environment that no spacecraft have flown in before. So there are some big challenges for the engineering team. But I think if there’s a way to solve this issue with the AACS, our team will find it.