Latest Voyager program Stories

In 1977, Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, Elvis died, Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning a record seventh time, and two NASA space probes destined to turn planetary science on its head launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The identical spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched in the summer and programmed to pass by Jupiter and Saturn on different paths. Voyager 2 went on to visit Uranus and Neptune, completing the "Grand Tour of the Solar System," perhaps...

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field has piled up, and higher-energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space. "Voyager tells us now that we're in a stagnation...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field piles up and higher energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space....

NASA’s New Horizons mission reached a special milestone Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, on its way to reconnoiter the Pluto system, coming closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft. It’s taken New Horizons 2,143 days of high-speed flight – covering more than a million kilometers per day for nearly six years—to break the closest-approach mark of 1.58 billion kilometers set by NASA’s Voyager 1 in January 1986. “What a cool milestone!” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan...

NASA's Voyager 2 has successfully switched to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft. Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the spacecraft to make the change on Nov. 4 and received confirmation on Monday, November 14 that the switch has been made. The change allows engineers to reduce the amount of power that the 34-year-old spacecraft needs to operate by turning off the heater that keeps the fuel to the primary thrusters warm. Although the rate of...

NASA's Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft Nov. 4 to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft. Confirmation was received today that the spacecraft accepted the commands. The change will allow the 34-year-old spacecraft to reduce the amount of power it requires to operate and use previously unused thrusters as it continues its journey toward interstellar space, beyond our solar system. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and...

DALLAS, Sept. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Voyager, a member of Cambium Learning Group serving the needs of at-risk and special student populations through strategic and intensive comprehensive interventions, announced today that its new online Back-to-School Resource Center is now available. The Back-to-School Resource Center offers an additional way for educators to access early literacy, secondary literacy and mathematics product information; download samples; register for upcoming webinars;...

  At this very moment one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched -- NASA's New Horizons -- is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day.  Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer than some missions last, and still has four more years of travel to go. New Horizons headed for the lonely world of Pluto on the outer edge of the solar system. Although astronomers now call Pluto a dwarf planet, "it's actually a large place, about 5,000 miles around at the...

MANCHESTER, England, August 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Voyager Software remains 'The Recruiters choice' for Byron Finance as Voyager and Saber Analytics announce a truly unique offering to their customer base. Paul Thompson, Director of Sales at Voyager Recruitment Software [http://www.voyage.co.uk ], today announced, "We've worked extremely hard to ensure our suite of products integrates with the very best 3rd party solutions...

A planetary scientist at the University of Arizona has determined Neptune's rotation. According to the first accurate measurements of the planet's rotational period, a day on Neptune lasts about 15 hours, 57 minutes and 59 seconds. University of Arizona planetary scientist Erich Karkoschka has discovered one of the largest improvements in determining the rotational period of a gas planet in almost 350 years since Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini made the first observations of Jupiter's Red...