The arena of human passions. Progress ray and gray dusk of everyday life. Jerusalem and Mecca of all religions. Crusades, rivers of blood Kings, courtiers, slaves. The illusion of greatness and power. Atrocities, wars and love. Saints, sinners and destinies. Human feelings, jingle of coins. The cycle of substances in nature. Hermit and superstar. Creators, ideological fighters - here everyone lived their own time to disappear forever. Wealth, faith and striving for unattainable beauty. Flight of hopes, sunset of impotence. Dream castle in the air. And an endless series of news: birth, life - a game with death, a kaleidoscope of all coincidences, forward and upward! the cycle is complete. It's time to leave. And ahead the light of other births is already dawning. Civilizations and ideas.
The price of all this nonsense is one grain of sand in the void.
… On February 14, 1990, the Voyager 1 probe's cameras received the final order - to turn around and take a farewell photograph of the Earth, before the automatic interplanetary station disappears forever into the depths of space.
Of course, there was no scientific benefit in this: by that time, Voyager was already far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, 6 billion km from the Sun. The world of eternal twilight, which is never warmed by the sun's rays. The illumination of those places is 900 times less than the illumination in the Earth's orbit, and the luminary itself looks from there as a tiny shiny point, barely distinguishable against the background of other bright stars. And yet, scientists hoped to see an image of the Earth in the picture … What does a blue planet look like from a distance of 6 billion kilometers?
Curiosity took over common sense, and several grams of precious hydrazine flew out through the nozzles of the Vernier engines. The "eye" of the attitude control sensor flashed - "Voyager" turned around its axis and took the desired position in space. Cameras revived and rattled, shaking off a layer of cosmic dust (the probe's television equipment had been inactive for 10 years since parting with Saturn in 1980). Voyager directed its gaze in the indicated direction, trying to catch in the lens the vicinity of the Sun - somewhere there must be a tiny pale blue dot rushing in space. But will it be possible to see anything from such a distance?
The survey was carried out using a narrow-angle camera (0.4 °) with a focal length of 500 mm, at an angle of 32 ° above the plane of the ecliptic (the plane of rotation of the Earth around the Sun). The distance to the Earth at that moment was ≈ 6,054,558,000 kilometers.
After 5, 5 hours, a picture was obtained from the probe, which at first did not cause much enthusiasm among specialists. On the technical side, the photo from the outskirts of the solar system looked like a rejected film - a gray nondescript background with alternating light stripes caused by the scattering of sunlight in the camera's optics (due to the huge distance, the apparent angle between the Earth and the Sun was less than 2 °). On the right side of the photo, a barely discernible "speck of dust" was noticeable, more like a defect in the image. There was no doubt - the probe transmitted an image of the Earth.
However, following the disappointment came a true understanding of the deep philosophical meaning of this photograph.
Looking at photographs of the Earth from near-Earth orbit, we get the impression that the Earth is a large rotating ball covered by 71% of water. Clouds clusters, giant cyclone funnels, continents and city lights. A majestic sight. Alas, from a distance of 6 billion.kilometers, everything looked different.
Everyone you have ever loved, everyone you have ever known, everyone you have ever heard of, all people that have ever existed have lived their lives here. Our many pleasures and sufferings, thousands of self-confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every politician and "superstar", every saint and sinner of our kind lived here - on a speck suspended in a sunbeam.
- astronomer and astrophysicist Karl Sagan, opening speech May 11, 1996
It is difficult to imagine, but our entire huge, diverse world, with its pressing problems, "universal" catastrophes and shocks, fit into 0, 12 pixels of the Voyager-1 camera.
The number "0, 12 pixels" gives a lot of reasons for jokes and doubts about the authenticity of the photo - did NASA specialists, like British scientists (who, as you know, shared 1 bit), managed to divide the indivisible? Everything turned out to be much simpler - at such a distance, the scale of the Earth was really only 0, 12 camera pixels - it would be impossible to see any details on the planet's surface. But thanks to the scattering of sunlight, the area where our planet is located appeared in the image as a tiny whitish speck with an area of several pixels.
This fantastic shot went down in history under the name Pale Blue Dot - a harsh reminder of who we really are, what all our ambitions and self-confident slogans “Man is the crown of creation” are worth. We are nothing to the universe. And there is no way to call us. Our only home is a tiny dot, already indistinguishable at distances over 40 astronomical units (1 AU ≈ 149.6 million km, which is equal to the average distance from the Earth to the Sun). For comparison, the distance to the nearest star, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, is 270,000 AU. e.
Our posturing, our imagined significance, the illusion of our privileged status in the universe - they all succumb to this point of pale light. Our planet is just a lonely speck of dust in the surrounding cosmic darkness. In this grandiose emptiness, there is not a hint that someone will come to our aid in order to save us from our own ignorance.
There is probably no better demonstration of stupid human conceit than this detached view of our tiny world. It seems to me that it emphasizes our responsibility, our duty to be kinder to each other, to cherish and cherish the pale blue dot - our only home.
- K. Sagan, continued speech
Another cool photo from the same series is a solar eclipse orbiting Saturn. The image was transmitted by the automated station "Cassini", which for the ninth year "cuts circles" around the giant planet. A tiny dot is barely visible on the left of the outer ring. Earth!
Family portrait
Having sent as a memento a farewell picture of the Earth, Voyager simultaneously transmitted another curious image - a mosaic of 60 separate images of various regions of the solar system. Some of them showed Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (Mercury and Mars could not be discerned - the first was too close to the Sun, the second was too small). Together with the "pale blue dot", these images formed a fantastic collage of Family Portrait - for the first time, mankind was able to look at the solar system from the side, outside the plane of the ecliptic!
The presented photos of the planets are taken through various filters - to obtain the best image of each object. The Sun was photographed with a darkening filter and a short shutter speed - even at such a huge distance, its light is strong enough to damage telescopic optics.
Saying goodbye to the distant Earth, Voyager's cameras were completely deactivated - the probe went forever into interstellar space - where eternal darkness reigns. Voyager will not have to photograph anything else - the remaining energy resource is now spent only on communication with the Earth and ensuring the functioning of plasma and charged particle detectors. New programs aimed at studying the interstellar medium were rewritten into the cells of the onboard computer, which were previously responsible for the operation of the cameras.
Photo of the Sun by Voyager's wide-angle camera from a distance of 6 billion km. Two areas (not to scale) - somewhere there should be a "pale blue dot" and Venus
36 years in space
… 23 years after the events described above, Voyager 1 is still floating in the void, only occasionally "tossing and turning" from side to side - the attitude control engines periodically fend off the rotation of the vehicle around its axis (on average 0.2 angular min. / sec), directing the parabolic antenna towards the Earth already hidden from view, the distance to which has increased from six (as of 1990, when the "Family portrait" was made) to 18.77 billion kilometers (autumn 2013).
125 astronomical units, equivalent to 0.002 light years. At the same time, the probe continues to move away from the Sun at a speed of 17 km / s - Voyager 1 is the fastest of all objects ever created by human hands.
Before launch, 1977
According to the calculations of the creators of Voyager, the energy of its three radioisotope thermoelectric generators will be sufficient until at least 2020 - the power of plutonium RTGs decreases annually by 0.78%, and, to date, the probe receives only 60% of the initial power (260 W versus 420 W at start). The lack of energy is compensated for by an energy-saving plan that provides for shift work and the shutdown of a number of non-essential systems.
The supply of hydrazine for the engines of the attitude control system should also be enough for another 10 years (several tens of kilograms of H2N-NH2 are still splashing in the tanks of the probe, out of 120 kg of the initial supply at the start). The only difficulty - due to the huge distance, it is more and more difficult for the probe to find the dim Sun in the sky - there is a danger that the sensors may lose it among other bright stars. Having lost orientation, the probe will lose the ability to communicate with the Earth.
Communication … it's hard to believe, but the power of Voyager's main transmitter is only 23 watts!
Catching the probe signals from a distance of 18.77 billion km is the same as driving a car at a speed of 100 km / h for 21,000 years, without interruptions and stops, then look around - and try to see the light of a lamp from a refrigerator burning in the beginning of the path.
70-meter antenna of the deep space communications complex in Goldstone
Nevertheless, the problem was successfully solved by multiple modernization of the entire ground receiving complex. As for all the seeming improbability of communication at such large distances, it is no more difficult than "hearing" the radiation of a distant galaxy with the help of a radio telescope.
Voyager's radio signals reach Earth 17 hours later. The power of the received signal is quadrillion fractions of a watt, but this is much higher than the sensitivity threshold of 34 and 70-meter "dishes" of long-range space communications. Regular communication is maintained with the probe, the telemetry data transfer rate can reach 160 bps.
Extended Voyager mission. On the border of the interstellar medium
On September 12, 2013, NASA once again announced that Voyager 1 had left the solar system and entered interstellar space. According to experts, this time everything was without errors - the probe reached an area in which there is no "solar wind" (the flow of charged particles from the Sun), but the intensity of cosmic radiation has sharply increased. And it happened on August 25, 2012.
The reason for the uncertainty of scientists and the appearance of numerous false reports is the absence of workable detectors of plasma, charged particles and cosmic rays on board the Voyager - the entire complex of the probe's instruments was out of order many years ago. The current conclusions of scientists about the properties of the environment are based only on indirect evidence obtained by analyzing the incoming radio signals from Voyager - as recent measurements have shown, solar flares no longer affect the antenna devices of the probe. Now the probe signals are distorted by a new, previously never recorded sound - the plasma of the interstellar medium.
In general, this whole story with the "Pale Blue Dot", "Family Portrait" and the study of the properties of the interstellar medium might not have happened - it was originally planned that communication with the Voyager 1 probe would end in December 1980, as soon as it left the vicinity of Saturn, - the last of the planets he explored. From that moment on, the probe remained out of work - let it fly wherever it wants, no scientific benefit from its flight is foreseen anymore.
The opinion of NASA specialists changed after they got acquainted with the publication of Soviet scientists V. Baranov, K. Krasnobaev and A. Kulikovsky. Soviet astrophysicists calculated the boundary of the heliosphere, the so-called. heliopause - an area in which the solar wind dies down completely. Then the interstellar medium begins. According to theoretical calculations at a distance of 12 billion km from the Sun, a compaction should have occurred, the so-called. "Shock wave" - the region in which the solar wind collides with the interstellar plasma.
Interested in the problem, NASA extended the mission of both Voyager probes to the deadline - as long as communication with space reconnaissance is possible. As it turned out, it was not in vain - in 2004, Voyager 1 discovered the boundary of the shock wave at a distance of 12 billion km from the Sun - exactly as Soviet scientists predicted. The solar wind speed dropped sharply by 4 times. And now, now the shock wave was left behind - the probe went out into interstellar space. At the same time, some oddities are noted: for example, the predicted change in the direction of the plasma magnetic field did not occur.
In addition, the loud announcement of going beyond the solar system is not entirely correct - the probe has ceased to feel the influence of the solar wind, but has not yet got out of the solar system's gravitational field (Hill's sphere) 1 light year in size - this event is expected to occur not earlier than 18,000 years later.
Will Voyager make it to the edge of Hill's Orb? Will the probe be able to detect Oort Cloud objects? can he fly to the stars? Alas, we will never know about this.
According to calculations, in 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will fly at a distance of 1.6 light years from the star Gliese 445. The further path of the probe is difficult to predict. In a million years, the hull of the starship will be twisted by cosmic particles and micrometeorites, but the space explorer, who has fallen asleep forever, will continue his lonely wandering in interstellar space. It is expected to live in outer space for about 1 billion years, having remained by that time the only reminder of human civilization.
