WHEN RESEARCH TAKES ITS TIME (5/5) – Launched 45 years ago, the two machines sail more than 20 billion kilometers and explore interstellar space.
Dazzling, science? Not always. If it can be slow, laborious and repetitive, it is often at this price that it provides answers. Some experiences can even last for decades. Stories of some of these challenges to time.
In the summer of 1977, when NASA launched the two Voyager probes into space two weeks apart, their main mission was officially supposed to last only four years, just enough time to fly over Jupiter and then Saturn. But the American astronomers hoped that the probes would last more than ten years, dreaming of extending the exploration to Uranus, then Neptune. Nobody at the time would have dared to imagine that forty-five years later the two machines would continue to operate. And this absolute longevity record is not just a technical feat. Because after having flown over the giant planets of the Solar System and their many moons, Voyager 1 and 2 are now progressing in a totally unexplored region, space…
This article is for subscribers only. You have 83% left to discover.
Pushing back the limits of science is also freedom.
Keep reading your article for €0.99 for the first month
Already subscribed? Login