The Farthest Object from Earth

The Voyager spacecraft is the Farthest Object from Earth, it was launch by NASA with Titan III centaur Rocket, Voyager 1 is zipping through space at 38,000 mph, is currently 11.7 billion miles from Earth. Voyager 2 took a different trajectory through the solar system and is currently 9.5 billion miles from home, As originally designed, the Voyagers spacecraft were to conduct closeup studies of the planet Jupiter, Saturn, and also the larger moons of the two planets, is also to extend the NASA exploration of the solar system and beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets and limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence, Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, just 16 days after Voyager 2 which is launch on August 20, 1977, the spacecraft has been exploring through space for 42 years, 9 months, and 21 days, both probes have now reached interstellar space.

On, March 2, 1972, Pioneer 10 was launch, it is an American space probe that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter, not only that but Pioneer 10 became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity which is needed to leave the Solar System, Pioneer 10 also brings a message to an unknown recipient, the message is a plague which is designed by Carl Sagan, the plague is not only on Pioneer 10 which is heading towards the star Aldebaran in the Taurus constellation but also on board Pioneer 11 which is headed toward the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle), Northwest of the constellation of Sagittarius.

The small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future, in the top left hand is a hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen, The design team postulated that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the cosmo, they inscribed two hydrogen atoms each in a different energy state. When atoms of hydrogen change from one energy state to another electromagnetic radiation are released. The wavelength is approximately 21 centimeters and the period is approximately 7 nanoseconds serves as a measurement of time, the two adult figure on the right of the plague, The man bends his arm and displays an open palm which is an international greeting beside the women is the binary number 8, inscribed between two ticks, which indicates the height of the woman, smart aliens then conclude that the woman is 8 units tall. the unit is the wavelength of 21 centimeters from the hyperfine transition, the women are 8 times 21 centimeters is 168 cm or 5.6 feet tall. in the middle of the pioneer plague is a pulsar map which is showing our star location, The length of the line with the binary code defines the frequency of the pulses, Their rapid spin, and intense magnetic fields cause the pulsars to emit narrow beams of light, which is similar to a beam from a lighthouse, every time they pass across our field of view, Each pulsar has its own signature pulse rate, making them easy to identify, and ideal as reference points on a map, the last things on the pioneer plague is a solar system’s planets (nine at the time) are depicted in the bottom margin of the plaque with their respective distances to the sun in binary.

But this is not the first message that human has sent to an unknown recipient, because the Voyagers spacecraft is also brought a message to through space, in the next 40,000 years voyager spacecraft will likely to pass another star system and possibly encounter Extraterrestrial life, so a message that was designed by Carl Sagan and his associates is sent to those that find Voyagers spacecraft, it’s a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images from all around the Globe it is called The Golden Record.

The Golden Record contains the diversity of life, culture and History on Earth that was made by Humans, The Golden Record consists of 115 analog-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a 12-minute montage of sounds on Earth and 90 minutes of music.

But of course, just like the pioneer plague Alien might not understand this Record and don’t know how to play it, The cover of the record consists with the pulsar map and the hyperfine transition unit that was included from the pioneer plague and also instructions of how to play the record, In the upper left-hand corner is the stylus of how to play the record correctly, the instructions using the transitions unit tells Aliens that the stylus must go around the record once every 3.6 seconds and in total will take around 1 hour to do so, besides the stylus, is the decoded picture consist of a round shape inside a rectangle, it tells aliens that they did it right, the record not only contains pictures of Earth but it also contains a message from the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

In space there’s no limit on how far we can communicate, Back on the Apollo Era NASA used unified S-band transponder to communicate between earth and the moon, this system combines different frequency like command, telemetry, communications and television into a single antenna to save size, weight and simplifies operations.

To receive and send data with an object as far as the Voyager spacecraft you will need the deep space network stations, this is large sensitive antennas which have a different size to pickup weak data from deep space, not to mention it will take over 20 hours to send data from Voyager 1 to reach Earth, on the other hand, Voyager 2 will take 16 hours to reach Earth, as voyager continue to go farther, The spacecraft signal and data rates become weaker and slower both spacecraft collect information about their surrounding environment in real-time and then send it back through radio signals, when Voyager 1 was 3.75 billion miles away from Earth, the probe took the famous picture Known as the “Pale Blue Dot,” it was the last picture that Voyager 1 took before its cameras were turned off to safe power.

The two Voyager spacecraft move with some propulsion on board, The outward speed comes from the combination of a high-speed launch from Earth, followed by a big gravitational slingshot past Jupiter.

Even though it seems impossible for an Alien to find and understand the golden record? But we must appreciate both Voyager spacecraft for letting us know of what is it like out there.

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