A long way gone.... and still going...

Just a quick mention of one of NASA's more successful endeavors. It seems that the Voyager 1 and 2 Spacecraft have reached the edge of our solar system and found some interesting discoveries. Also a mystery or two. For those of you who haven't kept up on the science behind the missions, (and we know who we are don't we.) Let's focus on Voyager 2 as she has recently done some unusual things. She was launched on August 20 1977. (The Bee Gees "How deep is your love." was on the charts, and Star Wars was breaking box office records across the country.) Her mission was to get a flyby of Saturn, but like many other NASA experiments she was an overachiever. She went on to do a flyby of Neptune, and Uranus. (Discovering ice geysers erupting from pinkish hued nitrogen ice that forms the polar ice caps on Triton, a moon of Neptune, also discovering the 1000 mile an hour winds that blew on that planet.) Since then she has been traveling toward the edge of our solar system, and here is where a bit of a mystery has occurred. Voyager 2 is currently about 8.6 billion miles from Earth. Traveling at 35000 miles an hour. She is traveling beneath the eliptic of the plane of the planets, while Voyager 1 is traveling above the eliptic. They are about 10 billion miles apart and not agreeing at all in what they are experiencing. The space where Voyager 2 is flying, is different than the space where Voyager 1 is flying. She has found an interstellar cloud that physics say should not exist. Solar winds are slower, the temperature is lower than expected, and as of April 22 she is starting to send back unintelligible bursts of data followed by normal transmissions. NASA officials are not sure what to make of it and what is happening with her we may never know. Voyager 1 is leaving our solar system, and still functioning normally, and as it leaves our suns influence may discover new things about our universe. If anything happens to either one we will never know what it was as it takes 13 hours to communicate with them, and another 13 hours for the data to get sent back home. (Communication at the speed of light.) Officially a part of humankind has left our solar system. The batteries on both craft will only last for about 800 years, so neither one will ever send information back about another solar system. They will be dead derelicts in space hundreds of thousands of years before that may happen. But we at the crazy just love that we are getting information from a craft launched over 32 years ago. And also a little comforted by the fact that long after we are dead a small part of us (humankind) will still be floating in deep space. So raise a glass to NASA and the voyager spacecraft. And think about the stars. Ciao for now.