Wednesday, 15 December 2010

why did this only get 30 seconds of air time on the BBC news

NASA Probe Sees Solar Wind Decline
NASA Probe Sees Solar Wind DeclineDecember 13, 2010: The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 17.4 billion kilometers (10.8 billion miles) from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.
The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1's passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, and the spacecraft's upcoming departure from our solar system."
The solar wind has turned the corner," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space."
Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath.

Saturn Then and Now: 30 Years Since Voyager Visit
Suzanne Dodd is the new project manager for NASA's Voyager spacecraft. She first worked on Voyager in 1984, sequencing science and engineering commands for Voyager 1 and 2 in 1984. A memento of those early years is a sheet of vellum that shows the timeline of commands communicated to Voyager 2 during its closest approach to Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.Suzanne Dodd is the new project manager for NASA's Voyager spacecraft. She first worked on Voyager in 1984, sequencing science and engineering commands for Voyager 1 and 2 in 1984. A memento of those early years is a sheet of vellum that shows the timeline of commands communicated to Voyager 2 during its closest approach to Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.
Suzanne Dodd is the new project manager for NASA's Voyager spacecraft. She first worked on Voyager in 1984, sequencing science and engineering commands for Voyager 1 and 2 in 1984. A memento of those early years is a sheet of vellum that shows the timeline of commands communicated to Voyager 2 during its closest approach to Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.Suzanne Dodd is the new project manager for NASA's Voyager spacecraft. She first worked on Voyager in 1984, sequencing science and engineering commands for Voyager 1 and 2 in 1984. A memento of those early years is a sheet of vellum that shows the timeline of commands communicated to Voyager 2 during its closest approach to Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.
Suzanne Dodd is the new project manager for NASA's Voyager spacecraft. She first worked on Voyager in 1984, sequencing science and engineering commands for Voyager 1 and 2 in 1984. A memento of those early years is a sheet of vellum that shows the timeline of commands communicated to Voyager 2 during its closest approach to Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.Suzanne Dodd is the new project manager for NASA's Voyager spacecraft. She first worked on Voyager in 1984, sequencing science and engineering commands for Voyager 1 and 2 in 1984. A memento of those early years is a sheet of vellum that shows the timeline of commands communicated to Voyager 2 during its closest approach to Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.
November 11, 2010: Ed Stone, project scientist for NASA's Voyager mission, remembers the first time he saw the kinks in one of Saturn's narrowest rings. It was the day the Voyager 1 spacecraft made its closest approach to the giant ringed planet, 30 years ago. Scientists were gathering in front of television monitors and in one another's offices every day during this heady period to pore over the bewildering images and other data streaming down to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Stone drew a crude sketch of this scalloped, multi-stranded ring, known as the F ring, in his notebook, but with no explanation next to it. The innumerable particles comprising the broad rings are in near-circular orbits about Saturn. So, it was a surprise to find that the F ring, discovered just a year before by NASA's Pioneer 11 spacecraft, had clumps and wayward kinks. What could have created such a pattern?
"It was clear Voyager was showing us something different at Saturn," said Stone, now based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Over and over, the spacecraft revealed so many unexpected things that it often took days, months and even years to figure them out."
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