Voyager 1:
(Jupiter)
Overview
In 1979, Voyager 1 flew by
Jupiter
at a distance of 349,000 kilometers (216,860 miles), and in the course of a few days,
transformed our understanding of the giant planet. Voyager 1 tracked wind speeds and
turbulent storms in Jupiter's atmosphere, discovered that lightning crackles through the
cloudtops, revealed a set of gossamer rings, returned stunning images of Jupiter's four
largest moons
Io,
Europa,
Ganymede, and
Callisto, pinpointed three tiny
new moons inside the orbit of Io, and confirmed that Jupiter has a magnetotail. Voyager 1
was the third spacecraft to visit Jupiter (after Pioneers
10
and
11). Although launched 16 days after its sister ship
Voyager 2, Voyager 1 was placed on a faster trajectory that
brought it to Jupiter four months ahead of Voyager 2. Voyager 1's flight path past Jupiter
was determined by where it needed to go next: a close look at
Saturn's moon
Titan (in November 1980). In
February 1991, from a vantage point 3.7 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above
the plane of the ecliptic, Voyager 1 returned an historic "family portrait" of
nearly all the planets in our solar system. Voyager 1 is continuing its journey toward
interstellar space, and is now farther from Earth than any other spacecraft.
Read More About Voyager 1
Visit the Voyager 1 Website
