Voyager

摘要

WHAT COULD BE MORE AMBITIOUS than a lunar landing? How about a tour of the outer solar system? Realizing that a once-every-176-years alignment of the planets would occur in the late 1970s, NASA planners conceived a "grand tour" of the four planets farthest from the sun (minus Pluto), settling on a two-spacecraft scheme after determining it would be more cost effective than building one spacecraft to observe all the worlds. Voyager 2 launched from the Kennedy Space Center on August 20, 1977; Voyager 1,16 days later. Both spacecraft carried TV cameras, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers, and photopo-larimeters to determine the physical properties of the atmospheres of their target planets. Voyager 1 observed Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's moon Titan before becoming the first human-made object to reach interstellar space.