Voyager Movie (1984)

e February 1979 Pasadena California lights burn throughout the night in the science offices control centers and  computer areas of the jet propulsion laboratory hundreds of scientists and  Engineers convene here drawn worldwide from research centers and universities want  to do I want to go auto back here put in one all the way through the time one start by the end  of the month photographers television Crews and other members of the press arrived you guys have  any questions they are drawn to the laboratory by two Voyager spacecraft electronic robot sent  by NASA to explore the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn a little while ago  I heard the remark that uh Voyager 1's exploration of Jupiter is continued  in the summer of 1979 when Voyager 2 approaches Jupiter and its moons and in 1980 and 1981 each  spacecraft explores Saturn and its moons of fantastic their cameras transmit  60,000 photographs of these strange new worlds subtle details not visible in the  photographs are computer enhanced in the laboratory scientific data are received from  a mix of instruments that probe the planets and the fleet of moons that escort them sensing  magnetic fields and measuring violent spheres of radiation the teams of scientists meet daily  to review this flood of data to cope with the new and unexpected and team members report their  findings to the waiting reporters and through them to the world if this is a she Zone the reporter  and scientist weld a close relationship in a mutual need to understand and communicate what  the voyagers Discover rather than tilted the other way and wow the estimate is that the crater  is 15 km deep and the central Peak is 15 km High one tends not to believe the reality of what  is there says one scientist of the Voyager discoveries Al I don't think I really  understand how these three images are related to each other they're we've seen things  that are different says another and things that are begging for answers we haven't got yeah but  where is this Edge on this view else we got go oh beautiful that nice beautiful just as  Galileo's discovery of the large Jupiter moons left a scientific Legacy for all of us  says Dr Edward Stone project scientist so do the stunning discoveries by Voyager provide  a similar Legacy for future Generations [Music] the Voyager team of Engineers and scientists spent seven years designing and planning  for the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn the spacecraft are endowed  with intricate logic systems and when necessary can make their own  decisions without contact from Earth they carry instruments for 11 science  investigations of the outer planets and their moons the radio link with Earth is channeled through a large dish-shaped  antenna that dominates the spacecraft two television cameras are the eyes of the spacecraft they can be  aimed with great precision these instruments detect the Unseen  forces that swirl around these Distant Worlds September 18th 1977 Voyager  is 7 million miles from Earth its cameras turn back to record the  Blue Earth and crescent moon together in a haunting photograph  of our home in the solar system 14 months later Voyager 1's cameras  transmit the first photographs of Jupiter February 5th 1979 from a  distance of more than 17 million miles Jupiter and three of its  moons are caught in a single frame at 12 million miles Jupiter's clouds  of gases and ice particles are seen to swirl and twist in strange new patterns invisible from  Earth from a series of more than 4,000 photographs a timelapse movie is made that covers 10 Jovian  days the atmosphere is more complex than had been thought the trajectories of voyagers 1  and 2 enable the spacecraft to obtain photographs which provide different aspects  of each of the four Galilean moons you wrot the size of our moon resembles a cracked billiard  ball but the complex markings are curiously flat like Stripes painted on the surface its icy crust  is thought to float on an ocean melted by interior heat IO is the most spectacular of the Jovian  moons its Vivid mtled surface with oddly shaped blotches of color mystify the scotists surely the  strangest object ever seen in our solar system ganim is as large as the planet Mercury  its dark ancient terrain is spotted with white impact scars adjacent areas are  cut by jumbled patterns of grooves and ridges Kalisto is the outermost  of the four large moons every inch of its surface Bears the  scars of billions of years of cratering two SCI scientific discoveries occur  during the first flyby of Jupiter on March 4th 1979 Voyager 1's cameras photograph  a faint ring of particles surrounding Jupiter several months later Voyager  2 photographs the Dark Side Of Jupiter backlighting by the sun produces a spectacular  view of the Ring it is ribbonlike 3600 M wide Jupiter now joins Saturn and Uranus to become  the third planet known to possess a ring system a second Discovery solves  the mysteries of io's bizarre surface on March 8th 1979 Voyager  1 takes a remarkable photograph of IO during a routine study of  optical navigation an engineer sees what at first appears to be a crescent Cloud scientists soon realize that it can only  be a volcanic plume erupting from IO a huge fountain of molten sulfur gas and bits of rock  surging upward against the moon's weak gravity a reexamination of IOP photographs reveals other  active volcanoes it's the first scen beyond Earth [Music] if we could obtain closer  views of some of the Galilean moons each would present a strikingly different  surface through an artist's rendering we approach Kalisto the moon most distant from  [Music] Jupiter its surface is saturated with craters dating back to a torrential  bombardment period 4 billion years ago although this is a dead world  its craters for the scientist are a record of the past history of the Jovian system a great cataclysmic impact Basin  extends for a th000 miles since Kalisto is half waterer ice the Basin unable to  hold its shape slowly slumped back into the moon's crust until only traces  of the surrounding ridges remain [Music] Canim is the largest moon in the solar  system long parallel ridges and valleys form chaotic criss-crossing patterns  created by cracking and shifting of the crust This Groove terrain borders  on regions of ancient surface vast Brown ice Fields covered with  the remnants of impact craters Jupiter fills the sky when viewed from the surface  of IO the innermost and smallest of the Galilean moons its bizarre colored  surface is an everchanging pattern of the Vivid Reds and yellows of Frozen [Music] sulfur scattered across the surface are  the vents of inactive volcanoes many of the calderas are dark in color  filled with lakes of Frozen black [Music] sulfur in the distance is an active volcano it erupts spewing hot  sulfur and gas 200 Mi above the surface and falling back in a plume  that spreads over a distance of 600 mil no impact craters are visible  on iO because constant eruptions resurface the moon with sulfur and bits of rock surface flows that originate in  dark volcanic Setters spread to Fan shapes about 60 Mi across or leave long snake-like patterns in the polar region are mountains  several miles in height and regions that appear appear to be made of stacked layers  of material these Cliffs are created by constant erosion from liquid sulfur compounds  escaping from underground and leaving snow white patches Jupiter has a huge magnetic field  the field would expand symmetrically in all directions if it were not impacted by the solar  wind a streaming flow of particles from the Sun a bow shock is created where  the solar wind meets the magnetic field behind the Bioshock the field is Warped and  turned inward upon Itself by the pressure of the wind it is formed into a long tail that extends  half a billion miles to the orbit of Saturn as IO moves in its orbit around Jupiter it creates  a unique relationship with the planet's magnetic field in this polar view Jupiter  spinning on its axis every 10 and a half hours drags its magnetic  field and trapped radiation with it but io's orbit is slower 43 hours as a result  CL clouds of Trapped radiation in the magnetic field sweep past Dio and strip away one ton  of sulfur and oxygen atoms each second into space these atoms form a Taurus a huge ring of electrically charged  particles trapped by the magnetic field an electrical current of 3 million amp flows  along magnetic field lines linking Moon and planet Taurus material flattens the magnetic field and  flows away from Jupiter to create the current sheet a thin sheet of charged particles  which distorts the field near the magnetic Equator the Voyager scientists had been  saturated with surprises at Jupiter and they approached Saturn with cautious open minds in this computer generated film Voyager  is shown as it arrives at Saturn after a journey from Earth of four years and  a billion miles the planet's rings are targeted for special study  they present the first of many surprises in this hypothetical sequence we may observe the changing  appearance of the Saturn rings all the great classic Rings appear to  break up into hundreds of small rings and each of the narrow Rings appears  to be filled with yet narrower [Music] structures Voyager 2's flight path allows  scientists to make a unique study of the Rings a light sensing instrument is pointed through  the Rings at the star Delta Scorpi more than 587 light years away the amount of Starlight passing  through the Rings is measured the experiment finds that what appears to be hundreds of rings are  waves in a sheet of icy particles with only a few gaps the Rings hold yet another surprise  dark streaks that orbit with Saturn and then vanish they are clouds of dust suspended  above the ring by some unknown method [Music] attention is shifted from the  Rings toward the known moons of Saturn mimus is the innermost of the larger Saturn  moons with an enormous crater 80 Mi wide and 6 Mi deep mamus is thought to be frozen solid teis  a moon scarred by a crater larg large enough to hold mimus and an ancient Chasm more than 1500 M  long dioni a moon with bright radiating patterns on one Hemisphere and an underlying presence  of craters Rea shows an icy face to the cameras bright streaks are probably fresh ice ejected  from beneath its crust Enceladus an extremely bright moon that reflects more than 90% of  the sunlight that falls on Great Plains of ice a closer photograph reveals that it may  be a recently active moon with internal heat that melted the surface iapetus the outermost  of the larger moons the dark side contrasts sharply with a lighter trailing hemisphere  an oddity for which there is no present explanation and Hyperion and an apparent  fragment from the shattering of a larger Moon tumbling erratically in its orbit  the most intriguing of Saturn's moons is Titan larger than the planet Mercury  it is the only Moon known to have an atmosphere nitrogen and methane gases shroud  Titan with dense clouds which our cameras cannot penetrate the chemistry of this  atmosphere is unlike that of any other if we could descend to the surface  of Titan we might see ice mountains softly eroded by a persistent  rain of complex chemicals and a deep chemical ocean a strange  parody of the oceans of [Music] Earth Titan's atmosphere like  the ancient atmosphere of Earth contains pre-life chemicals but  is too cold for life to [Music] evolve the moons of Saturn have  a direct influence on Saturn's rings a natural tendency of ring material  is to spread both toward and away from the [Music] planet but the moons in a  complex interplay of gravitational forces shape the Rings and find their [Music] structure 4 and 1 half billion years  ago the planets were formed in the gravitational collapse of a great cloud of  swirling gas and dust in the that collapse the gravitational energy of this gas and  dust falling inward heated the planets as they [Music] formed Jupiter  and Saturn have not yet cooled off consequently both planets give off more energy  than they receive from the Sun and this energy is thought to be the heat engine that yields the  stormy patterns of their intricate weather systems an experiment has been performed which  demonstrates how these weather systems could work the major planets can be regarded  essentially as rotating fluid spheres which are heated from within in the laboratory  this is simulated by a rotating sphere assembly when instability is  induced long thin columns are formed in a series of ever larger shells or layers the layers create wind flows moving at  different speeds and the tips of the columns form the familiar bands of Jupiter's  clouds if this is what happens and there are competing theories it could change our  understanding of weather systems on these giant planets Jupiter and Saturn have have dozens of  storm systems on Jupiter the white ovals are smaller versions of the Great Red Spot the red  spot is larger than several Earths and rotates in 6 days this violent storm has existed  for at least 300 years its Center is quiet but the outer rim seizes clouds and smaller  storms and whips them around the edge of the spot a series of blue filter photog s  assembled to form a movie of The Red Spot enable scientists for the first time in centuries  of observation to study the storm's motion and detail Saturn's atmosphere appear similar to  Jupiter's with alternating dark belts and bright zones alive with edies that swirl and dissipate  their energy into atmospheric circulation it is the summer of 1981 as Voyager 2  flies behind Saturn out of sight of the tracking stations on Earth for 2 and 1/2  hours the movable camera platform jams and stops when the spacecraft appears from  behind Saturn it is programmed to again transmit photographs but in place of  images only blank frames are displayed on the monitors the platform is obviously not  pointed where it should [Music] be it's not there the way all the instruments on the platform  are put into a standby mode and project Engineers begin to analyze the problem  these end out okay end time was suppos to SC 2 Days Later Engineers find that with  care a platform can again be commanded to move despite the fact that voyagers a billion  miles from Earth Engineers are able to pinpoint its problem and successfully restore the  platform to use an image reappears on the monitor screen and the final photographs  of Saturn and its rings are sent to Earth is drawn what you should be [Music] seeing August 1981 Voyager 2 recedes from  Saturn on its journey to Uranus and Beyond the recent discovery of nine rings in  circling Uranus and its five known moons hold the promise of fresh discoveries and in four  more years Voyager to will reach that [Music] Planet 3 years later it will reach the eighth  planet Neptune and its Great Moon [Music] Triton meanwhile Voyager 1 will continue its flight  searching for the unknown edge of the influence of the Sun where Interstellar space begins and  our sun is just another star in the sky [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]