CNN Indonesia
Wednesday, 02 Aug 2023 13:14 WIB
Illustration. NASA revealed that the travel time from Earth to the farthest planet from Earth, Neptune, is 12 years. (Photo: Courtesy NASA/JPL)
Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) expresses the travel time from Earth to the farthest planet from Earth, namely Neptune reach 12 years.
The travel time is almost equivalent to the period of elementary to high school in Indonesia. The travel time is the result of the Voyager 2 mission approaching the object in 1989.
NASA’s spacecraft is the first probe to observe the planet Neptune. Passing about 4,950 kilometers above Neptune’s north pole, Voyager 2 made its approach to Planet Neptune 12 years after leaving Earth in 1977.
Voyager 2 traveled 12 years at an average speed of 19 kilometers per second to reach Neptune, which is 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth.
Five hours later, Voyager 2 passed some 40,000 kilometers from Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, the last solid object that will have a chance to be studied by spacecraft.
Neptune is one of the planets included in the class of gas giant planets such as Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. These planets are about 4 to 12 times larger in diameter than Earth.
They do not have a solid surface but do have a massive atmosphere containing large amounts of hydrogen and helium with traces of other gases.
quoted JPL NASAnow Voyager leaves the solar system, rising above the plane of the ecliptic at an angle of about 35 degrees, at a speed of about 520 million kilometers per year.
Voyager observed Neptune almost continuously from June to October 1989. Now Voyager 2 is heading outside the solar system, diving below the plane of the ecliptic at an angle of about 48 degrees and a speed of about 470 million kilometers per year.
Neptune was the first planet to be discovered not by observing observatories, but by using mathematics in 1781.
John Couch Adams from England and Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier from France used mathematics to predict that the gravity of other planets outside Uranus affects Uranus’ orbit.
Accidentally lost contact with Voyager 2
It was recently reported that NASA accidentally cut contact with Voyager 2, which is 19.9 billion kilometers from Earth. This is due to Voyager 2’s antenna being shifted 2 degrees.
According to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JP NASA), scientists lost contact with the probe on July 21 after accidentally causing Voyager 2 to tilt its antennae away from Earth by about two degrees, citing Live Science.
Unable to send or receive messages from NASA’s Deep Space Network, Voyager 2 is now drifting and alone in the darkness of space, having left the outer edge of the solar system in November 2018.
However, the radio blackout was only temporary. Voyager 2 was programmed to readjust its antenna alignment several times each year to keep it in touch with Earth as it drifts farther and farther. The next reset is scheduled for October 15, at which time communications with Voyager 2 will resume.
Meanwhile, NASA’s JPL said in a Twitter post that the Deep Space Network had captured signals from Voyager 2 during a routine scan of the sky.
“Like hearing the spacecraft’s ‘heartbeat’, this signal confirms that the spacecraft is still airborne, as the engineers had hoped,” the account wrote.
(can/dmi)
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2023-08-02 06:14:00
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