Voyager missions in the context of "Planetary oceanography"

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⭐ Core Definition: Voyager missions

The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment to explore the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and potentially also the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune—to fly near them while collecting data for transmission back to Earth. After Voyager 1 successfully completed its flyby of Saturn and its moon Titan, it was decided to send Voyager 2 on flybys of Uranus and Neptune.

After the planetary flybys were complete, decisions were made to keep the probes in operation to explore interstellar space and the outer regions of the Solar System. On 25 August 2012, data from Voyager 1 indicated that it had entered interstellar space. On 5 November 2019, data from Voyager 2 indicated that it also had entered interstellar space. On 4 November 2019, scientists reported that on 5 November 2018, the Voyager 2 probe had officially reached the interstellar medium (ISM), a region of outer space beyond the influence of the solar wind, as did Voyager 1 in 2012. In August 2018, NASA confirmed, based on results by the New Horizons spacecraft, the existence of a "hydrogen wall" at the outer edges of the Solar System that was first detected in 1992 by the two Voyager spacecraft.

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Voyager missions in the context of Subsurface ocean

Planetary oceanography, also called astro-oceanography or exo-oceanography, is the study of oceans on planets and moons other than Earth. This field developed after the discovery of sub-surface oceans in Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa during the Voyager missions. The Cassini mission observed surface lakes of liquid methane on Titan, and directly sampled a plume of sub-surface ocean water from Enceladus.

Early in their geologic histories, Mars and Venus are theorized to have had large water oceans. The Mars ocean hypothesis suggests that nearly a third of the surface of Mars was once covered by water, and a runaway greenhouse effect may have boiled away the global ocean of Venus. Compounds such as salts and ammonia, when dissolved in water, will lower water's freezing point, so that water might exist in large quantities in extraterrestrial environments as brine, or convecting ice. Oceans are thought to exist beneath the surfaces of many dwarf planets and natural satellites; notably, the ocean of the moon Europa is estimated to have over twice the water volume of Earth's.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Subsurface ocean ← Planetary oceanography ← Sub-surface ocean
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Interstellar probe → Voyager 1 → Voyager 2 → Jupiter → Saturn → Flyby (spaceflight) → Titan (moon) → Uranus → Neptune → Outer space → Interstellar medium → Solar wind → New Horizons → Heliosphere →