Astronomers have nicknamed Neptune the Ice Giant and Voyager 2 has returned incredible images of its rings and moons. Additionally, unlike Uranus, Neptune does not release excess heat left over from planet formation processes like Uranus does.
Neptune’s magnetic field appears more intricate than that of Jupiter or Saturn, while its ring system boasts two known moons: Triton and Nereid.
The Voyager Mission
NASA scientists were eager to see what would await them as Voyager 2 flew by Neptune, another gas giant without solid surface. To mimic what had occurred with Jupiter and Saturn, their spacecraft were expected to study weather systems, magnetic fields, rings and raindrops of Neptune as well as Triton; each day it appeared as a fuzzy blue dot on monitors in mission control room before growing larger as closer, loading line by line into clear images on monitors in mission control room monitors.
At its closest approach, Voyager 2 came within a few miles of Neptune and its satellites while simultaneously speeding through our solar system’s heliosphere toward interstellar space. JPL scientists carefully planned this encounter so Voyager 2 stayed on its optimal trajectory and had enough power for this last interplanetary voyage. They also increased data rates at Deep Space Network tracking stations across California, New Mexico, Australia, and Japan.
Voyager 1
Voyager 1 reached the heliosphere’s boundary in 2012 in less time than anticipated, according to Johns Hopkins University Professor Stamatios Krimigis. According to Krimigis, solar cycles involving sunspots strengthening and weakening solar winds causes oscillations in force exerted by the heliosphere onto particles from interstellar space, causing its boundaries to expand and contract periodically.
Voyagers communicate with Earth by transmitting radio signals across vast distances to one of three large Deep Space Network, or DSN, antennas still operating – Madrid Spain; Canberra Australia and Goldstone California – that remain operational today. Neptune also allowed it to capture images showing long, bright cloud streaks similar to Earth cirrus clouds yet non-blue in colour – something it cannot do when communicating directly with us!
NASA scientists are planning how they’ll keep Voyagers’ instruments operating as they make their journey deeper into interstellar space. Triton, Neptune’s moon, boasts a nitrogen ice “volcano” on its surface and is currently the coldest body in our solar system. Furthermore, Voyager 2 documented weather, magnetic fields, rings and weather on outer planets like Neptune.
Voyager 2
Voyager 1 and 2 pioneered spaceflight science by flying by Saturn and Jupiter; then their flybys of Neptune and Triton set new records in spacecraft science, surpassing everyone’s wildest expectations. Voyager scientists discovered rings, moons, wild winds that might support life forms on Neptune; as well as data showing Neptune had an extremely complex gravitational field than predicted.
On November 5, Voyager 2 passed through the boundary between our sun’s heliosphere and interstellar space, an area in which hot solar wind mixes with cool plasma from other stars. Scientists believe that as Voyager 2 left the heliosphere, its magnetic field was propelled outward, similar to how wind particles are dispersed through space.
Voyager 2 carried five operational instruments onboard, such as magnetometers, plasma spectrometer, an instrument for measuring low-energy charged particles, and one to measure cosmic rays. Furthermore, there was also a 70 meter tracking antenna located in Usuda, Japan which helped increase data transmission rates.
Neptune
Neptune is a huge ice world with an atmosphere composed of hydrogen and helium with trace amounts of methane, water, and ammonia. Below the surface however, temperatures and pressures rapidly increase, prompting scientists to speculate that Neptune may possess an expansive sea of superheated liquid that circles its core.
Voyager 2 also discovered Neptune’s peculiar rings, consisting of nonuniform bands of bright, thick clumps of dust called arcs. And it photographed two-thirds of Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, a cold world with pitted cantaloupe-like terrain and nitrogen ice “volcanoes” spewing gasses into space.
Astronomers have noted that many of Neptune’s outer moons belong to dynamical clusters similar to those seen at Uranus and Saturn. This suggests they once orbited larger parent moons which have since disintegrated, leaving fragmented pieces revolving along similar orbital paths.