WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.045 --> 00:00:06.156
Now, in this week's Art of Movement, we're looking at something that has gone where no man-made object has ever gone before.

2
00:00:06.485 --> 00:00:14.095
Now, NASA's Voyager has finally exited our solar system and it's still sending back crucial information about our universe.

3
00:00:26.206 --> 00:00:30.004
It's been on a 37-year trip deep into space.

4
00:00:31.873 --> 00:00:38.052
NASA's unmanned spacecraft, Voyager, has traveled farther than anyone or anything in history.

5
00:00:38.354 --> 00:00:43.038
The primary mission for Voyager was to fly by Jupiter and Saturn.

6
00:00:43.465 --> 00:00:45.337
But Voyager went beyond this mission.

7
00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:53.838
It has been the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus or Neptune and has no plans to stop, having already journeyed billions of kilometers.

8
00:00:54.148 --> 00:01:01.608
Voyager took advantage of alignment of the outer planets, which are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,

9
00:01:02.059 --> 00:01:06.434
to be able to go by all four of those planets within a 12-year period.

10
00:01:06.719 --> 00:01:10.718
Now, that alignment of planets only happens every 176 years.

11
00:01:13.745 --> 00:01:19.683
The brilliant images Voyager sends back to Earth are the only true window this far into our universe,

12
00:01:20.111 --> 00:01:27.014
providing fascinating new information about our solar system all from a spacecraft designed almost 40 years ago.

13
00:01:27.757 --> 00:01:30.023
Voyager was launched in 1977,

14
00:01:30.034 --> 00:01:37.322
so the technology that are on each of the Voyager spacecraft are vintage '70... early '70s to '75.

15
00:01:37.762 --> 00:01:42.246
Vintage technology, like only having around 70 kilobytes of memory.

16
00:01:42.726 --> 00:01:48.693
A 16-gigabyte iPhone 5 has more than 240,000 times that amount,

17
00:01:49.034 --> 00:01:52.054
but some of Voyager's features have proven to be timeless.

18
00:01:52.562 --> 00:01:58.975
Its fault-protection technology allows the spacecraft to fix itself without getting commands from Earth.

19
00:01:59.338 --> 00:02:04.392
The fault-protection technology that Voyager had on board has been improved,

20
00:02:04.752 --> 00:02:08.995
but has been flown on every spacecraft since Voyager.

21
00:02:09.365 --> 00:02:12.506
And instead of an endless supply of energy carried on board,

22
00:02:12.860 --> 00:02:19.947
Voyager helps fuel itself using the pull of gravity to essentially slingshot from planet to planet.

23
00:02:20.538 --> 00:02:28.049
And now Voyager is heading toward new discoveries, already moving past the edge of our solar system into interstellar space.

24
00:02:28.519 --> 00:02:33.037
What that means is that Voyager has traveled outside of the bubble of our sun.

25
00:02:33.445 --> 00:02:43.462
The data that Voyager 1 is sensing now is data from other stars and from supernova eruptions and the remnants of stars that have exploded over the course of history.

26
00:02:43.947 --> 00:02:47.969
The art of getting this data back to Earth takes time and precision.

27
00:02:48.455 --> 00:02:54.011
Now, Voyager is now so far from Earth that commands take more than 17 hours to reach it.

28
00:02:54.248 --> 00:02:58.338
But it may be much longer before the spacecraft encounters any other planets.

29
00:02:58.586 --> 00:03:07.705
It's gonna take us 40,000 years to come within three light years of the next nearest sun or the next nearest star.

30
00:03:07.871 --> 00:03:09.443
And that's a long, long time.

31
00:03:10.179 --> 00:03:15.017
But if there's anything out there, Voyager will be the first to let us know.