Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led mission with strong NASA participation. The spacecraft will perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun from high-latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun.
During nominal science operations, science data will be downlinked for eight hours during each communication period with the ground station. Additional eight-hour downlink passes will be scheduled as needed to reach the required total science data return of the mission. The Solar Orbiter ground segment will make maximum reuse of ESA’s infrastructure for Deep Space missions:
The ground stations, which belong to ESA’s space tracking station network (ESTRACK)
The Mission Operations Centre (MOC), located at ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany
The communications network, linking the various remotely located centres and stations to support the operational data traffic
The objective of the mission is to perform close-up, high-resolution studies of the Sun and its inner heliosphere. The new understanding will help answer these questions:
How and where do the solar wind plasma and magnetic field originate in the corona?
How do solar transients drive heliospheric variability?
How do solar eruptions produce energetic particle radiation that fills the heliosphere?
How does the solar dynamo work and drive connections between the Sun and the heliosphere?
Timeline And Status
April 2012: €300 million contract to build orbiter awarded to Astrium UK
June 2014: Solar shield completes 2 week bake test
September 2018: Spacecraft is shipped to IABG in Germany to begin the environmental test campaign
February 2020: Successful launch
Trajectory
After launch, Solar Orbiter will take approximately 3.5 years, using repeated gravity assists from Earth and Venus, to reach its operational orbit, an elliptical orbit with perihelion 0.28 au and aphelion 0.91 au. The first flyby will be Venus in December 2020. Over the expected mission duration of 7 years, it will use additional gravity assists from Venus to raise its inclination from 0° to 25°, allowing it a better view of the Sun’s poles. If an extended mission is approved, the inclination could rise further to 33°.
We have sent a probe deep into space. In 1977, two unmanned space probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were sent deep into space. Although their original mission was to study only the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune. The Voyagers now explore the outer boundary of the heliosphere in interstellar space; their mission has been extended three times and they continue to transmit useful scientific data. Neither Uranus nor Neptune has been visited by a probe other than Voyager 2.
On 25 August 2012, data from Voyager 1 indicated that it had become the first man-made object to enter interstellar space, traveling “further than anyone, or anything, in history”.
As of 2013, Voyager 1 was moving with a velocity of 17 kilometers per second (11 mi/s) relative to the Sun.
On 5 November 2018, 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 System, and has now joined the Voyager 1 probe which had reached the ISM earlier in 2012.
Their speeds right now, are approx. 17261 m/s. which is almost the square root of the speed of light. I hope you get how fast the speed of light actually is. Also, by travelling at the speed of light, You would travel time (theoretically).
Coming at your question, Voyager spacecrafts are actually decelerating at a rate of 0.000002592832 m/s^2. This is because after entering interstellar space, Very less forces are acting upon the probes. Also in vacuum, unless an external force is acted upon, their acceleration must be 0, but it could be that they have encountered a repelling force that has reduced their acceleration or the plutonium-238 fuel that resides in the probe is radiating in direction opposite to motion, hence decelerating the probe with respect to the sun.
If you are thinking the probes must accelerate forever, that can’t and won’t happen. This is due to 2 things, the main source of natural thrust(not engines or any sort of thrusters) in our solar system, is the solar wind. The solar wind is a stream of energized, charged particles, primarily electrons and protons, flowing outward from the Sun, through the solar system at speeds as high as 900 km/s and at a temperature of 1 million degrees (Celsius). It is made of plasma. But its affect is negligible, after we cross the Heliopause, This is due the fact that these particles lose their acceleration when they reach the edge of the sun’s gravitational field, i.e Heliopause or edge of the solar system.
I wanted to include a lot more points to this, much has not been said. Interstellar space has been made possible, but it is still unmanned. Travelling a whole light year would take the Voyager spacecraft nearly 50.000 years and it will lose contact with earth in 2025.
I hope we travel at the speed of light very soon, although we would not be around to witness it. 🙂
Everything has a beginning and an end. A blackhole has neither.
It’s A New Day
The Multiverse
Believe it or not, the question to existence of another species somewhere millions of light years away still blows your mind away. This is the beauty of science. I define science as the literary whose cent percent is evident, factual, unending, pure bliss. Which could never nag you, if and only if studied in its beauty, with a free and open mind. A mind open to question the existence of our specie, the reason this one in a million planet supports life. In the words of the revolutionary physicist Stephen Hawking,
“ One Of The BASIC RULES of the universe is that NOTHING IS PERFECT. PERFECTION SIMPLY DOESN’T EXIST… without imperfection, neither you nor I, WOULD EXIST”
-Stephen Hawking
Stephen hawking, has been one of the top three major contributors to physics, namely Isaac Newton(IQ 190), Albert Einstein(IQ 160) and Stephen Hawking(IQ 160).
Stephen Hawking’s greatest contribution “THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING”. Stephen Hawking was able to elucidate a formulation that unified quantum mechanics and classical physics as it pertains to the description of BLACK HOLES. Breaking down what you just read and how ground-shaking this actually is, let me repeat again “BLACK HOLES”. Black holes have always been one of the most fascinating and yet the scariest myths of the universe. It is a topic over which scientists had just known about. Stephen hawking stated, proved and made it unquestionable that black holes do exist. In layman terms, hawking considers black holes these giant vortexes in space, with only one condition, VACUUM. A vortex whose main feature is wind, exists in space in form of a black hole, where there is no wind. So how are these “vortexes” formed?
In Action
An average star has a given lifetime (like our sun which has lived half its life) after which it goes through a supernova explosion(huge explosion of a star causing all its mass to concentrate in a very small radius 30-40Km causing a multifold increase in its density) leading the star to its ultimate death. After death, this star forms a neutron star(high density and small radius). According to law of gravitation, gravity is inversely proportion to the square of radius and directly proportional to its mass or density, hence as radius of the star decreases and density increases, the gravity of the star multiplies to a very high extent, hence behaving like somehow a vortex. The neutron star later forms a black hole having extreme value of gravity and the black hole is given its name because even the light nearby gets sucked by it. I think, now you can assume the assume the scale of this universal entity.
Supernova Explosion
Now having said all this by hawking, it brings us to the result that “everything that comes near a black hole gets sucked into it, even light.” Now arises the question, “WHERE DOES ALL THIS STUFF GO?”
Stephen Hawking stated in his “Theory Of Everything” and his book “A Brief History Of Time”, that a blackhole actually is a two ended spectrum. Whose other end is in another universe. “wait, what?!” another universe?!
According to hawking, there are different universes, one is a parallel universe, which is a carbon copy of our universe but the exact opposite. Think of it like a mirror, your right hand becomes your left when you see a mirror.
A universe can have multiple parallel universes, the speciality being the different time zones. Every universe runs on its own clock. But is parallel at the same time, bringing possibilities of your own self few years later, or your descendents (if they survive doomsday) a million years later or maybe destruction of this universe. Who knows what time has set in our path. The time taken to travel to our nearest galaxy would be 749 million years, that too if we travel at the speed of light and the time taken to reach the edge of this universe will take 300400 times of this time i.e. 225 trillion years at the speed of light.
The Multiverse
Thinking of the Multiverse as a case of probability, the observable universe extends upto 225 trillion years creating the possibility that if you look far enough towards the end of this universe or even another universe will find you your own self infinite number of times, where some of them will be doing the same thing you are right now and others may have made different life choices and look the same but doing something different. Now marvel reference, most of you know about doctor strange, the scene where he uses the time stone to see all the probabilities of them defeating thanos. He does so by looking at the one million versions of him fighting thanos in all parallel universes. Now what I’m discussing might interest some and might as well confuse some to death.
Don’t take this too hard and understand the beauty and entirety of this eternal unending landscape of space all over.
Infinite Physics 