Space travelers have been traveling in space for 45 years, including a recording device and less memory than an ordinary smartphone

Sensors are built to last, with as few moving parts as possible because movement inevitably involves wear. They were equipped with the most modern of what was around at the time, but now they are kind of a time capsule back then and sometimes old-fashioned.

For example, all of them have an 8-track tape recorder on board to store their data so it can be sent back to Earth, have 3 million times less memory than an average smartphone and transmit their data about 38,000 times slower than the average smartphone with a 5G internet connection.

Yet they remain at the forefront of space exploration. After all, the two space probes, operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, are the only spacecraft to explore interstellar space – the galactic ocean through which our sun and its planets move.

The sun and planets are in the heliosphere, a protective bubble formed by the sun’s magnetic field and the outflow of the solar wind, and charged particles from the sun. Researchers, some of whom are smaller than space probes, are combining Voyager observations with data from new missions to get a more complete picture of our Sun and learn how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space.

Solar Physics Fleet [de fysica van de zon betreffende] The mission provides us with invaluable insights into our sun, from understanding the corona or the outer part of the sun’s atmosphere, to investigating the sun’s influence throughout the solar system, including here on Earth, in the atmosphere, and beyond in interstellar space, he said. Nicola Fox, director of the Solar Physics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“Over the past 45 years, the Voyager missions have played a vital role in providing this knowledge and helping to change our understanding of the Sun and its influence in ways that no other spacecraft can.”