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Published online 2 July 2008 | Nature 454, 24-25 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454024a
News Feature
Scientific exploration: What a long, strange trip it's been
Launched in 1977, NASA's Voyager missions transformed humanity's view of the Solar System. Now in their fourth decade, they are sending back information about the borderlands of interstellar space. Here, three veterans recall details and moments that meant something special along the way.
The little motor that could
We needed an instrument that scanned the sky in order to determine the direction that particles flying past the spacecraft were travelling in. But how do you get an instrument to scan 360° of the sky when the spacecraft on which it's mounted doesn't rotate, and must always point to Earth?
Our answer was to mount the instrument on a small platform and have an electrical stepping motor move it 45° every minute or two — sometimes a lot faster.
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