What Are The Space Probes ?

Space probes are the unmanned and unpiloted robotic spacecraft sent in the space for the exploration. Space probes don’t orbit the earth but they travel beyond those spaces where humans can’t event think to travel such as galaxies, planets, asteroids and interstellar space. Space probes are often launched in the outer space with no return plans. Space probes are designed in a way that they are equipped with everything such as propellers to move and camera’s to record and capture images of space and a transmitter to send those images back to Scientists transmitters. There are three types of Space probes: Interplanetary probes, orbiter probes and Lander probes. All these probes are particularly designed for the designated purposes such as Interplanetary Probes are made to travel further in space and enter the interstellar space. Orbiter Probes are made to send in the earth’s orbit to revolve around earth and even launched to the orbits of other planets to collect information. Landers are the third type of space probes that are designed to land on other planetary surfaces. These space probes are sent in space to collect information regarding the surrounding, make new discoveries and get clear images of other celestial bodies. Space probes are very important and useful because they help in many studies, researches, in enhance our knowledge about universe and our solar system. The space agencies and space scientists are advancing the probes’ technology and they predicted that in future space probes would be able to return on earth with the samples from other planets that can help us to discover atmosphere and chemical composition of other planets and even help to get evidences of life forms in universe.

Probes in Space

There are five probes that are sent to space till now and they are all from American space agency NASA. These space probes are launched successfully in the space and made many discoveries. The probes are: Voyager 1, voyager 2, pioneer 10, pioneer 11 and new Horizon. According to the scientists in 2019, only Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and pioneer 10 succeed to reach interstellar space while the rest of pioneer 11 and new horizon are on interstellar trajectories. Another space probe named Solar Parker’s space probe is launched by NASA towards the Sun. This space probe will directly travel towards Sun and the main purpose of this probe is to study the outer atmosphere corona of Sun.

Voyager 1

Voyager 1 is the first man made object in space.This space probe that was launched on September 5, 1977. There are over 44 years of Voyager 1 operating in space and it is the longest run for any space probe. The purpose of Voyager 1 was to explore the outer solar system and discover interstellar space. Currently it is 14 billion miles away from earth and it the farthest space probe from Earth. Voyager 1 made new and important discoveries such as a thin ring around Jupiter and two new Jupiter moon. Aside from Jupiter voyager 1 also discovered new ring of Saturn and its five new moons.

Voyager 2

Voyager 2 was launched in space on August 20, 1977. Voyager 1 is also travelling in space for almost 44 years and according to data it is 11 billion miles away from earth now. Voyager 2 discovered 10 new moons and two new rings of Saturn. It has also discovered a titled magnetic field of Uranus that is stronger then Saturn. Scientists predicted that the gravitational assist from Uranus is going to propel the probe towards Neptune.

Pioneer 10

This space probe was launched in 1972 and it is the first artificial object to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the solar system. Pioneer 10 completed the first mission to Jupiter and then travels farther now. The last signal from Pioneer 1 was sent to earth from 7.6 billion miles in January 2003.

Pioneer 11

Pioneer 11 was launched on April 5 1973 to study the asteroid belt. It discovered Cosmic ray, solar winds and atmosphere of Saturn and Jupiter. The last signal sent by pioneer to earth was on November 24 , 1995. After that the space probe travel farther in the deep space that is out of earth’s view.

New horizon

This space probe was launched on December 6, 2014 and the main mission of New horizon was to approach Pluto and explore it. It is currently Traveling and exploring Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto and eventfully it will enter in the interstellar space. The main discoveries of new horizon are the region of ice on pluton, water ice Mountains, Chasms on Charon and reddish material on the north pole of Charon that is escaping from Pluto’s atmosphere.