Category Science

Hanuman is said to be the son of the god of wind. Can you name him?

Lord Hanuman, son of Vayu (wind God) and Anjana, was very powerful. There are different versions of how he was born. One is that on Ramanavami, when Rishyashringa performed yagna, divine nectar which contained the seed of Lord Shiva was given to the three wives of King Dasharatha, the King of Ayodhya.

After consuming it, Ram, Lakshman, Bharat, and Shatrughna were born to them. But one portion of the nectar was carried away by a large bird into the sky. However, Vayu took that portion away from the bird
and brought it to Anjana. She drank it and Lord Hanuman was born.

 

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What is the Golden Record?

A time capsule in the form of a 12-inch phonograph disc – called the Voyager Golden Record – was sent aboard Voyager 1 and 2. It was intended to communicate the story of our world to extraterrestrials, if any. The disc contains an auditory archive representing Earth’s sounds from greeting in every language to animal grunts. There is an eclectic selection of music including Eastern and Western classic and a variety of ethnic music. The 90 minutes of music was chosen after collaborating with historians, artists and folklorists to create the best first impression of our home planet.

 

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What are the achievements of the mission Voyager 1 and Voyager 2?

Between them, the two spacecraft have explored all the giant outer planets of our solar system – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – as well as 49 moons, rings and magnetic fields of the planets.

  • Voyager 2 is the first spacecraft to fly by all the four outer planets. It is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune. It is the first spacecraft to image the rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. It discovered Neptune’s Great Dark Spot and its 1,600-km-per-hour wind.
  • Voyager 1 found that Jupiter’s Moon 10 has active volcanoes and is the most geologically active place in the Solar System.
  • Voyager 1 detected lightning on Jupiter.
  • Voyager 1 detected a nitrogen-rich atmosphere on Saturn’s moon Titan, likely having clouds and rain of methane.
  • In 1990, Voyager 1 took the first “family portrait” of the Solar System as it looked back toward home before its journey towards interstellar space. The portrait included the iconic image of planet Earth known as the Pale Blue Dot.
  • On February 17, 1998, Voyager 1 passed Pioneer 10 to become the most distant human-made object in space.
  • Both Voyager 1 and 2 suggested the existence of an ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
  • The Voyager spacecraft are the third and fourth human spacecraft to fly beyond all the planets in our solar system, outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun. Pioneers 10 and 11 were the first two to do so.

 

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When did Voyager 1 and 2 enter interstellar space?

After Voyager 1 departed from Saturn in November 1980, it began its journey towards interstellar space. It crossed over to interstellar space on August 25, 2012, leaving behind the heliosphere – the enormous magnetic bubble encompassing the Sun, the planets and solar wind.

Voyager 2 headed towards interstellar space after departing from Neptune in August 1989. It entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018, six years after its twin did the same.

According to NASA, Voyager 1, the faster of the two probes, is currently over 13.6 billion miles (22 billion km) from the Sun, while Voyager 2 is 11.3 billion miles (18.2 billion km) from the Sun. It takes light about 16.5 hours to travel from Voyager 2 to Earth. By comparison, light travelling from the Sun takes about eight minutes to reach Earth.

Factfile:

The heliosphere is a bubble around the Sun created by the outward flow of the solar wind and the opposing inward flow of the interstellar wind, while the heliopause marks the end of the heliosphere and the beginning of interstellar space.

 

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Where do the spacecraft get their power from?

The spacecraft are powered by nuclear batteries (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) with electricity generated from heat produced by the decay of plutonium. While it is a pretty durable power source, it is not designed to last forever. The spacecraft loses power by roughly 4 watts every year. With power dwindling, some non-essential instruments on the spacecraft had to be shut off over the years to keep the mission going. For instance, in 2019, the primary heater for the cosmic ray subsystem instrument was turned off to reduce power consumption.

Each probe holds 11 instruments to carry out various tasks such as examining atmospheric chemistry, magnetic fields, charged particles, physical properties of the planets, and solar wind.

 

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When were the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched?

Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Its trajectory was designed to allow flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Voyager 1 was launched first on a longer trajectory as it had to study the two outermost planets-Uranus and Neptune-in addition to Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 1 was launched second in such a way that it could overtake Voyager 2, before reaching Jupiter.

 

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