PASADENA, CA—Confirming that several components had broken off the craft
and that most of its scientific instruments were no longer operational,
officials from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that Voyager
1, the pioneering space probe launched in 1977, had been severely
damaged Thursday after crashing into the end of the universe. “It
appears that, at approximately 8:20 this morning, Voyager struck the
edge of the universe head-on at a speed of 38,000 miles per hour,
resulting in significant structural damage to the spacecraft,” said
Voyager project scientist Ed Stone, noting that the force of the impact
with the outer border of the cosmos had bent the probe’s main antenna
dish and completely snapped off its low-field magnetometer. “While we’re
receiving only intermittent signals from Voyager now, incoming data
indicate that, in addition to nearly totaling the craft’s thermoelectric
generator, the collision left a significant dent in the end of the
universe as well.” JPL scientists added that Voyager 1 now appears to be
moving laterally, scraping its left side along the universe’s outer
edge, and that it is expected to continue doing so for the next 50 or 60
years until the remaining fragments of the probe eventually come to
rest in the bottom-right corner of outer space.
EmoticonEmoticon