NASA photo of Voyager 1 launch
NASA photo of Gold Record cover affixed to each Voyager NASA rendering of Saturn and its moons
Activity 2 - Not So Trivial Pursuit: Some questions to see who's got it and who hasn't!
Activity 1 - Ponder This: Discussion questions that can be adapted to most age groups. Voyager Links: Helpful links for further discovery and exploration of the Voyager Mission.
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Ponder This: Students might want to discuss these questions before and/or after viewing "The Voyager Encounters" planetarium show. There are really no right or wrong answers, only different viewpoints. Even though students may at first have difficulty discussing them, you may find that they continue to mull them over.
Activity 1
  1. To date the Voyager Mission has cost the American public $865 million (this is equivalent to 20 cents per US resident per year). Explain why you think this expenditure is or is not justified.
  2. Affixed to each Voyager is a gold-plated disk containing sounds, images, and recorded messages in 55 languages from different cultures and eras. Since it might be 40,000 years before the Voyagers approach another planetary system, who do you think might someday play this disk? Do you think that they will be able to interpret the images and messages? What do you suppose their reaction might be?
  3. The Voyagers have completed their planetary explorations and are now extending their journeys to explore the heliopause, the region that extends beyond the Sun's influence, and onward to interstellar space. Why should (or shouldn't) man want to explore this area? What do you think we might discover from this exploration?
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Not So Trivial Pursuit: These trivia questions can be posed before and/or after viewing "The Voyager Encounters" planetarium show.
Activity 2
1

How many times has Neptune orbited the Sun since its discovery in 1781?

 Answer 1
2
 Which planet(s) has(have) rings? Answer 2
3
 What are the giant "eyes" or spots that appear on planets like Jupiter and Neptune? Answer 3
4
 When Galileo first saw Saturn through his telescope, what did he think its rings looked like? Answer 4
5
 What common household appliance uses roughly the same amount of energy as a Voyager space probe? Answer 5
6
 What could scientists determine when the Voyagers "took the temperature" of planets or moons they visited? Answer 6
7
 How long did it take voyager 2 to reach Neptune? Answer 7
8
 Other than Voyager 2, what other spacecraft have visited Uranus and Neptune? Answer 8
9
 How long has the Voyager mission been going on? Answer 9
10
 The Voyagers have one component that is made of gold. What is it? Answer 10
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Net Connection: If your students would like to learn more about the Voyager Mission and NASA, the following sites should prove beneficial. Some of them contain multi-media resources that require plug-ins but access and download instructions are provided.
Voyager Links
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