Voyager ist derzeit das einzige von Menschenhand erschaffene Fluggerät, das sich im interstellaren Raum befindet. Das Raumschiff ist 20,9 Milliarden Kilometer von der Erde entfernt und muss seine Antenne immer wieder so ausrichten, dass es mit der Erde kommunizieren kann. Um die jahrezehntelang ungenützten Düsen benutzen zu können, mussten sich die Wissenschaftler durch Aufzeichnungen längst ad acta gelegter Programmiersprachen wühlen und neuen Code zum Testen schreiben.

(5.9.2017)

As project scientist for the unmanned Voyager spacecraft missions to the outer Solar System since 1972, and a major spokesman for the Voyager science team, he became especially well-known to the public in the 1980s. He has since been principal investigator on nine NASA spacecraft missions and coinvestigator on five more.

He was the P.I. for the Cosmic Ray System on Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, an experiment to measure cosmic rays.

While some spacecraft get the chance to go out in a blaze of glory, others are in it for the long haul – Voyager 1 more so than any other. The mission celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, but it’s not just a lump of metal floating through interstellar space: that baby still runs. Thrusts, rather.

The Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS-1), first selected in 1998 for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), re-manifested in 2010 on the NOAA-NASA Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), then the NOAA Polar Free Flyer, is now scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in November 2017.

(29.11.2017) According to NASA, which has spent the past 40 years measuring solar irradiance, the new data will provide a more accurate understanding of what constitutes the earth’s primary energy source, and help scientists simulate better models of the earth’s climate.

One of the most enduring zombie theories (a theory that has long been refuted by the science but lives on in social media, blogs, and opinion editorials) is that recent changes in climate are just related to the Sun. On December 4th, NASA and SpaceX will be sending a new instrument, the Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS-1), to the International Space Station (ISS) to continue forty years of solar monitoring with the intent of understanding the Sun‘s activity and impacts on Earth‘s climate.

7.11.2002) The interaction creates interesting phenomena on the sunward and shadow side of the Earth, in particular, magnetic reconnection, which occurs where the fields entangle, break and then recombine. The new findings reported by Marit Øieroset, Robert Lin and their colleagues at the Space Sciences Laboratory came from measurements by the Wind satellite as it passed through the reconnection region in the magnetotail, indicated by Phase 3. This diagram shows four phases of a possible NASA mission to study magnetic reconnection in the Earth‘s magnetosphere.

(30.7.2001) Durch Zufall stieß die Raumsonde „Wind“ vor zwei Jahren auf ein noch nie zuvor beobachtetes Ereignis: Wie Marit Oieroset von der University of California-Berkeley und Kollegen jetzt im Journal Nature berichten, flog „Wind“ genau in dem Moment durch den Schweif des Erdmagnetfeldes, als sich die Feldlinien des Sonnenwindes mit denen des Erdmagnetfeldes verknüpften. Bei diesem Prozess, den die Fachleute „Rekombination“ nennen, pumpt der Sonnenwind geladene Teilchen in das Erdmagnetfeld, welche magnetische Stürme und Polarlichter verursachen können.

(7.11.2002) The observations were made April 1, 1999, as NASA‘s Wind satellite made a chance pass through the magnetic reconnection region in the Earth‘s shadow. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley‘s Space Sciences Laboratory report the results of their data analysis in the Nov. 4 issue of Physical Review Letters.

The qualitative description of the reconnection process is such that magnetic field lines from different magnetic domains (defined by the field line connectivity) are spliced to one another, changing their patterns of connectivity with respect to the sources. It is a violation of an approximate conservation law in plasma physics, called the Alfvén‘s Theorem, and can concentrate mechanical or magnetic energy in both space and time. Solar flares, the largest explosions in the Solar System, may involve the reconnection of large systems of magnetic flux on the Sun, releasing, in minutes, energy that has been stored in the magnetic field over a period of hours to days. Magnetic reconnection in Earth‘s magnetosphere is one of the mechanisms responsible for the aurora

(29. September 2009) Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls „a perfect storm of cosmic rays.“

(24.8.2011) It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‚cosmic rays‘ from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth‘s atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe‘s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.

(7.10.2008) Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass selbst kleine Veränderungen des Magnetfelds die Löslichkeit von Gasen im Wasser verändern. „Wenn das Magnetfeld schwächer war, löste sich 15 Prozent weniger Luft im Wasser als bei einem stärkeren Magnetfeld“, erläutert Winklhofer. „Für Kohlendioxid war der beobachtete Effekt sogar doppelt so stark.“

Die Naturwissenschaftler verwendeten in ihrem Versuch ein Magnetfeld von 50 Mikro-Tesla Feldstärke, welches dem normalen Erdmagnetfeld in unseren Breitengraden entspricht, und ein Magnetfeld von 20 Mikro- Tesla, um ein abgeschwächtes Feld zu simulieren. „Wir schließen aus den Ergebnissen, dass die Stärke des Magnetfelds den Gasaustausch zwischen Ozean und Atmosphäre beeinflusst“, sagt Winklhofer.

Die Erdmagnetosphäre entsteht durch Einwirkung
des Sonnenwindes (ein Strom elektrisch geladener
Teilchen, der ständig von der Sonne abströmt) auf das
Magnetfeld der Erde

(18.Januar 2014) „I‘ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I‘ve never seen anything quite like this,“ says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

(1.November 2013) The sun‘s activity is in free fall, according to a leading space physicist. But don‘t expect a little ice age. „Solar activity is declining very fast at the moment,“ Mike Lockwood, professor of space environmental physics at Reading University, UK, told New Scientist. „We estimate faster than at any time in the last 9300 years.“