Bengaluru: Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium has launched a new sky show that retraces one of humanity’s longest-running space missions, the journey of Nasa’s twin Voyager spacecraft that continue travelling beyond the solar system nearly five decades after launch.Titled “Voyager – The Never-Ending Journey”, the 33-minute programme opened to the public on April 30 and combines a 24-minute main feature with a nine-minute preamble produced by the planetarium. The production traces the story of Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 launched by Nasa in 1977. The spacecraft flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, sending back detailed images and scientific observations that transformed understanding of the outer solar system.The show also highlights Voyager-1’s iconic “Pale Blue Dot” image of Earth and explains how both spacecraft eventually crossed into interstellar space in 2012 and 2018 respectively.According to the planetarium, Voyager-1 is currently about 26 billion km from Earth, while Voyager-2 is about 21 billion km away. Both spacecraft continue carrying the “Golden Record” — messages, sounds and images intended for possible intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.The show is available daily in both English and Kannada. The planetarium also showcases a trailer for an upcoming Chandrayaan-themed production developed in-house.
