JPL/GSFC: Revisiting Old Voyager 2 Data, Scientists Find One More Secret

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Revisiting Old Voyager 2 Data, Scientists Find One More Secret
NASA | GSFC | JPL-Caltech | Voyager 2 | 2020 Mar 05

Voyager 2 took this image as it approached the planet Uranus on Jan. 14, 1986. The planet’s hazy bluish color is due to the methane in its atmosphere, which absorbs red wavelengths of light. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Eight and a half years into its grand tour of the solar system, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft was ready for another encounter. It was Jan. 24, 1986, and soon it would meet the mysterious seventh planet, icy-cold Uranus.

Over the next few hours, Voyager 2 flew within 50,600 miles (81,433 kilometers) of Uranus' cloud tops, collecting data that revealed two new rings, 11 new moons and temperatures below minus 353 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 214 degrees Celsius). The dataset is still the only up-close measurements we have ever made of the planet.

Three decades later, scientists reinspecting that data found one more secret.

Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus' atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about the planet's one-of-a-kind magnetic environment. ...

Voyager 2 Constraints on Plasmoid-based Transport at Uranus ~ Gina A. DiBraccio & Daniel J. Gershman

• Geophysical Research Letters 46(19):10710 (16 Oct 2019) DOI: 10.1029/2019GL083909