THE MARVELOUS MACHINE

The bowl-shaped antenna carried above Voyager 1's ten-sided body is 12 ft. in diameter. At 825 kg (1,820 lbs.), the whole machine weighs less than a Ford Escort. It moves through frictionless space effortlessly from its initial thrust, sometimes affected by the gravitational pull of planets, but able to correct its course with blasts from small thruster rockets. The most complex cluster of equipment is housed forward near its two TV cameras, and includes an infrared radiometer that measures the heat of planets and spectrometers to analyze composition of the atmosphere. The magnetometers for locating and measuring magnetic fields are carried on the opposite side of the antenna, on a derrick-like boom (13m, 43 ft.), to keep them free from magnetic distortion. Power to run all this equipment comes from three cylindrical Plutonium generators carried below the spacecraft to keep the radiation from affecting the instruments.

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