Slingshotting Through Space: Exploring Uranus and Neptune
In Slingshotting Through Space: Exploring Uranus and Neptune, Professor Brian Cox explains why Uranus and Neptune are so difficult to reach, and how the Voyager expedition took advantage of a planetary event that happens every few hundred years to speed through space so we could get a glimpse of these distant planets. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Brian Cox’s Adventures in Space and Time, a series that seeks to explain our place in the Universe. Professor Brian Cox looks back on decades of discovery and toward the next frontier in space, pondering the question: What’s next?
Lesson Express
Q: What does it mean that in outer space, space is measured in billions rather than millions of kilometers?
A: Things are very far apart. The distance between objects is much farther than in the inner Solar System.
Q: What did scientists think we would find after Neptune? What might they find?
A: Scientists thought we would find small, lifeless worlds. Student responses will vary.
Q: What opportunity did scientists take advantafe of in the Voyager mission?
A: They used the alignment of the planets, that happens once every hundred years, to slingshot the spaceship to Neptune and Uranus.
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