MONDAY's Top Picks, and NASA goes Rock n' Roll

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Welcome to an EXTRA editon, including updates of what's happening tonight, and some unexpected hipness from the space geeks.
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THE WITCHER BROTHERS, in a rare reunion, play a benefit concert for pioneering folk promoter PITT KINSOLVING, at 8 pm at the Coffee Gallery Backstage in Altadena. Tix, $20. Reservations a must, at 626-798-6236.
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In a FREE show, the BERNIE PEARL BLUES BAND, joined by vocalist SISTA SHERRY PRUITT, plays the "CONCERTS IN THE PARK(ING LOT)" series presented by the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association. It's in the parking lot S of Turner Chiropractic, 3530 Atantic Av, Long Beach 90807. You can opt to buy dinner on-site from Baja Sonora. Info, 562-595-0081. All ages, free.
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NASA goes Rock n’ Roll
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Thirty-five years ago today, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, the first of two Voyagers, was launched.
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NASA celebrated that fact with an announcement titled, “Break on through to the other side,” words that most everyone reading this will recognize as iconic '60s lyrics from the DOORS. The song gained fame more recently in the “Forrest Gump” soundtrack.
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Like Forrest Gump, the little robotic spacecraft have had quite a history – and an added imaginary one as “V-ger” in the first “Star Trek” movie.
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The past three-and-a-half decades have taken Voyager 2 on a journey that would make it the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune and the longest-operating NASA spacecraft ever. Both Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, which launched 16 days later on September 5, 1977, are still going strong. They are hurtling away from our sun at unprecedented speeds.
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Now, mission managers are eagerly anticipating the day when they become the first objects created by humans that “break on through to the other side” – the space between stars.
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“Even 35 years on, our rugged Voyager spacecraft are poised to make new discoveries as we eagerly await the signs that we've entered interstellar space,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He added, “Voyager results turned Jupiter and Saturn into full, tumultuous worlds, their moons from faint dots into distinctive places, and gave us our first glimpses of Uranus and Neptune up-close. We can't wait for Voyager to turn our models of the space beyond our sun into the first observations from interstellar space.”
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Voyager 2 became the longest-operating spacecraft on Aug. 13, 2012, surpassing Pioneer 6, which launched on December 16, 1965, and sent its last signal back to NASA's Deep Space Network on December 8, 2000. (It operated for 12,758 days.)
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Voyager’s most recent discoveries are currently unfolding. They are marked increases of high-energy particles streaming in from outside our solar system, and diminishing lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system.
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And who says scientists aren’t fun people? The same statement today noted Voyager 1’s early discovery of “the kinky nature of Saturn's outermost main ring.”
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Voyager 2 is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from the sun, heading in a southerly direction. Voyager 1 is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from the sun, heading in a northerly direction. Those distances increase significantly every day. For the last five years, both spacecraft have been exploring the outer layer of the heliosphere, the giant bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself.
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"We continue to listen to Voyager 1 and 2 nearly every day," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where they were built. "The two spacecraft are in great shape for having flown through Jupiter’s dangerous radiation environment and having to endure the chill of being so far away from our sun."
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Dodd and her team have been carefully managing the use of power from the continually diminishing energy sources on the two spacecraft. They estimate that the two spacecraft will have enough electrical power to continue collecting data and communicating it back to Earth through 2020, and possibly as far as 2025. No one really knows how long it will take to get to interstellar space, since it’s going “where no one has gone before.” At JPL, Voyager scientists think we don't have long to wait. And, besides, the first 35 years have already been a grand ride.
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YOU CAN ATTEND a public lecture about the journey of the twin Voyager spacecraft on September 4 at JPL in Pasadena. Details at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.cfm?year=2012&month=9 .
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More on both Voyager spacecraft is at http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and at http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov .
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MUCH MORE, from tonight to waaay past Mayan Calendar Doomsday, is in the full edition from August 18.
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