JPL reports research using ancient Chinese eclipse records

The probe’s record carried images and sounds selected to represent life and culture on Earth.

The second Voyager launch used a trajectory that overtook Voyager 2 on the way to Jupiter.

Voyager 1 began a mission designed to return images and measurements of distant giant planets.

Its record presented sounds and images from Earth to any future finders of the spacecraft.

The 5 September launch completed the pair’s departure for outer-planet exploration.

A mismatch between predicted and recorded eclipse paths reveals accumulated changes in the length of the day.

Records reaching back many centuries give modern science a time span impossible to reproduce with recent instruments alone.

Chinese textual expertise and modern celestial mechanics together create evidence neither discipline could produce independently.

The telescope lifted off aboard space shuttle Discovery for an orbit above Earth’s atmosphere.

Hubble’s launch created a platform for observing the universe without most atmospheric distortion.