Did You Know?

The spacecraft Voyager 1 has become the first human made object to leave the Solar System. As no human-made object has ever been this far before, nobody was sure exactly where the edge of the Solar System was, but scientists used oscillations from a burst of solar wind to measure the density of plasma around Voyager and confirm that it has passed into interstellar space. The new data indicates that Voyager actually left the Solar System on 25^th August 2012. It is the most distant human made object from Earth and about 12 billion miles from the Sun.

What is Voyager 1?

Voyager 1 is a space craft launched by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in 1977. Its original mission was to visit the planets Saturn and Jupiter, sending back data and images to earth. It has now left our Solar System, moving away at a speeds of over 35,000 miles per hour.

You can read more about Voyager 1 on the NASA website: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Space provides a great context for maths activities. How about making scale drawings of some of the planets? Perhaps you could even make a scale model of the Solar System in your playground, or have children stand in for the planets. MyMaths has a lesson on scale drawing at Level 5. Planning and making scale drawings and models uses maths skills such as measuring, using scales and ratios, multiplying and dividing large numbers, drawing circles and using circle vocabulary (radius, diameter and circumference).