Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
science.nasa.gov
Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#2How many years until V'Ger returns home?
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#3Every time I read about either Voyager I/II or Pioneer 10/11 I am amazed at just how vast space is. Nothing like spending the better part of 50 years to go an incredible distance - a distance, which is so small in the grand scheme of things...
At the same time I'm delighted to be alive during a part of history in which humanity accomplished such a pitifully tiny and yet monumental feat.
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#4Voyager is a beautiful example of reliable code and engineering. 30 years and 10 billion miles out, and still functioning.
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#5How many years until V'Ger returns home?
For anyone who didn't get the 'joke' (like me) and who knows nothing about Star Trek (also me), turns out that "V'Ger" is a Star Trek character. From Wikipedia:
"A sentient being that evolved from Voyager 6, a fictitious space probe from the 20th Century that vanished into a black hole and was given life by a race of living machines. The story of V'ger and its return to Earth to seek "the creator" forms the plot for the first feature film in the Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Motion Picture."
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#6Fantastic read!
Fantastic technology! This stuff is old, but it still works extraordinarily well. They sure knew how to engineer stuff then. They say that they might keep going until 2020 -- I bet those bad boys will surprise us and keep on kicking for much longer!
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#7It's almost as if the universe was created to mock us. So much space to explore, but physical law makes it impossible to explore more than the smallest, most insignificant fraction.
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#8Fantastic read! Fantastic technology! This stuff is old, but it still works extraordinarily well. They sure knew how to engineer stuff then. They say that they might keep going until 2020 -- I bet those bad boys will surprise us and keep on kicking for much longer!
> They sure knew how to engineer stuff then.
Arguably, the current generation of engineers aren't too shabby themselves. Spirit and Opportunity were designed to last 90 sols, with their actual missions lasting some 25 times that, and Opportunity is still knocking about up there.
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#9Fantastic read! Fantastic technology! This stuff is old, but it still works extraordinarily well. They sure knew how to engineer stuff then. They say that they might keep going until 2020 -- I bet those bad boys will surprise us and keep on kicking for much longer!
From memory, the probes will shut down their functioning gradually as they run out of power. Also if they stop receiving messages from earth they will keep doing science according to some preprogrammed procedure and beam the results back. Go humans!
Re: Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
#10It just so happens I was listening to some beautiful 1970s space music when I read this (Tangerine Dream, if you're interested).
The dreams of exploration we had from the time of the first man in space through the 1980s were so wonderful and optimistic. I grew up reading OMNI and Discover, watching Carl Sagan on television and playing with toy Space Shuttles.
When the Voyager left earth, we believed that man would walk on Mars by the end of the millennium, and that first contact was just around the corner. It was unthinkable that, in 2011, we would be seeing the end of the Space Shuttle with nothing to replace it and the suspension of SETI.
I hope that moments of wonder like Voyager leaving the solar system, still functioning, will light our collective spirit and inspire us to remember why we wanted to reach for the stars in the first place.