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NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
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Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#152[flagged]
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#153[flagged]
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#154There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.
Wasn't there a Star Trek enemy that was based on Voyager colliding with some kind of doomsday machine?
V-GER
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#155There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.
Oh, you sweet summer child...
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#156[flagged]
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#157[flagged]
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#158There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.
Do we know how long the power source will last?
It has a few years left as best.
Supposed to run out in the 2020s
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#159There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.
Do we know how long the power source will last?
The plutonium 238 decays according to a curve, and the thermocouples are degraded as well by heat and radiation according to a curve. So the power output drops rather predictably: "The radioisotope thermoelectric generator on each spacecraft puts out 4 watts less each year." [1]
The Voyagers will soon no longer have enough power to operate any of their instruments. They'll have enough power to continue operating the transmitter (which serves as a science experiment of its own) into the 2030s. The power of the signal will drop before the electronics and control brown out (if it works as designed), and it the signal might become too weak to detect before the probe completely stops operating. Such a fate befell Pioneer 11, who may yet still be warbling away at low power no longer pointed at Earth; its carrier was last detected in 2003.
[1] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/