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Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

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Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#111

Post by jjk166 »

curryst wrote: post #41
dirktheman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the actuator broke down the 351st time, would you've commented 'they didn't even spin something 400 times...'? What would be a number you'd be comfortable with instead?

I would have thought they would run every part until it died so they know roughly what it's lifespan is. It's good if the parts lifespan is twice as long as you need. However, it's even better if you could make it four times the amount you think you need, as long as it isn't horribly expensive. I would tend to assume they've thought of that though, and stuck with this part for reasons. Maybe there werent other space-…

When you are weight constrained the way a space probe is, every factor of safety above the bare minimum is horribly expensive. With no risk to human life and a skilled team of engineers on the ground, the cost of further risk reduction easily may not be worth it.

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#112

Post by viklove »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #92
part1of2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most academic research is done by underpaid PhD and postdoc students for the love of science I’d hardly call the graduate papers coming out of academia equivalent to the level of innovation & creativity of what the engineers above described. Perhaps they’re both underpaid, but one is certainly more amazing. Hardly the same.

That's a pretty amazing comment to me. Perhaps I am biased because of all the blood sweat tears and life I spent publishing papers in academia. Generally, with the exception of certain low quality publication venues, certain fringe areas of humanities, and of course review papers, each academic paper is a new contribution to science that has never been made before. Heating and cooling something to unjam it? That's be…

This is clearly about more than just unjamming a part, but the work that was put into building the probe, sending it to the edge of the solar system, and the fact that it's still functional today.

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#113

Post by Misdicorl »

pvaldes wrote: post #105
Misdicorl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its useless. Most of the time Earth is closer to the Voyager spacecraft than Pluto (or Saturn or...) is! In addition, we can build and maintain much better equipment here on Earth than we can ship to Pluto. If you wanted to do this "for real", the better option is to send a train of repeaters after the Voyager spacecraft in roughly the same flightpath. More effective, and vastly easier.

Yes but that would need a similar planetary alignment I assume. Could a repeater send orders to voyager too?

You'd need a good planetary alignment to get the huge boost that voyager got. But not to get on the trajectory. Your repeater would get further and further from voyager, but not as quickly as earth is.

And yes, the repeater can both do tx and rx repeating.

That said, I'd expect Earth based (including earth based orbit) solutions to outperform at a lower cost for a long long time.

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#114

Post by jonathanyc »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #92
part1of2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most academic research is done by underpaid PhD and postdoc students for the love of science I’d hardly call the graduate papers coming out of academia equivalent to the level of innovation & creativity of what the engineers above described. Perhaps they’re both underpaid, but one is certainly more amazing. Hardly the same.

That's a pretty amazing comment to me. Perhaps I am biased because of all the blood sweat tears and life I spent publishing papers in academia. Generally, with the exception of certain low quality publication venues, certain fringe areas of humanities, and of course review papers, each academic paper is a new contribution to science that has never been made before. Heating and cooling something to unjam it? That's be…

Are you seriously claiming almost every academic paper in a prestigious journal demonstrates more innovation and creativity than that displayed by the deployment of the Voyager spacecraft? I strongly disagree.

Remember also that a large fraction if not a majority of the Voyager team almost certainly had PhDs or even came from academia. I think we can appreciate innovation and creativity everywhere without having to make it into a genital measuring contest.

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#115

Post by Anarch157a »

pvaldes wrote: post #105
Misdicorl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its useless. Most of the time Earth is closer to the Voyager spacecraft than Pluto (or Saturn or...) is! In addition, we can build and maintain much better equipment here on Earth than we can ship to Pluto. If you wanted to do this "for real", the better option is to send a train of repeaters after the Voyager spacecraft in roughly the same flightpath. More effective, and vastly easier.

Yes but that would need a similar planetary alignment I assume. Could a repeater send orders to voyager too?

Probably not. It takes Megawats of power to ensure the small antenna on the proves gets the signal, it's not feasible to put such a thing on a spacecraft. Add to this the limited usefull life of Voyager's RTG power source (after 40 years, half the plutonium have already decayed) and we can conclude that this is not a good idea.

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#116

Post by dr_orpheus »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #93
dr_orpheus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the rotation of the earth is one of the primary reasons for the spacing, the hemisphere does matter for Voyager. From the article: "As Voyager 2 is heading southwards compared to Earth's orbital plane, only a dish south of the equator can send the probe a sufficiently powerful signal."

True, but that's mostly an issue because the construction of the antennas have a minimum elevation limit.

Not necessarily, Voyager 2 is pretty far angled below the ecliptic plane by 48 degrees [1]. If you were to point the Goldstone dish (35 degree N latitude) directly at the horizon you can reach as far as ~78 degrees below the ecliptic plane if you are pointing in the direction of the tilt of the earth (I don't actually know where Voyager is relative to the tilt of the Earth). If it were in the opposite direction, pointing the antenna at the horizon means you could only point at something ~32 degrees below the ecliptic. And Madrid has a slightly higher latitude at 40 deg N.

[1] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/fact...

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#117

Post by brlewis »

ProAm wrote: post #104
superasn wrote: post #3

I was just reading the pale blue dot and he mentions that Voyager 2’s scan platform jammed after its encounter with Saturn. Voyager 2 emerged from behind Saturn (as seen from the Earth) in August 1981. The scan platform had been moving feverishly—pointing here and there among the rings, moons, and the planet itself during the all-too-brief moments of close approach. Suddenly, the platform jammed. A stuck scan platfor…

It's not 'hacking' it's engineering.

When it's ground nobody's covered before, it's hacking.

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#118

Post by MauranKilom »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #71
eminence32 wrote: post #56

I know it's the year 2020 and we're capable of some amazing technical feats, but for some reasons the fact that we can have bidirectional communication with something so old and so far away is astounding to me.

Over the course of my life, I feel like I've read the "Voyager is going to go out of communication range/Voyager has gone out of communication range/Wait, no, they figured something out" series of stories several times. It's amazing, and it makes me happy every time.

Of course there's a related xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1189/

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#119

Post by ProAm »

brlewis wrote: post #117
ProAm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not 'hacking' it's engineering.

When it's ground nobody's covered before, it's hacking.

I do not believe that is accurate and I also find it disrespectful to call engineers 'hackers'. Most people today that refer to themselves has 'hackers' are also not (also get off my lawn).

Re: Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

#120

Post by doomjunky »

Misdicorl wrote: post #84
pvaldes wrote: post #32

Lets imagine... hypothetically [1] that we could design a new kind of space oriented machines, sort of a "spatial server" or a "telephone repeater", that could be left in Pluto (or an asteroid, or orbiting Saturn, whatever...), and be designed to take this weak signals, amplify it, and resend it to the earth Would this help to increase the range of what discover can report and... hum, discover? Would help us to have…

Its useless. Most of the time Earth is closer to the Voyager spacecraft than Pluto (or Saturn or...) is! In addition, we can build and maintain much better equipment here on Earth than we can ship to Pluto. If you wanted to do this "for real", the better option is to send a train of repeaters after the Voyager spacecraft in roughly the same flightpath. More effective, and vastly easier.

Anybody wondering why earth is closer to yovager than pluto? CGP Grey has a good explanation https://youtu.be/SumDHcnCRuU
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