That thing just won't die!
Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
111–120 of 318 posts
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#112Were engineers 50 years ago just much smarter than we are now? It’s pretty unbelievable that these things still work. Or is there something systemic about how they were able to achieve so much so long ago with basically no computers to help.
NASA missions still routinely overperform. Curiosity's been operational on Mars for a good 12 years now.
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> fission reactor Am I wrong that the plutonium in the Voyagers is not in a fission reactor but in an RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator), which converts the heat from the plutonium into electricity. ? I suppose the heat is result of fission, but I don't think an RTG is what is meant by a fission reactor. ??
Voyager uses a RTG. The USSR used some full-on nuclear reactors in space, but as far as I know no one else publicly did. Edit: Yep, not sure how I forgot about that.
The US put a fission reactor in space too. They did it first, in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A
Edit: it’s apparently still there and will be for a long time (!) albeit non-functional:
> Decay date: April 3, 5966 (planned)Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but mostly no, also no, and, frankly, why would we. Yes: we could lift off a much heavier spacecraft, give it plenty of fuel, and many of its parts would be lighter than their 1970s equivalent, giving us lots of room for modern sensors No: the "battery" in the old ones is nuclear and it's going to be difficult to beat that (but not impossible: a nuclear stirling engine, either powered by fission or by decay, e.g…
> the "battery" in the old ones is nuclear and it's going to be difficult to beat that Newer atomic batteries can theoretically last centuries instead of decades. V'ger 1 atomic battery is based on Plutonium-238 which has a halflife of ~88 years. It's down to ~210W output from initial 470W at launch time. Americium-241 has a half-life of over 400 years.
Finding “V’ger” hilarious.
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#115I’m not saying it’s true but I really feel like I see this article once or twice a year. I’m not sure what’s going on.
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#116I didn’t realize the Voyagers relied on a once in a 175 year planetary alignment. What a lucky break technology had advanced to the point we could make use of it.
I’m trying to figure out why the alignment was so important. Wouldn’t it be possible to get a gravity assist in any alignment - albeit just taking a little longer to ping-pong across the system?
Ignoring the feasibility of the physics, imagine trying to calculate all the resulting trajectories to point antennas at to talk to the probe. With computers and equipment of the 1970s.
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
NASA loves to downplay expectations in case something goes wrong, but people really underappreciate just how overengineered these things are, which makes sense when a bad mission can be political suicide for their future funding.
It was also incredibly on budget. I think Sagan says in the book it cost the individual American taxpayers in the single digit dollars.
Single digit dollar sounds more like the Appollo program. I think it's been a long time since the entire NASA budget was more than a penny per tax dollar.
NASA says the voyager mission cost 865 million dollars from the start in 1972 to Neptune encounter in 1989, and currently runs at 7 mllion dollars per year.
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#118I’m not saying it’s true but I really feel like I see this article once or twice a year. I’m not sure what’s going on.
I think there’ve been at least two recent episodes of trouble, including this one. I feel like I’ve seen more than two articles about it though.
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#119It's fascinating how Voyager 1, despite my lack of space knowledge, utilizes a nuclear power source for 40+ years, offering steady and reliable power without any moving parts that could degrade over time. In contrast, India's decision to rely on solar panels led vikram lander to be dead in just 14 days due to lack of sunlight (afaik). I'm curious about the rationale behind this choice when nuclear power seems like a…
Sure! First, the nuclear power source is a giant hunk of plutonium. It is expensive to get, dangerous to use, and due to concerns about further refinement, is restricted internationally. Second, it is toxic inherently — the source is continuously radioactive at a hazardous level to humans, plutonium itself has acute and long-term toxic effects aside from the radioactivity, and if a launch fails, the rtg will disinteg…
Kosmos-954 didn't poison hundreds of miles, square or otherwise.
They could only find a dozen of radioactive bits, each only dangerous within a very small area around it, and not really leaching anything due to its ceramic nature. Most of the fuel dispersed and became harmless by dilution, probably never even reached the surface.
Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981
#120I'm reading Pale Blue Dot to my kids at night currently so this is really awesome. (The Voyager missions are described in excellent detail in ways that I never appreciated fully before.) It blows my mind that these are machines from the 8-track era. And they have fallbacks and redundancies that were completely ahead of their time.
Yeah it's really amazing that these come from a time where normal people had never even heard of bits and bytes. And now they're the furthest man made objects and their data link still works.