I always have a sense of pride and a feeling of respect for us as a human race when reading about V'ger. It's astonishing that we were able to send a space probe, designed and built to be so robust that it's still doing its thing and sending us postcards after 46 years(!!!) of flying away from us in an extremely harmful environment, while we still fuck simple stuff up back home.
Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
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Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#222LOL @ CNN blocking Firefox! "Browser Blocked We apologize, but your web browser is configured in such a way that it is preventing this site from implementing required components that protect your privacy and allow you to view and change your privacy settings. This functionality is required for privacy legislation in your region. We recommend you use a different browser or disable the “EasyList Cookie” filter from you…
If I had to guess, it's phrased like this since it's blocking their third-party cookie banner.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#223Criminy. Why aren't we launching more of these probes? With Musk's cheap rockets, we could launch a fleet of them.
Voyager took advantage of a specific alignment of planets that allowed it to make many consecutive gravity assists.
In theory we could just do an arbitrary number of consecutive gravity assists between say earth and mars to get the speed to travel past a single planet to exmaine it and then travel on out of the solar system.
With the cost savings of the new Starship rocket, the increased scale of probes that it would enable, the increase in processing and sensing technology, and the lowered cost that would come from mass production of many probes we could probably end up with a more cost effective solution this way, even if we're sending more probes.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why are there hard boundaries before that bounced back?
Gravity. The suns gravity field is in theory infinite but there is a pretty precise boundary where it stops to have an immediate effect on the things around it and orbits around the sun are no longer possible.
This is not correct. The particles are not in orbit about the Sun, they're coming from the Sun--they're the solar wind. The heliopause is where the solar wind particles are stopped by the pressure of the surrounding interstellar medium. When Voyager passed that point (the heliopause), the number of particles hitting it dropped drastically.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Voyager took advantage of a specific alignment of planets that allowed it to make many consecutive gravity assists.
I know. But still, just flying around the solar system can be endlessly productive. Does anyone think we've learned all we can about the solar system?
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#226Criminy. Why aren't we launching more of these probes? With Musk's cheap rockets, we could launch a fleet of them.
If I remember correctly Voyager benefitted from a particular alignment of the planets to get multiple slingshot boosts from gravity wells. Part of the appeal of the mission was that it will be a very long time before we could possibly do this again because the planets won't line up correctly and we have no technology to speed the probes up to the velocities that the voyager probes achieved.
What exactly does that get us? It gets further into space faster? It travels faster? Cheaper to launch?
I mean if it just means it leaves the solar system 20 years faster or something then it seems like cheaper launches far outweigh those favorable conditions.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#227My favorite graph of all time is the one that demonstrate Voyager 1 had left the solar system. I was a high school math and science teacher at the time, and I spent the whole day sharing this graph with students. It was so much fun watching everyone's faces and seeing the moment they realized what it really meant. https://phys.org/news/2012-10-voyager-left-solar.html
Why isn't it linear?
A solar eruption may impose 10~ AU of continued heliosphere at this distance.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Voyager took advantage of a specific alignment of planets that allowed it to make many consecutive gravity assists.
I know. But still, just flying around the solar system can be endlessly productive. Does anyone think we've learned all we can about the solar system?
2013
MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution): Launched by NASA, this probe is aimed at studying the Martian atmosphere to understand how it lost its water and atmosphere over time.
2014
Hayabusa2: Launched by JAXA, the Japanese space agency, this asteroid sample-return mission targeted the asteroid Ryugu.
2015
DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory): A joint mission by NASA, NOAA, and the U.S. Air Force, DSCOVR studies the solar wind and its impact on Earth.
2016
OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer): NASA's mission to asteroid Bennu for a sample return to Earth.
2017
Parker Solar Probe: Launched by NASA to study the outer corona of the Sun.
2018
BepiColombo: A joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and JAXA to Mercury. InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport): A NASA lander to study Mars' interior.
2019
Chang'e 4: A Chinese lunar exploration mission that achieved the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon.
2020
Mars 2020 (Perseverance Rover): NASA's rover to explore Mars, seeking signs of past life and collecting samples for possible return to Earth. Tianwen-1: China's mission that includes an orbiter, lander, and rover to Mars. Hope Probe: The United Arab Emirates' mission to study the Martian atmosphere.
2021
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): An international collaboration led by NASA, with significant contributions from ESA and the Canadian Space Agency, JWST is designed to observe the earliest galaxies and stars formed after the Big Bang."
-ChatGPT
Space exploration is definitely still a thing.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#229If NASA can't contact it again and it has bravely gone into the great darkness alone with a piece of us, let's hope it's eventually found by a race capable of understanding the fragment of memory it carries. If you're lost V'ger, safe travels.
Perhaps not now, but this is definitely the case.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. Didn't want to tap a CNN link for anything involving science P.s. I also wouldn't go to Fox, before you think this is left/right bias. My bias is against regular media reporting on anything scientific. It's either rendered alarmist, so simplified it's wrong, or some combination of the two
CNN is now owned by a right-wing nut, so CNN and Fox news are about the same now.
Who's that in a "Warner Bros. Discovery" world? Glancing at the wikipedia page I see no clear single owner anymore.
Edit: not intending to come to CNN's defense in any way here, just genuine curious who's pulling the strings now in the new ownership structure.