So cool.
Especially the 8-track recorders still going strong.
NASA's famous Voyager 1 space probe, sailing outwards into the interstellar void far beyond the orbit of Pluto, has entered a new and never-before-seen region of space thought to be the very edge of the "bubble" maintained around the solar system by the power of the Sun. "We shouldn't have long to wait to find out what the …
It's largely marketing; there is a logic to it, but it's a bit tricky. One probe was launched to reach Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The other probe was launched to reach Jupiter and Saturn and focus on Titan as it went by Saturn, and preferably to get there first.
Titan was a tantalizing world at the time (still is). It was known to have an atmosphere of methane and be larger than Mercury and the Galilean satellites and was speculated as a place where some form of life might conceivably have formed. In fact, Titan was considered important enough that, if something happened to the probe that was to fly close by it, the second one would sacrifice the trips to Uranus and Neptune for a good look at Titan.
Because of this and the alignment of the planets, the craft going to all four planets had to launch first to arrive at the right time on the right trajectory to reach all four. I think I read once that, to reach Uranus and Neptune, the margin for error at Saturn was very very small, the equivalent of sinking a 900 ft putt without rimming the cup. However, it would also arrive at Jupiter AFTER the Jupiter-Saturn-Titan probe, partly from the math and partly to know which trajectory to take (Uranus-Neptune or Titan). Since the later launching probe was arriving at Jupiter first, it was called 1.
Beer, because my brain hurts
Nope.
Soon we find out that Voyager 1 has been vaporised by the quarantine barrier set up by the Galactic Council in 1945 when they realised that a species capable of Nuking itself was perhaps a little too dangerous to be allowed loose in the Galaxy.
Yes, and in the long run, swapping a Vaxuall Astra for a Voyager probe it would have worked out approximately 10 times cheaper. By my maths, not allowing for inflation:
Vaxhall Astra 1.4
Purchase Cost (On the Road): £13,000
Running Cost/Year: £650
Years: 6
Miles: 90,000
Fuel Cost: £9,828
Total Cost :£26,728
Cost/Mile: £0.30
Speed/MPH: 70
Voyager 1
Purchase Cost (Launched): £219,200,000
Running Cost/Year: £4,800,000
Years: 34
Miles: 11,000,000,000
Fuel Cost: Included in Purchase Cost
Total Cost :£382,400,000
Cost/Mile: £0.03
Speed/MPH: 36,907
The only problem with the Voyager option is that I doubt your bank would lend you the inital 219 million quid for the deposit.
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that you would live for the 17,926 years it would take your Vaxhaull Astra to reach the edge of the Solar System (plus 18 years to get your driving license in the first place).
When you get to the edge of the 'bubble' is there a large sign saying "You are now leaving the Solar System. Only space probes travelling to other stars may go beyond this point. Please have your papers ready for security. You are not permitted to carry the following items ..."
More interesting: what language is it written in?
"Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft ever known to have visited the outer planets Uranus and Neptune"
Is this to cover the possibility that LGMs have visited Uranus and Neptune, or that NASA, the Soviets or China sent some undercover space missions there that we haven't been told about yet?
Your LGM hypothesis does not adequately explain this convoluted bit of journalese.
For, if some extraterrestrial space-probing species had sent a visitor to Uranus and/or Neptune, it's odds-on *they* would have known about it.
NASA does not attempt this lets-give-the-aliens-the-benefit-of-the-doubt contortion. The mission website says "Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets".
Source: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/index.html
PS - for certain values of "visited". Try telling your mother that you swung by 50,000 miles away doing a million kph to take a few snaps, and see if she thinks that counts as "visiting".
I would speculate that the reason they don’t, is because NASA personnel know how far away the stars are. Furthermore, if they did acknowledge the possibility in any way, they would be totally unscientific as there is no evidence yet of extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations.
And it may well be there is no such thing as an interstellar spacefaring race anywhere! After all, the age of the Earth is a significant fraction of the age of the Universe, and in order for our Solar System to exist at all there must have been at least one complete generation of supergiant stars, and I think that in order to get the amount of interesting elements like uranium that we find on Earth there was probably another generation of star formation in between too. We may in fact, as improbable as it seems, be the first spacefaring life in the cosmos — we have exactly as much evidence for that as we do against it.
About 98,192.85 Billion Linguini
Standards converter page, it's there for a reason
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html
It's also travelling at approximately at 0.5158% of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum, but I couldn't be bothered to convert that to furlongs per fortnight
It makes me feel tremendously proud of us as a race that these voyagers are out there, so far from home and still going. They will continue to travel, and outlast us all, even though at some point in the next decade or so their RTGs will decay to the point where they generate insufficient power to allow them to keep communicating with the miniscule dot surrounded by other tiny dots that is their view of the place we all call home.
"For the past 22 years they have been not merely space probes but star probes"
That's like saying when I'm in my garden I'm visiting my neighbour's house. They're still WAY closer to the sun than to any other star.
Also, her 39-year mission? When launched in 1977? Someone needs a new calculator.
Still, it's amazing that the probe is still functioning after 34 years, and the timeline (Voyager was launched when I was 5, and I just celebrated my 40th birthday) really gives you a sense of how big space is, when it's not even out of the vicinity of the sun after all this time!
New Horizons, the mission to Pluto, had the highest Earth departure velocity but it will never overtake Voyager 1.
Voyager 1 was accelerated by gravity slingshots around the outer planets during it's visits and currently has the highest cruising speed of any probe so far.
Voyager, Pioneer and New Horizons. A million years from now they will likely still be out there, silent and alone in the darkness between the stars. Testaments to the existence of a species long since gone (extinct or ascended, take your pick), and perhaps forgotten.
God speed and a safe journey.
And would any probe these days get the kind of buy-in (and funding) to develop something which could radio home from that distance?
I continue to be enthralled by the idea of a man-made device which can still manage to signal to us from that distance. It's astonishing. I've actually spent hours geeking out on the comms logs, imagining how long it took for each bit to reach us from out there. It's a feeling we need to get into our kids, the wonder of it - to keep them engaged with learning itself.
Also - Lewis, spotted another blunt reference to how great Nuclear power is there. Tut.