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NASA To Contact Its Oldest Spacecraft
BugBBQ writes: "This is very "Space:1999 UltraProbe" kinda-kool...
NASA will attempt to contact its oldest spacecraft, Pioneer-6, launched in 1965! (yikes! that's the year I was born for crying out loud! which I'm sure I did at the time)). p.s.: Anyone who gets the Space:1999 ref is welcome to e-mail me" This bird has been spinning through space for a long time.
Well it's simply because the Nuclear Waste Dumps on the far side failed to explode :)
Troc
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Pioneer 6 is in solar orbit at 0.74 AU
Pioneer 10 has left the solar system, and is 7 billion miles away
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If the probe is continuously transmitting, then it would be nice if they'd just publish orbital elements and protocol information so everyone with a 300-meter antenna can listen in.
Very little, I'm afraid. There are many more very good instruments, most notably SOHO, TRACE.
However, for a amateur science project, it would be great, as you're working on data from a spacecraft that made history, and you're the only one who does it.
The question remains, how expensive it would be to build an antenna to downlink the signals.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
It's .74 AUs from the Sun, that's only about 20 million miles from Earth.
Pioneer 10 and 11 are the ones that are waaay out there.
The article doesn't mention this, so in case anyone was wondering. The last time this spacecraft was contacted was in October of 1997.
The space-time metric is not unknown to us primitive earthlings. I ran into it in my second year course on relativity. It is called delta s. (I can't make that damn triangle).
My signs may be wrong, but
delta S = delta x - (c * delta t)
Unfortunately, I also forget what it was called. I do remember that whether it was positive or negative had some significance, though. If it was positive, there was an inertial frame of reference in which the two events that the delta was measured between were simultaneous. If it was negative, there was an inertial frame of reference in which the two events occur at the same point in space.
Also, check out the units - distance.
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Yes, but we know that time travel can be achieved by attaining the exact speed of 88 mph (plus a flux capacitor)...so maybe we launched it yesterday, it went back 7 billion years in time, and now we are just trying to contact it.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
NASA is open about such things, but based on my experience with the UARS satellite, much of the protocols were one shot solutions applicable only to the particular mission or mission family. If the thing's still up and running you've got a good shot of getting everything on the web. However, if it's been shut down for more than a couple of years, they probably tossed the binders containing the documentation. That was a big problem even on a working project like HRDI and UARS were during the early 90s. Namely it had been running for a several years already, the software was getting long in the tooth and it needed updating. A lot of my job was tweaking legacy code to to bring it in line with language updates and whatnot. Its really frustrating to be able to find no documentation whatsoever on a critical piece of running code. And, thats from the programmer's point of view. I don't wanna think about ther operations engineers would have done if they had to restart it. Anyway, searching for lost documentation would be an original science history project. It'd also be fun to go through the old software archives and take a peek at the code. Mind you for something this old who knows how its stored--punch cards? It kinda gives the creeps to know that someday a historian may draw an image of me based solely on a bunch kludgy Fortran 66 and VAX DCL programs.
Why didn't the moon spin off into Space in 1999? I was really disappointed by that...
What are they going to say? "Ground Control To Major Tom"
I don't they will be able to contact it. P'ner will come back and try to contact us though. Perhaps encased in a big cloud...
Hehee .. if that thing's still working. Good ole' discrete electronics don't fail as much as Intel's processors! :)
--
"The TRW Inc.-built spacecraft was the first - and is now the lone survivor - of a series of four identical spacecraft launched between 1965 and 1968."
;)
There are a few TRW research sites near where I live, one of them is up on a hill where they test antennae and other such stuff, they have this upside down airplane up on stilts which they use for their testing. The site is relativly popular amongst the local population, it's commonly refered to as "the upside down airplane". Of course it also has the advantage of being right next to a beautiful overlook of the San Jose suburbia, so it's popular for another reason too
Does it disturb anyone that NASA didn't keep in contact with this probe,
:)
even if only for the sheer PR value of having a 'human presence' so far
away from our home planet?
This doesn't bode well for generation-based or worse yet, sleeper missions
to remote places, does it
HelpGeeks - don't bother visiting, it's not worth it! Really!
As any geek would be, I would be interested to know what kind of hardware was used to build that thing, especially considering when it was built. I also wonder what the protocol is used to download data from the spacecraft, doubt anyone would know, except NASA people, considering it would be proprietary.
"...originally launched on what was to have been a fleeting six-month mission to measure the solar wind, solar magnetic field and cosmic rays."
My additional question is what practical use it's information would have today, with all the monitoring equipment we have on Earth and have sent into orbit. Keep in mind it does have the advantage of not being obstructed by Earth's weather nor any other Earthly obstructions because it's in a solar oribt.
ping -i 36667
Some of these older space probes are still producing useful data. Check out Mit's Space Plasma web page. Voyager 2 is alive and well and producing data which is being actively studied. It should be passing the heliopause soon and then really be out beyond the system. Its hard to keep interest and funding up for these old guys, but it is well worth the effort.
Pioneers 10 and 11 are the ones on the way out of the solar system. Pioneer 6 was one of the first to leave the Earth-Moon system and go into an inependent orbit around the sun. It bounces around in a circle between Venus and Mars.
I have to buy a new VCR every 2 years. Pioneer 6 has been continuously functioning for 35 years now. Of course, my VCR only cost $100; I'm sure Pioneer 6 probably cost around $100,000,000.99. I guess you do pay for quality.
Of course, Mir has outlasted my last 3 VCR's, my car, my education, and a few other things!
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.
The other pioneers 10 & 11 faint signals are used
to test SETI equipment. I recall one of the two
becoming undetectable recently.
...because if nothing else it gives ground controlers training and practice at contacting robotic craft. What other thing can you use to practice new tracking and communication techinuqes on? Unless you are willing to have NASA mess with craft like Voyager 2 then this is the best way to train new personal and tune their communication techinque.
I do a twice weekly ``finger nasanews@space.mit.edu 2>&1 | /usr/bin/mailx -s "NASA Space News" spacefans'' to keep up to date on what NASA's doing and this item didn't appear. Guess I'll have to find another source so I can get news about space the microsecond it happens.
A terse comment in response to another post about why NASA hasn't been listening to Pioneer 6 all the time: ``$$$''
Have a good one!
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If it's seven billion light years away, then that might explain why my pings to it always timeout. :)
(I think you meant seven billion here, not seven billion light years. One LY = 6 trillion miles/9 trillion KM, if I recall correctly. I really, really doubt that Pioneer 10 is 63 billion trillion KM away.)
Who wouldn't get the Space 1999 reference?
BTW, Martin Landau rules... (He was the captain/leader on Space 1999) even if he hasn't aged very well...
BlackNova Traders
I know that sounds like sour grapes, but I can't even encourage students to go into research anymore - the chances of making a livelihood are so small nowadays, the percentage of time one spends looking for their next meal, and the everyday stress of wondering if money will be yanked out from under you just no longer measures up to all of the positive aspects of the career. I've been watching this over the last 20 years; I don't see any likelihood of any change for the better in the next 4 (8?) years.
This vehicle, in particular, was launched 35 years ago. It has the computing power equivilant of a c64 (If I gauge that correctly.), and NASA wants to contact it now? Was it not good enough in 1990? *sniff* *sniff* do I smell publicity stunt? Now, not to flame NASA in general, but contacting a ship that has been pretty much written off as a 'Rock' hurdling through space, I just do not get what NASA hopes to gain. 'Yea! It's still talking! Ok, shut down the equipment, we will meet back here in another 20 years.' It's like trying to contact an ex-girlfriend. You might get ahold of her, but chances are, it's not going to be a meaningful conversation.
. . . . what NASA doesn't realize is that the aliens have now intercepted the probe and are using it as a coffee table. Any data returned are the result of spilled coffee, or alien equivalent thereof. :-)