Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Voyager Keeps on Trucking

Posted by michael on from the to-boldly-go dept.

spagiola writes "CNN has a brief story about Voyager I continuing on past Pluto, and about the problems of keeping in touch with it as it keeps heading further away. They've activated a spare sun sensor and star tracker. I wonder: would it make sense to send out another probe after it, to relay messages to/from it?"

1 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Actually, not so useless... by Mr.Intel · · Score: 5, Informative

    As for the fastest man-made object, Deep Space 1 would have it I believe with its ion drive (53,100 kilometers per hour): http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ deepspace_propulsion_000816.html

    That was just an estimate of capability. For actual speeds, check the official website out here. Also look at the log archives of the different staff members. Here you will see that as of July 29, 2001 it was travelling at 16.5 km/s! That's 16,500 m/s or 0.055C. So you are correct, it is the fastest man-made object so far.

    --
    ASCII tastes bad dude.
    Binary it is then.