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Voyager Keeps on Trucking
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?"
The cost of checking in with Voyager every now and again is minimal. Far, far less than the costs of building even New Horizons, let alone another Voyager-class mission. And since Voyager is heading for the the heliopause and quite probably will get through it before it dies off or we lose contact, that will be a great scientific benefit. Right now, we don't really know where the heliopause is, exactly. To miss this chance to encounter it would be foolish, especially since our next chance wouldn't come for at least 20 more years, if we launched a mission right now.
Can you imagine trying to get a 35-meter dish antenna even so far as low-earth orbit, let alone on a solar-escape trajectory? Get real.
I see no such problem. Perhaps it is you who should take a little time to think before posting; The concept of a sectored parabolic dish that expands when it deploys is not a new concept. If you do that now you're down to an 18m long component. If you're willing to send it up and have a crew assemble it instead of have it self-deploy en route to its destination you can get that number down MUCH smaller.