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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?"
Although it would be an interesting experiment to extend our communications reach with relay probes, the scientific data provided by Voyager isn't worth it when the money should go to more important things like the Pluto mission. The Voyager mission is basically down to exploring the Kuiper belt and testing the length of time the back-up systems that NASA wisely installed will last. Hopefully the extreme survivability of Voyager will encourage aerospace and spacecraft engineers to use more redundancy, as the trend lately has been towards less to cut costs.
Thanks,
Travis
forkspoon@hotmail.com
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.
Oh, you meant the probe... my mistake...
Here is some useless information about the Voyager spacecraft...
From the article:" Voyager 1 was launched on Sept. 5, 1977 and completed flyby exploration of both Jupiter and Saturn. The spacecraft now is rising above the ecliptic plane -- the plane in which most of the planets orbit the sun -- at an angle of about 35 degrees at a rate of about 520 million kilometers (about 320 million miles) a year.
Voyager 2 was launched on Aug. 20, 1977 and also completed visits to Jupiter and Saturn and then went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, completing the reconnaissance of the giant outer planets. The spacecraft is now diving below the ecliptic plane at an angle of about 48 degrees and a rate of about 470 million kilometers (about 290 million miles) a year.
So Voyager 1 is travelling at 320,000,000 miles per year. That is about 3090 m/s or 0.0103C. Not too shabby! Voyager 2 is at 290,000,000 miles per year or 2800 m/s or 0.0093C.
I wonder what the fastest man made object is? Hmmm let's see, this page says that the Ulysses probe was the fastest at 15 km/sec. That's 15,000 m/s or 0.05C! Then this page claims the Pioneer 10 was the fastest at 51,810 km/hour. That's 14,391.67 m/s or 0.04797C. So it looks like Ulysses wins. If you can find anything else to add to the list, please do!
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Even if it were technically feasible, it'd just add another possible point of failure. Trying to fix a problem in Voyager would be interesting if everything had to be relayed, and even more interesting if the relay itself had problems. If the information Voyager gathers is really that useful, they'll find a way to keep in contact.
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.
... especially since our next chance wouldn't come for at least 20 more years, if we launched a mission right now.
Not even. Voyager 2 used four gravity assists off of the giant planets to build up speed. Even IF we launched today, we couldn't get to Uranus or Neptune with conventional rockets. The configuration of the planets that allowed the multiple-assist grand tour of the solar system (giving the two Voyager probes more delta-V than we can with today's (or even tomorrow's) technology) only occurs once every ~180 years.
To quote a NASA mission scientist on Voyager, "the last time this was possible, Jefferson was President. And boy, did he blow it."
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
Thanks for the info. (no sarcasm here) I was actually wondering about the article.
a rsystem/ deepspace_propulsion_000816.html
The article says:
"Voyager I was launched in 1977 to study and photograph the giant planets in the outer solar system...."
and then later says:
"A robotic twin of Voyager I left Earth in 1975 as well. Voyager II is heading in the opposite direction of Voyager I and traveling at a slightly slower speed."
That confused the hell outta me. (Why would they name it "II" if it left 2 years earlier than "I"???)
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/sol
Karma: NaN
Maybe they started building Voyager II after Voyager I, but finished Voyager II first and launched it first.
proton != antielectron
that future probes consider <focus_paranoia>nuclear</focus_paranoia > reactors for long term power needs when solar panels no longer provide sufficient means?
I know they got a bad rap after a Russian satellite equipped with a nuclear reactor crashed down into Canada a few years ago, but it seems like they'd be a good idea for interstellar probes of this kind.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The Japenese Halca satellite, launched in 1997 had an 8 meter deployable dish, and it was supposed to be superceeded by something bigger (but funding got a bit tight of course)
The "Trumpet" SigInt (Signals Intellegence) satellites, of which the NSA has launched 4 or so, have an absolutly HUGE dish. See Pic here Size is said to be in the region of 150-200 meters in diameter, in a very high orbit (either Moylina, or Geosync)
(Of course, it needs to be that size to pick up your keystrokes and monitor radiation from orbit.)
Karma cap reached, so mod somebody else up.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
It's not quite that bad. If you do a couple of gravity assists off of Earth and Venus (and you can do that no matter what year you launch) and snag Jupiter on your way out, you can get a pretty good velocity up. A big reason the Voyager alignment was so special is that they actually got to go to all 4 giant planets. If Neptune had been on the opposite side of the Sun from Jupiter, gravity assist or not, we'd have been sunk. Pioneers 10 and 11 didn't use the outer 3 giant planets, and they're doing a pretty good clip, too.
Still, you're right that we'd be short some of that Voyager delta-v! If memory serves (which is does at its own conviences, the punk), Voyagers overtook their Pioneer cousins a while ago.
If memory serves (which is does at its own conviences, the punk), Voyagers overtook their Pioneer cousins a while ago.
:)
Your memory is doing just fine
The most distant spacecraft right now is Voyager 2, followed by Voyager 1, and then the Pioneers 10 and 11 (not sure which order).
The Pioneers, of course, were just test probes to make a rough estimate of what the Voyagers could expect. Went to Jupiter and Saturn. Discovered the Jupiter-Io flux tube (which resulted in a major Voyager redesign) and proved that it was possible to get through the asteroid belt (which was a big question at the time).
Good ships, all of them!
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
The disk isn't that vunerable, mainly due to three reasons:
1. Its in a fairly clean orbit, most of the manmade space junk is in low orbits.
2. The dish is made up of a light mesh, so its mostly 'empty space', the actual 'cross section target area' is relativly small.
3. At the frequencies that this disk is listening, you don't need a solid dish, so if a passing asteroid punches a 10 foot hole through it, it will still work. (although your signal strength and 'aiming sharpness' will be slightly degraded).
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Compare that to a very expensive, single-purpose mission. Just because something might be feasible (notice that we've never done anything of the sort before) doesn't mean that it makes any sense to try to do it.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
You, my friend, have a common misconception of the volume of empty space out there. We can't see shit, metaphorically speaking. Given the distances involved in comparison with (1) the size of voyager and (2) the speed of voyager I really think it would be akin to releasing a dandilion seed on the continent of africa and hoping someone on the other side sees it one day.
Check the numbers for the sizes and distances of the sun, the earth, and pluto.. then boil it down to scales we can see. If the sun was a basketball - how far away would the earth be from it, and how large would it be? What about pluto? Now, how far away from those objects is the next closest star?
Given those distances and sizes, how big would voyager be and how fast is it moving?
it boggles the mind, it does! :-)
Sorry, i'm confused. How do you slingshot around Venus when you're going out of the solar system? Seems like that would be counter-productive unless you can manage to slingshot around the sun too, which seems pretty weird.
Simple, you come around behind it just like you do at Jupiter. Slingshotting has nothing to do with where in the solar system you are, it's just a matter of robbing momentum from the planet.
The Galileo and Cassini probes both used Venus and Earth slingshots to get to the outer solar system.