Voyagers Legacy in Pictures

tanveer1979 writes "Space.com has an interesting photo feature from the voyager craft. For the uninformed voyager is the most distant man made object. For the first time we are recieving photos of distant parts of the solar system. Currently voyager is about 12 light hours away. Wonder how far is that? Well Sun is 8 light minutes away from Earth. In case you are wondering what is this all about, check out the current location of voyager. The voyager spacecraft are about to cross heliopause, which is the limit of the rule of the sun, after which inter steller winds take over, and for the first time scientists can get the feel of what lies outside the solar system."

Comments

Voyager makes me wonder

[Krapangor]

if all this "low-budget-space-exploration" the NASA does these days is the wrong direction.
With the old expensive programs you got huge bills but you got huge results, too.
The cheap stuff on the other hand tends to fail and doesn't has much scientific content.
Space exploration is not about driving cute robots on mars - actual scientific results are wanted. No matter if the public "loves" them or not.
Perhaps NASA is bound to degenerate to a pseudo-science space-entertaiment agency. If Disney sponsors one of their flights, then we will know it for sure.

Re:Voyager makes me wonder

[Tablizer]

(* if all this "low-budget-space-exploration" the NASA does these days is the wrong direction.
With the old expensive programs you got huge bills but you got huge results, too. *)

I don't know about that. Would you rather have 3 missions to different places or one mission to the same place.

Voyager 2 took a unique and limited opportunity of the fact that the outer planets were in the right position to use as a "slingshot" to the next target. I don't know how budget situations would have affected this.

If a similar "alignment" opportunity comes along, but is not taken advantage of, then I can see a real complaint. But so far nothing like that has been "missed" that I know of.

The closest similarity may be the tentative Pluto probe: if they don't launch soon, then Pluto's atmosphere will be frozen for another 200 years or so, losing any opportunity to study its non-frozen atmosphere close up for a long while. (Pluto has a highly elliptical orbit compared to most planets.)

If they cancel the Pluto probe, then somebody should be summarily fired (even if a Senator did it). The ISS keeps sucking up the funds for it.

Europa and Mars are not going anywhere soon, but Pluto's atmosphere is.

I think they should send *two* probes in case one fails. Bleep happens. Even the Voyagers had intermittent problems, despite a "full" budget. Galellio (sp?) had a huge antenna problem which prevented most planned photography despite a full budget, and Mariner 8 totally failed.

So far, the failure rate of the newer crop is not significantly more than the 70's probes. I think Countour's recent failure bumped up the newer number to stand out a bit, but it is still not that much worse.

Slightly offtopic but... Light Hour? Light minute?

[tonywestonuk]

Isn't stating distances in these units a bit 'oldie style.... Shoulden't we be always stating Light Years, where,

27.4 milli-Light years = 1 Light day

114 micro-Light Years = 1 Light Hour

1.9 micro-Light Years = 1 Light Minute

Mix and matching units isn't the way to go, for instance, how many times further is the Voyager from the sun than us?... (12 light hours compaired to 8 light mins, is more complecated than 15 uLightYear compaired to 1368uLightYear, where in the latter, it can be seen that it is approx 100 times further.)

You're brain damaged as well

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper distance unit in the solar system is the "astronomical unit". Voyager 1 is currently 85.601 AU from Earth. That makes it, ahem, 85.601 times further than the sun because the distance of the Sun is 1 AU.

Re:Slightly offtopic but... Light Hour? Light minu

[freeweed]

Mix and matching units isn't the way to go, for instance, how many times further is the Voyager from the sun than us?... (12 light hours compaired to 8 light mins, is more complecated than 15 uLightYear compaired to 1368uLightYear, where in the latter, it can be seen that it is approx 100 times further.)

Most people educated past grade 2 these days are taught that there are 60 minutes in an hour, and have no trouble working these sorts of figures out.

The biggest reason *I* like to see light-hours/minutes/etc is that it's actually meaningful. 871 micro-Light Years is some arbitrary figure. 11 light minutes means that light (a really, really fast thing) takes 11 minutes to travel that distance. And if I want to communicate with a spacecraft that's 12 light hours out .. well, I won't be getting my response back until this time tomorrow. Things like that.

Mod this down

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of Voyager space probes?

NASA's aims in this are quite clear:

1 - Launch probes to outer space
2 - ?????
3 - Profit!