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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."
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.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/
It's not much, just 10 pictures. Click on "Voyager's Photo Legacy", then again for a Javascript pop-up gallery.
- More, higher resolution pictures
- Detailed timeline
- A 2 minute NPR segment
- A longer segment at the end of Science News Roundup on NPR
And a few newspaper stories:From the comment field in the GIF file (can you write such long comments into the GIF file using Photoshop?):
NASA's Voyager 2 took this photograph of Saturn on July 21, 1981,
when the spacecraft was 33.9 million kÿilometers (21 million
miles) from the planet. Two bright, presumably convective cloud
patterns are visible in the mid-northern hemisphere and several
dark spoke-like features can be seen in the broad B-ring (left of
planet). The moons Rhea and dioneÿ appear as blue dots to the
south and southeast of Saturn, respectively. Voyager 2 made its
closest approach to Saturn on Aug. 25, 1981. The Voyager project
is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. This image was converted directly from digital data to
GIF format.
(Unfortunately, the Slashdot "filter" doesn't allow me to post the whole comment.)
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.
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.)
.. well, I won't be getting my response back until this time tomorrow. Things like that.
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
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
It makes me wonder what we could do with the even lower power and lower weight computer/sensor technologies we have available now. Looks like the Voyagers are going to last past 2020 but with even lower power one might marvel at how long newer devices could last. That is assuming, of course, that we can ever straighten out conversions between english and metric units.
In the mid 80's I remember walking by the newstand, and suddenly seeing a picture of a big, blue/green spooky looking planet on the front page. Then right next to it was "Voyager Reaches Neptune!".
I remember the space books before that simply showed grainy star-like blob photos of neptune (assuming no guessed illustration).
Then low and behold, this big spooky ball with wispy clouds and a jupiter-like dark spot is revealed, and its a real place, waaaaaay out there at the cold edge of the solar system.
It fit well the stereotype of a distant, strange, lonely, but beautiful planet.
Thumbs up, Voy!
Table-ized A.I.
Years later we will cheer and gawk as NASA or the U.S. Air Force reports a fleet of unidentified space ships entering the atmosphere... until they pull out their laser blasters and photon torpedoes and come looking for revenge.
"ISS to Houston, come in please."
"Houston, go ahead"
"Will you fix the toilet up here? It's not flushing and theres shit all over the place."
"ISS, we're trying, but 200,000 bloody people are trying to look @ pictures of Uranus right now. Will advise."
= Grow a brain...
(* It makes me wonder what we could do with the even lower power and lower weight computer/sensor technologies we have available now. Looks like the Voyagers are going to last past 2020 but with even lower power one might marvel at how long newer devices could last. *)
Too small of electronic parts cause problems near heavy radiation areas like Jupiter and other gas giant planets. Some of this can be helped with sheilding, but the sheilding increases the weight where it may be more effective to use fat electronics rather than fat shielding.
One of the reasons that a planned Europa (Jup moon) probe was postponed is that the cost of radiation sheilding was more expensive than they thought. Older probes did not have as much worries about that because their electronics were larger. Now they have to weigh more tradeoffs because of the options and problems that minituration provides WRT heavy radiation.
Plus, doesn't the power needed for radio transmission remain pretty much constant, especially in light of the fact that newer missions send more data than older ones?
The efficiency of radio transmission has not followed Moore I don't believe. It is linear I think.
Table-ized A.I.