Slashdot Mirror
Whisper Heard From Pioneer 10
Irishman writes "NASA has heard from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft for the first time since March. Unfortunately, it is too faint to get scientific data from the craft. CNN has the story here.
Considering that the craft is twice the distance from the Sun as Pluto is and that it has spent 30 years subjected to space, this is amazing! Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
"Khaaaaaaaan!"
sorry, I'll quit now.
The Pioneer 10 spacecraft was heard to whisper, "I can see my house!"
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
Too bad they couldn't decode the message:
"Hey guys, Veeger's here, and she's pissed."
Kill Trolls Dead. Here's
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
They can, you just don't want to pay for it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Why didn't NASA send out repeaters behind it ? I'd imagine that a series of repeaters behind it would be able to get information back to us on earth...
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
I've got a working C-64 that's been through a dozen moves, an infinite number of Jumpman inspired rages, and two boys' adolescensce. Space? Hah!
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
...and still being productive. What is your excuse?
You raise a child, send them off, and they don't even call home that often, and when they do, they can't even understand them...
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
Who says they don't? I'd say that the fact that you won't be using the same computer 30 years from now has very little to do with reliability. In which case, why bother designing for a 30 year lifespan?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
It must be a man, it waited this long to ask for directions...and then it had to whisper.
From the Pioneer Status web page:
Pioneer 10 distance from Sun : 81.86 AU Speed relative to the Sun: 12.228km/sec (27,355 mph) Distance from Earth: 12.10 billion kilometers (7.52 billion miles) Round-trip Light Time: 22 hours 25 minutes
There was one more Pioneer 10 contact on 12/5/02. The Deep Space Station (DSS) near Madrid (DSS-63) found the signal but could not lock onto the receiver, and so no telemetry was received. The signal level was just under the threshold value. The uplink from DSS-14 at Goldstone, sent 12/4/02 at a power level of 325 kw, confirmed that the spacecraft signal is still there (Round Trip Light Time = 22 hr 24 min).
Project Phoenix also picked up the signal from Pioneer 10 at Arecibo in Puerto Rico.
LARRY LASHER, PIONEER PROJECT MANAGER
(Copyright NASA)
Where exactly is the Pioneer headed to. Is it intended to eventually make a circular path and eventually head home, or will it just continue to wander out into space? If we could start planting satellites in circular synchronous orbits, perhaps we could eventually have a transmission array that could gradually extend throughout the solar system.
Sending out probes is cool when we can collect info, but it's not really useful if the data isn't able to be processed. A probe that wanders away isn't really very useful, unless perhaps somebody picks it up and sends it home or comes to visit.
"On the rare occasions when astronomers have coaxed even sparse data from Pioneer 10 in recent years, they have used the readings to investigate everything from cosmic rays to chaos theory to gravitational mechanics."
Are we getting accurate data? Do we know that the data coming back is reliable? Should we trust Pioneer 10 and the data that it is sending us? Note: I'm glad it is still operating. That really is a feat. But, we should temper our enthusiam with a heatlhy dose of skepticism.
How to Download YouTube Videos
send out another multi-million dollar spacecraft out toward Pioneer 10 that will send a signal yelling "WHAT????"
Apart from all the moronic comments about sturdy computers (Nice going Irishman, trolling in the story), Isn't this a clue about the silence in space? You know, the Drake equation? How strong must a signal be, to be heard? Pioneer is only 2x orbit of Pluto away from the Sun, and already impossible to listen to. Nearest star is 4.2 light years away, and nearest galaxy is "just" 75,000 light years away. How strong signal would be needed to communicate these distances. I know the Pioneer signal is only a few milli (micro?) watts, but still...
J.
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
It's called the Compaq Nonstop Himalaya. Each processor runs every calculation twice, in parallel, and compares the answers when done--if they do not match, it tries again. If they do not match again, the processor state is saved then restored in one of the "hotspare" processors. The memory uses a special, extra high-reliability (and extra slow) ECC algorithm. The server itself has integrated battery backup, variable speed fans which adjust for the death of other fans, and each system is immensely expandable without ever being rebooted or shut down.
An acquaintance of mine works for a company which has a Nonstop with an uptime of nearly ten years.
Remember the Tandem?
Note that the Nonstop isn't much more reliable than IBM's Z series mainframes, which basically never die either.
Ironic, isn't it, that a company famous for making desktops which are essentially crap, makes one of the most reliable servers on earth?
Er, back on topic, isn't Voyager significantly farther from the sun than Pioneer 10?
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Oh, then you've the temperature thing. Commercial grade components won't handle sub-zero celcius. Industrial grade goes to -40 and military/space will support -50.
Space is 5'K, which is -268 celcius. The difference in rates of thermal expansion of metals and plastics would be enough to shatter most components, at that temperature.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Can you hear me now?"
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
I don't believe that's actually always the case. I have a friend who works for the Surrey Space Centre on very small satellites - I was chatting to him down the pub about it one day and I was quite surprised to find out that it ran on an ordinary StrongArm Chip running at something like 133Mhz (Sorry - I don't recall the exact speed).
However, I suppose it's possible that the nanosatellite they built was sufficiently close to the earth to be sheilded from the radiation you speak of...
The transputer, for example, was mathematically proven correct, and cost $15 a chip. Given that a T400 was as powerful as an 80486, several years before Intel made any, it's pretty obvious cost isn't the reason.
(The transputer was a marvel, for its time - it was linearly scalable, regardless of number. 1000 of them would give you the same performance as a Cray 1, for 1% of the cost.)
The reason is complexity. Mathematical proofs aren't trivial, so few chip companies bother. It's simpler to ship defective goods, and hope nobody notices. Notice I'm saying "simpler", not "cheaper". Mathematicians aren't much more expensive than good VLSI engineers.
Why is simple important? Because of PR. If you can get a product out fast, or a new press release out fast, then that's Good Business. Taking your time to get it right doesn't fill newspaper columns. Nobody ever wrote an editorial on how so-and-so proved the ALU free of bugs. They =WILL= write plenty on Intel/whoever releasing the latest nth generation processor, even if their last release was the month before.
The cost of replacement is about the same as the cost of getting it right, but the PR life-cycle is much faster, and so gets more attention & higher stock value.
For those of you who have chosen "popular" over "quality" in any part of your life, you know the lure, even though you know the real price you'll pay in the end.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
I'm sure if you're willing to pay $350 million, most PC makers would be willing to work with you on that.
Considering I paid roughly 0.00000228% of that, I'm willing to deal with a reboot every month or so.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
I sense a disturbance in the force...millions of Slashdot "comedians" all crying out with bad jokes and ill puns and then silenced.
Unlikely. NASA deep space stuff is up around 8 GHz, where atmospheric effects are minimal. No, the thing is just too far away, and its signal just isn't strong enough.
What for?
In the present situation, it wouldn't make any difference. Goldstone et al are out in the middle of nowhere, and have no significant radio interference problems. The atmosphere isn't an issue at these frequencies.
If I wanted to build the Proverbial Really Big Radio Telescope I'd park it at a Lagrange point. No gravity at all to worry about, I could make it as big as I wanted, and in a vacuum I could have all sorts of fun making it out of improbable materials.
The main seelling point for a radio telescope on the Moon would be interferometry, providing a much longer baseline than any telescopes on Earth could muster. Until we set up shop on Mars...
...laura
Is the solar system larger than the orbit of Pluto? If so, what defines it?
I'm no expert, but I believe that the edge of the solar system is generally considered where the sun no longer has any influence. Beyond Pluto (Pluto is about 39.5 AU from the sun) the sun continues to have influence in the form of solar wind (thought to go out to around 100 AU). Many scientists also believe that many object exist outside the orbit of Pluto.
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
Nope, temperature is a measure of the energy of a system. For normal objects it manifests itself as the oscillation of the atoms making up that object. At absolute zero the atoms are motionless.
Infrared radiation is a mechanism of heat transfer. Hot objects radiate in more than just the infrared though. The infrared range just happens to be where the peak for black-body radiation for objects with typical earth temperatures lies. Hotter objects (such as an incandescent lamp) have peaks at higher frequencies such as the visible range and beyond.
"From my cold, dead hands you damn, dirty apes!" - CH
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If the asteroid (or spacecraft) isn't too old, it outgasses, and the outgassing rate depends strongly on temperature, forming a weak natural rocket engine. Even for refractory materials (or old asteroids that have outgassed all that they are going to) the photon pressure from the warm side can have a significant effect over millions of years.
I haven't done the calculation myself, but I've discussed it over cocktails with Bill Bottke, a leading asteroid scientist, and he seemed to think it was a plausible explanation for the Pioneer 10 orbital drift. P10 is a spinner.
Imagine, please, that you have a pipe 1m in diameter stretching from just past Earth's atmosphere to the Alpha Centauri system. (Ignore the engineering difficulties, please.)
Can you guess how much all the contents of that pipe would weigh?
Less than a kilogram.
Considerably less than a kilogram.
I would tell you just how tiny, but you wouldn't believe me. I'll let you do the math: the observed density of the universe is 2.1 * 10**-29 kilograms per cubic meter. From here to Alpha Centauri is about 4.5 lightyears, and each lightyear is 9.5 * 10**15 meters.
So we're looking at a total distance of about 4*10**16m to Alpha Centauri. Multiply that by the cross-sectional area of our pipe (.6m) and you get... 2.4 * 10**16m**3 of volume.
Multiply that by the observed density of the universe and you get...
5 * 10**-13 kilograms.
Yeah. Like I said. Considerably less than a kilogram.
Your post shows a severe lack of understanding about space. One, it's freaking cold. Two, once you get past Saturn you can pretty much write off solar flares and activity. Three, sure, there are energetic cosmic rays--but they're here on Earth, too, so Earth's no better off. (No, our atmosphere doesn't protect us in any substantial way from cosmic rays.)
If you were to stand on Pluto and turn on a cell phone, the radio signal from your cell phone would be the brightest electromagnetic signal in the sky--by orders of magnitude.
Space is overwhelmingly small, dark and quiet. Yes, there is the occasional bit of matter which can be a real royal pain in the ass... but the odds of a collision are, well, astronomical.
I don't think you understand a damn word of what you just posted, and it astonishes me that you can get a +4 moderation for being totally flipping wrong.