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VOYAGER 1 Signal Received by AMSAT-DL Group
Anonymous Coward writes "
Space probe VOYAGER 1 successfully received.
On March 31st, 2006 an AMSAT-DL /IUZ team received a signal from the American
space probe VOYAGER 1 with the 20 m antenna in Bochum. The distance was
14.7 billion km. This is a new record for AMSAT-DL and IUZ Bochum. The
received signal was clearly identified through means of doppler shift and
position in the sky. The receive frequency was exactly measured and compared
with the information provided by NASA.
This distance equals approximately 98 times the distance between Earth and Sun.
VOYAGER 1 is the most distant object ever built by mankind. This again proves
the superior performance of the Bochum antenna. Most probably this is the
first time Voyager 1 has been received by radio amateurs.
VOYAGER 1 was launched on 5. September 1977 by NASA. It transmitted the
first close-up pictures of Jupiter and Saturn. In 2004 VOYAGER 1 passed the
Termination Shock Region, where the solar wind mixes with interstellar gas.
VOYAGER 1 today is still active, measuring the interstellar magnetic field.
The following radio amateurs were involved:
Freddy de Guchteneire, ON6UG
James Miller, G3RUH
Hartmut Paesler, DL1YDD
Achim Vollhardt, DH2VA/HB9DUN
Special thanks to Thilo Elsner, DJ5YM of the IUZ Bochum, Roger Ludwig of Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena USA and the Deep Space Network
Tracking Station in Madrid, Spain for their cooperation.
"
Message contents:
I AM V'GER, YOU ARE NOT TRUE LIFE FORMS.
I will remove the infestation on the Creator's planet.
Mr Sulu, Brown alert, we're gonna need some new uniforms.
liqbase
It must be such a truly incredible day for those amateur radio guys.
NINJA SPIRIT - The Ancient Art of Insanity
Wow, I'd love to have that QSL card! :)
Receiving anything at that distance is a very impressive feat. There are so many things that have to work near-perfectly to detect such a weak signal.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If they send a signal back out to Voyager now, will they be able to count it for bonus points on this year's Field Day?
This is really exciting for me as a space buff, but bittersweet at the same time.
It's great to know that something launched before I was born (1980), can still be found and active.. but at the same time, where is the spirit NASA used to have? These days it always seems about money & more money, while they whine and complain about the ever present-flaws in the space shuttle.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do everything possible to keep our astronauts safe, but if they hadn't contracted the shuttle out to the lowest bidder in the first place, we might have better craft.
I wonder how much it would cost to launch a few more Voyager-like probes?
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
Actually, I'd like to shake their hands. Receiving such a weak signal as a radio amateur proves that there is still a lot of life in the hobby. Kudos to the guys!!!
PS. The message said "All of your Voyager are belong to us"
I drink to make other people interesting!
Why was the word 'Voyager' written in all caps?
Thank God for clean efficient nuclear power. If these had been solar powered we would've lost contact a long time ago.
With all the semi-news posts I've seen on Slashdot the last few weeks, this news about Voyager has made up for it.
Job very well done to ALL members of the Voyager team, wherever you are today.
Half the time I'm right, the other half you're wrong.
"I'm not saying we shouldn't do everything possible to keep our astronauts safe, but if they hadn't contracted the shuttle out to the lowest bidder in the first place, we might have better craft."
China makes shuttles?
I took my parents down to the Smithsonians Air & Space Annex near Dulles Airport on saturday. While we were in the space/rocketry section my dad mentioned that some hams had received a message from 'one of those spacecraft way out there'. I thought he meant Pioneer but, my dad being my dad, had obviously misremembered which spacecraft.
I questioned him on this and he assured me that the signal reception had been confirmed.
Not that this adds anything to the conversation other than a weird coincidence of him telling me about this and now seeing the story.
As an aside, I would highly recommend visiting the annex if you get the chance. The number and variety of planes in the hangar is impressive. Essentially the entire history of flight, from a competitor to the Wright Brothers to ballooning and on to spaceflight, is represented. They even have the model of the mother ship from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and you can see the easter eggs the designers added such as an R2D2 figure, a graveyard and two airplanes.
There are even several planes which are the only ones of their kind to exist anywhere in the world including several from WWII as well as the Enola Gay.
It will take the entire day to see everything so plan accordingly. The parking is $12 a car not including the tolls on the Dulles Toll Road.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And to think that now even amateurs can contact Voyager 1, even though it's almost 100AU away. This makes me want to build my own compact, high-performance radio telescope, with a superconducting receiver, just so that I can commune with V'ger before I go to bed at night. :-)
Deep Space Radar Telemetry huh....
think we can upgrade it from here ?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but people are in constant contact with Voyager. This headline makes it sound like nobody has heard from Voyager in years, but the truth is, they never lost it.
This is just a story about how some amatures managed to find it. I mean, that's cool. Don't get me wrong. Congrats to those guys. But don't play it up to be more than that.
VOYAGER 1 was launched on 5. September 1977 by NASA. It transmitted the first close-up pictures of Jupiter and Saturn
Didn't Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 do that first?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's great to know that something launched before I was born (1980), can still be found and active.. but at the same time, where is the spirit NASA used to have? These days it always seems about money & more money, while they whine and complain about the ever present-flaws in the space shuttle.
In addition to what LiquidCooled said... we also no longer have that little booster called the "Cold War." During that time we didn't care how much money we spent as long as we were ahead of the Soviets. Being ahead of the Soviets was the jusifitication for everything. Now they need to find new justifications, and the public doesn't necessarily support science for science's sake. So they have less money. This means less "incredible" missions, and a stretching of older technology beyond what it was meant for (Space Shuttle). It also means that the missions must have more practical application - which means a lot more close Earth orbit stuff (satelites, etc).
Similar things have happened all over the place, in the new economy... not because of the Cold War, but still similar. Note how there's no more pure research facilities left? IBM's Watson facility is perhaps the last left, but even that has turned to more practical application of research than research for research's sake.
-Daniel
"It's hard for the tree huggers to believe that we've built a nuclear power source that's functioned flawlessly for 30 years, but it's true."
Yes, a thermal pile is so much harder to build than a nuclear power plant.*
*Set sarcasm detectors to overload.
So what would this have said about the SETI program if they had recieved a signal that they couldn't verify with NASA?
0*0
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***
I clicked through to read TFA, and (in addition to it being in German), it was shorter than the summary! ... no, wait, it was just a bad link to the home page of this particular group, rather than to the actual article that the AC submitter appears to have translated practically word-for-word to create the summary (which nevertheless didn't bother to link to the source article).
... summarize? Can someone for the love of FSM explain to me why we needed not only all the geeks involved's names, but also their radio call signs? Wouldn't all the Voyager telemetry groupies be willing to read TFA to get that crucial information?
Is it too much to ask that the summary
Yes, I'm grumpy today. Sorry...
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
Anyone got english stuff telling about their low noise amp and all that stuff? What is this thing made of (geek details please) and how big is it in ft? Could I put one in my back yard?
but don't you think it'd be easier to simply build your interstellar vehicle here instead of something that can catch up to Voyager in order to kit it out as one? It's 13.6 light-hours out! Just build a new, more robust probe and launch.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Did they bring a towel? Very important for space travel.
A colleague has been involved in establishing the web site for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Museum. See www.defence.gov.au/raaf/raafmuseum.
Yes, this is also off-topic! :-)
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
Doesn't this increase the chance of it being hacked? Osama would love to embarass us by making our furthest probe dump all its stablizing propellent and spin into oblivion.
Table-ized A.I.
The signal that the amateur radio guys received sounded somthing like:
"Help! I Want to come back, you bastards!"
Oh well, that should happen in about two hundred and fifty years or so, according to a Mr G. Roddenberry!
Galileo; launched 1989
Cassini;Launched 1997 launched 1989
New Horizons; launched this year
Not every sat has to be nuclear. To be honest, I am quite happy that we are building a lot of solar cell based sats. They will encourage the building of cells for use on the moon and mars. And the sun is plenty good the inner solar system. Nukes are really only need for travel to the outer planets, or perhaps for long-term living on a planet.
Now, what is missed is that we are still using the same technology from the 50's. It would be better if we could create a longer term/higher power system for doing ion thrusters so that it does not take 30 years to hit the edge of the system.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Crap, it's cold out here."
You have too many blank lines in your post.
Please remove three.
I am not a crank.
Sincerely,
Abraham Simpson