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Voyager 1 Passes 100 AU from the Sun

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the they-don't-build-em-like-they-used-to dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday, Voyager 1 passed 100 astronomical units from the sun as it continues operating after nearly 30 years in space. That is about 15 billion kilometers or 9.3 billion miles as it travels about 1 million miles per day. Scientists still hope it will find the edge of the solar system and get into interstellar space."

6 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators by Lazbien · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The article states that Voyager 1 is using radioisotope thermoelectric generators to power the flight... not knowing what these were, I went to Wikipedia, which told me that they were used to generate a few hundred watts or less, and seem to get hot. My question from this is the application in to on-Earth areas. For instance, why aren't radioisotope thermoelectric generators used in Data Centers? Or Factories? Or Office Towers? Or on farms? Can't we take a few hundred of these, bury them in a sub-basement, and start generating our own power? I want my space age power, damnit. Any rocket scientists out there know the cost of one of these suckers?

  2. Re:Poor V-ger by Lurker2288 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nah, if there are ETs out there capable of detecting it, retrieving it, and figuring out where it came from, chances are they can manage to go a little faster than a probe that's been coasting on a gravity slingshot for 30-odd years.

  3. Re:Can we still ping it? by WED+Fan · · Score: 2, Insightful
    the craft's current rate of acceleration as it heads away from the sun is not consistent with current gravitional laws.

    Could you amend that to read, "is not consistent with our current understanding of gravity" or "is not consistent with our apparently flawed gravitational laws"?

    Really, I wish they would stop calling these things "law". Every generation sees a bushel of these "laws" being thrown out, adjusted, or ignored.

    The Universe doesn't play by our "laws", it just waits until we understand Its LAWS.

    --
    Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
  4. Re:Batteries not included...... by Klintus+Fang · · Score: 2, Insightful
    30 years without changing the batteries *AND* 30 years without exploding. Can I get one of those?
    i know little about the specs of those generators, but somehow I suspect that you wouldn't find the current they are able to provide satisfactory... :-b
    --
    In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. -T.S. Eliot
  5. Wow! Is this thing still working? Fantastic! by Uninstaller · · Score: 2, Insightful

    NASA sure used to build rugged, solid stuff!

    --
    Futurama lover
  6. URL to a photo? by kimvette · · Score: 2, Insightful
    [...]The spacecraft are traveling at a distance where the sun is but a bright point of light[...]


    Are there any photos of the sun from that distance? I've never seen photos looking back at the solar system from those spacecraft published. Even if it is only points of light, it'd be neat to see some photos from Voyager with the sun and visible planets highlighted to get some sense of scale of our tiny corner of the universe.
    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50