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Voyager 1 Passes 100 AU from the Sun
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."
I wonder how long until it comes back carrying half the solar system with it looking for it's maker?
My humor is probably your flamebait
How many more AUs to scientists think Voyager still has to travel before it reaches the edge, or do we not have a good estimation of that distance?
If I'm a space science noob does that make me a "Universal Noob"?
I recall some time ago reading that the total-return-time for an ICMP_ECHO_RESPONSE from voyager 1 was something in the scale of 29 minutes. I'm hoping we're still getting useful data from these devices.
Informatus Technologicus
Yeah.
If you are like me and love reading about Voyager 1 stuff, here's a great blog post with tons of linked info on the Golden Record, the philosophy behind the probe, who worked on it, that sort of thing.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Kudos JPL.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
http://g-fav.blogspot.com/2006/07/hey-linguists-a
(and now I must wait 49 seconds to amend it, ferfuxsake. slowdowncowboyslowdowncowboyslowdowncowboy)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
While your post was nice, I wouldn't describe it as a "great blog post". Or did you miss a link? :-)
This is a good place to mention Luis Cupido's web site. He's actually managed to pick up the Voyager 1 signal on a 5.6-meter dish, using a lot of DSP-fu and maybe -- you be the judge -- a bit of wishful thinking.
A fascinating, if somewhat slow-loading, page.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
30 years without changing the batteries *AND* 30 years without exploding. Can I get one of those?
Layne
Scientists still hope it will find the edge of the solar system and get into interstellar space."
The alternative is for the Sun to pull it back.
To sail on a dream through eternal nighttime of space To ride on the crest of a wild raging storm To work in the service of life and the living In search of the answers to questions unknown To be part of the movement and part of the growing Part of beginning to understand
Aye, Voyager, the places you've been to The things that you've shown us The stories you tell Aye, Voyager, I sing to your spirit The men who have served you So long and so well
a tip of the prop to the late John Denver
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The point is, the two Voyagers are the last of the first generation of robotic interstellar spacecraft. Interstellar 2.0 will use ion drive, nuclear electric, solar sails, magnetic sails, and other exotic propulsion technologies. Interstellar 3.0 will get useful paylods to other planetary systems, within the lifetime of some slashdot readers. Cost? Less than the Shuttle/Space Station welfare system. Payoff? Priceless! Starflight without Warp Drive Hydrogen Ice Spacecraft for Robotic Interstellar Flight
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?
I wonder whether there are plans for launching a new, more powerful, more sophisticated aircraft with the same purpose. After 30 years of progress we should be able to do much better, shouldn't we ? (To be honest I suspect that modern technology is less reliable than 30 years ago - the complexity is killer - but still we have to try)
Couldn't there be a very low power engine of some kind, just enough to provide a minimal thrust for, lets say, a decade. You don't need a lot of thrust in vacuum. Even small but constant acceleration should be sufficient to eventually achieve very high speed and perhaps even outrun the older spacecraft.
Is Voyager 1 providing any useful information any more, besides the becon signal and trajectory information? Wasn't there a Voyager 2?
I'm curious what's failed on the probe so far. After 30 years, something has to have died.
This is probably a dumb question. But here goes.
How is it that Voyager (and other probes) is able to avoid crashing into obstacles (eg: asteroids, commets, planets etc)?
Do they have some kind of navigation system that can sense an object coming towards it and alter its course?
One would think that in 30 years and so many billion miles, it must be *VERY* lucky to have avoided any obstacles in its path?
Can anyone explain?
According to this article Voyager 1 already passed the heliopause at 85 AU. So which edge are we looking for now?
Space and Computers.
Space is big. Really big.
Slagborr
If, as seems possible, this amateur radio astronomer can detect signals from Voyager 1, it may also be possible for amateur radio astronomers to detect the presence of very faint signals coming from the furthest objects in the solar system, as the iron within them cuts through the charged particle stream of the interstellar winds, which is all you need to generate a radio wave.
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)
Space is VERY empty.
It's only slightly less non-empty when you're real close to a star or other big mass of stuff. Right now Voyager is the farthest from a star that any man-made object has ever reached, so the chances of it hitting into stuff are nearly zero.
But to answer your original question though, no, it doesn't have any kind of stuff-avoidance ability. Even if they had designed it to have that ability, by now it wouldn't have any power left to do that.
I respond to your sigs
NASA sure used to build rugged, solid stuff!
Futurama lover
I wonder if it'll ever find life, and what the scenario in that case would look like.
Maybe floating down from the skies with a note inside...
"Looks like you lost something, but jeez, it was hard to track you down with more planets than its schematic shows!"
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Only one more AU until it passes 100 AU from Earth.
The reason it hasn't run into anything is because space is basically empty. There's very little out there to hit and what is there is a long way from anything else. So, not it's not *VERY* lucky to have not hit anything. If it had hit something, it would have been very *UN*lucky.
All the data sent back will be lost by NASA anyways.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
Too bad the CDP1802's architect, Joe Weisbecker, didn't live to see his microprocessor become the first in interstellar space. Coincidentally, this month also marks the 30th anniversary of his Popular Electronics article on the COSMAC ELF; Nuts and Volts magazine is covering it.
breaking the previous record of 99.99999AU, also set by Voyager I... the day before.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
100 AU over 30 years. Seems to me I've gone almost as far in the same period of time.
Quick math :
-The earth travels (about) 3.14 AU / year
- 3.14 * 30 = 94.2 AU over 30 years
(note: I make math errors all the time. No doubt someone will correct this one if its wrong)
Why isn't voyager faster than the earth given it started off going as fast as the earth, and quickly accelerated from that point during takeoff?
100 AU is nowhere near the Oort cloud. Sedna's orbit is highly eccentric ranging from around 92 au out to around 850 au. The Oort cloud is even further out at 50,000 au.
Scientists still hope it will find the edge of the solar system
What's to find? It's not like it's hidden. Just keep going and you'll trip over it.
Are you saying it's big even compared to the walk to the chemist?
If I've ever learned anything from about radiation exposure from low-budget Japanese films, I think that the missus would be rather pleased...
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
> Only in the short term.. given a long enough timeframe, its odds of running into something eventually are 100%.
;^)
Depends on the nature of the universe.
If you believe in that the universe is uniformly expanding, then every point is at the center of the expansion. Since the velocity of voyager isn't that high (relativistically speaking), there is at least some chance that it could eventually get to a state where nothing even going at speed of light can run into it, ever.
There's a nice article on the flight team from a few years ago here.
Taking an educated stab in the dark (I've done satellite operations for NASA, but not on Voyager), I'm guessing that you've got a couple that deal with trajectory (where it is in space), one that handles the scheduling of time on the Deep Space Network downlink stations and queing command activities on the spacecraft itself, and maybe 3 that handle sustaining engineering on vehicle hardware systems like electrical, communications, attitude control (including momentum wheels and propulsion), and science instruments. Maybe 1 or 2 that handle the onboard computer and flight software. Finally, probably 1 or 2 maintain the ground data retention system and support workstations, plus a manager for the whole shebang.
It's also almost certain that most or all of these 10 people work on other JPL projects, too.
Worst...sig...ever!
that it tried to get onto my Quake server?
We were trying to fire a game up, and on comes Voyager 1, with its 26 hour ping time. We all laughed and then booted it off.
Yet, somehow, it makes me feel smaller than ever.
Speaking of Nomad: http://echosphere.net/star_trek_insp/insp_nomad.jp g
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
I wonder how long until it reaches the next Starbucks?
As discussed before, Voyager is powered by radioisotope generators which derive power from the heat produced by radioactive decay. It's not a very efficient power source but it is reliable and long term the two neccessities for a mission of this type.
The answer to the second question is that it's an ordinary radio transimitter using the X-band frequency as I recall. The key to our reception is not Voyager's radio but the fact that we have very powerful tranceivers that can both receive it's very weak signal and transmit with enough boost so that Voyager's receiver can pick up commands.
I was wondering if the Voyager is protected from take overs. Can anyone control it herself instead of Nasa, and then do stupid things with it?
hemi