Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Voyager Spacecraft Celebrate 30th Anniversary

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the grandpa's-space-probe-still-tellin-stories dept.

Raver32 writes to mention that 30 years after the original launch of Voyager 2, both Voyager spacecraft are still going strong. Flying away from us some billions of miles from our solar system's edge they continue to be a wealth of information more than 25 years after their original mission concluded. Voyager 1 currently is the farthest human-made object at a distance from the sun of about 9.7 billion miles (15.6 billion kilometers). Voyager 2 is about 7.8 billion miles (12.6 billion kilometers).

1 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Remarkable Spacecraft by Iskender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let's not forget what makes these probes possible: nuclear power, more specifically RTGs. No, I'm not trying to glorify nuclear, but we simply don't have the technology to make something equally robust at anything approaching a reasonable price and launch weight. So for the moment, RTGs it is for outer solar system probes, and nuclear reactors should be given consideration if they make more valuable science possible (remember, the Russians already used some of those in space AND had them fail, so they won't be the end of us).