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Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues

Posted by kdawson on from the now-voyager dept.

dangle sends in an update from the borderland of Sol. "Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that has altered the pattern in which it sends updates home, preventing mission managers from decoding the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in overall good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. 'Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later,' said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 'It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery.' The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system."

14 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. v'ger by CDS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought it was Voyager VI that was supposed to come back and we couldn't understand what it was saying...

  2. ROI by BloodyIron · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Talk about return on investment!

  3. 33 years old = bit rot and other SS parts going ba by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    33 years old = bit rot and other SS parts going bad??

    Battery getting weak?

    Some kind of y2k error?

    Rollover error?

  4. More Like it? by coofercat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but...

    We now have much better technology, both for getting to space, and for science aboard a probe. For example, even something like the British Beagle 2 Mars mission cost a few million to make, and although it didn't end up returning much of use, it demonstrates how 'easy' such things are (or how hard things are, depending on your point of view, I suppose).

    So I'm wondering, isn't it worth mankind's time to build a (say) £25M long-range probe, like the Voyagers, only designed for the purpose, and shoved into space in some get-there-fast manner?

    I'm sure we can argue about the best use of a limited budget, and what constitutes the best science returned for the spend, for the rest of our lives, but a "cheap" probe sent out every few years to do something a bit random might well do wonders for us and our understanding of the Solar system, let alone the Universe as a whole. I wouldn't presume to say we should do such things at the expense of anything more major, but more to foster some 'experimentation' in space.

    Just a thought... TFI Friday :-)

    1. Re:More Like it? by qc_dk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's probably relatively cheap to build such a probe, and probably also relatively easy to get the funding for a short project like that, but the problem comes when we have to listen to the probe. That's probably expensive and a very long-term project, which are very difficult to get funded(plus they are the prime victims of budget cuts, because such long-term projects are often funded directly outside the normal proposal calls.)

    2. Re:More Like it? by compro01 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Recording is no problem, it's sending it back. New Horizons will only be able to send back about 8GB of data. Even with the big dish it has and a 70 metre dish on the ground here, you only get about 1 kilobit per second of transfer out at Pluto.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    3. Re:More Like it? by darkmeridian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The advances (and readily available advances) in ion engine technology could be used to drive a spacecraft that will accelerate for years out into deep space after chemical boosting ends. Advances in miniaturization and materials science mean that it can be made lighter and carry more instrumentation with better functionality and reliability than those found on Voyager. If we wanted to do it, we can make a new probe that is lighter, has more capabilities, and is sturdier so it can flier faster and stay alive longer than Voyager. Of course, not sure if we still have the desire to be explorers of the universe.

      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
    4. Re:More Like it? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can type "fuck" on slashdot.

  5. Re:Garbled how? by rbochan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You hope in any future endeavor like this, if it hasn't been done already, that each batch of data it sends would start with some sort of test/reference data that they could compare against.

    --
    ...Rob
    The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
  6. Re:Orly? by medcalf · · Score: 1, Insightful

    At least he got to see the world anew each day.

    --
    -- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
  7. maybe... by DragonTHC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Perhaps the data has been altered by intelligent beings in order to communicate with us.

    Or maybe they did it as a joke.

    --
    They're using their grammar skills there.
  8. Re:What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? by Meumeu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Assuming a constant speed of 17km/s, 30 years for Voyager is 30 years and 1.5s on Earth.

  9. same age as Apple and MicroSoft by peter303 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Imagine if you were still using version 1.0 of their hardware and softwares.

  10. But Seriously... by AmigaMMC · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How can they possibly hope to decode alien language if they can't decode their own technology?