Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues

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."

Comments

Re:More Like it?

[Rhodnius]

Well, the problem with cheap probes is that NASA doesn't want cheap. NASA wants a mission to be expensive, as high as they can get "without going over" to the point where Congress will cancel it.

NASA's purpose is to hire and pay themselves and their contractors. Actually exploring space is a distant second priority. This has been true pretty much since the first Shuttle started development.

Somebody besides NASA could certainly do cheap space probes, but it won't be American.