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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."

28 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Decoding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think I can make it out. It says "All... your... base..."

  2. V'ger expects an answer. by axl917 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't piss it off, NASA.

  3. 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...

  4. What! by Tobor+the+Eighth+Man · · Score: 5, Funny

    "It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."

    Well, I never!

    1. Re:What! by Lloyd_Bryant · · Score: 5, Funny

      "It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."

      Well, I never!

      You most certainly *did*. And NASA has the pics to prove it.

      --
      Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
    2. Re:What! by tom17 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Rule 34? "Any officer caught sniffing the saddle of the exercise bicycle in the women's gym will be discharged without trial?". I really don't see the relevance here.

      Tom...

  5. Re:Orly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I used to work for a chemistry department whose *nix boxes were named after elements. The back up sun server (it was previously was the primary server, but it was retired in favor of a more powerful sun box and just kept as a backup) was Uranus. Every time you said Uranus, one of the *nix admins would say "Whose anus?"

    Now, what was really funny was this person had a memory issue. So EVERY TIME he thought it was the first time he had told you the "joke". It got to the point where before he could even say Uranus, every professor would say yes whose anus, and he would just sit there shocked and say "How did you know I was going to say that?"

  6. Tried to find some more info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All the news articles report pretty much the same, digested, not particularly informative stuff. The mission page hasn't been updated in a while, the NASA news item isn't any more detailed, and the last operations report was from March 12. But I did learn this from the operations report: they're running the whole mission on less than 275 Watts of power from the RTG units. Wow.

    1. Re:Tried to find some more info by dtmos · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Reading that operations report I was most impressed by these two lines:

      There were 97.9 hours of DSN scheduled support for Voyager 1 of which 61.3 hours were large aperture coverage.

      and

      There were 62.3 hours of DSN scheduled support for Voyager 2 of which 39.3 hours were large aperture coverage.

      Wow -- that's an incredible amount of Deep Space Network time in a week -- and, looking at earlier reports, it seems to be representative of the time used in a typical week. I had no idea that the Voyagers were consuming that much DSN time. I assume "large aperture coverage" means use of the 70m dishes -- also an impressive number.

      That much DSN time must be very expensive.

  7. Garbled how? by hcdejong · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if it'd be possible to reconstruct the signal. We know what the signal is supposed to look like, and should be able to find out what's different.

    1. 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.
    2. Re:Garbled how? by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 5, Funny

      They should put it on BitTorrent labeled "Assasin's Creed 3 with Ubisoft's unbreakable DRM -- REAL !!!1! 0-day warez CDC propz to Hippie!!!". It will be fixed in a week.

    3. Re:Garbled how? by i.am.delf · · Score: 3, Informative

      From what I remember from a tour I had of the DSN facility at Goldstone is that even back then(~2000) that both Voyager 1 and 2 were well beyond the noise background. I think they said it was 9dB below noise even then. The only way they could understand the signals coming back from the probes was by "voting". Basically they would have the probe send the same message over and over and over. The message was then reconstructed by saying Bit #125 was 65 for and 35 against, probably a 1. More than that they also knew the formats of the messages so they would have a good idea of this bit is probably going to be a 1 or a 0 in particular spots. If something has happened with it, it might be impossible to ever reconstruct the messages coming back even if we have them recorded. The signals have only gotten weaker since then because the probes are that much further and their power sources that much weaker. It is absolutely amazing they have been able to keep in contact as long as they have.

    4. Re:Garbled how? by amRadioHed · · Score: 3, Informative

      Did you notice that the RCA 1802 page you linked to specifically says that the chip was not used on Voyager?

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
  8. event horizon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    D.J.: I thought it said "liberate me" - "save me." But it's not "me." It's "liberate tutame" - "save yourself." And it gets worse.
    [Plays the distress signal again]
    D.J.: There - I think that says "ex inferis." "Save yourself... from hell." Look, if what Doctor Weir tells us is true, this ship has been beyond the boundaries of our universe, of known scientific reality. Who knows where it's been, what it's seen. Or what it's brought back with it.
    Miller: From hell.

  9. 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 Burdell · · Score: 5, Informative

      It would probably cost a good bit more than that to build a long-range probe that has to work for many years before reaching its target. Also, you have to pay for ground stations and personnel to monitor it for the years it takes to get somewhere. We have no magic "get-there-fast manner" today; in fact, the Voyagers were able to do so much because of a once-in-our-lifetime planetary alignment (the Grand Tour). The NASA New Horizons probe is going to Pluto (and beyond), and it will take 9.5 years to get there (and if the launch had been delayed by another few weeks, it would have taken several years longer because there wouldn't have been a Jupiter slingshot fly-by).

    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.

  10. Re:Orly? by vegiVamp · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uranus isn't an element.

    --
    What a depressingly stupid machine.
  11. What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? by antirelic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Being that I am not a physicist (though I am a big fan), I am asking any physicists out there if they have figured out how much time has passed for the Voyager satellites according to the laws of relativity compared to Earth. From what I understand, they are traveling around 17km/s. How does that work out over a span of 30-50 years from earthling perspective.

    Thanx in advance.

    --
    20th century Marxism is not progress...
    1. 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.

    2. Re:What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? by profBill · · Score: 5, Informative
      The relativity calculator at http://www.1728.com/reltivty.htm gives a relativity factor of 1.0000000016077795 for a speed of 17km/sec. If you multiply that all out for the approximate 33 years of travel (back of the envelope style, 33*525600*60), you get about a 1.67 second difference.

      Of course, with the aliens towing in the spaceship, that might be off a bit :-)

      >>>bill

  12. 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.

  13. Re:Ice Giants by Anomalyst · · Score: 3, Informative

    So you'd need to build separate probes to go to each planet, instead of being able to send one probe to many of them.

    Well, no. The outer planet approximate syzygy provided the most efficient profile, mission timewise. You can always gravity sling from one sufficiently massive planetary body to another, using the correct entry and exit vector for the current velocity, it would just take longer to visit them all at this point in time, as you might have to go all the way across solar system to reach the "next" body and then back across again for the next hop.

    --
    There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
  14. But Seriously... by AmigaMMC · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  15. Re:33 years old = bit rot and other SS parts going by budgenator · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pissaw, young'uns don't know anything anymore; more likely a fried 1452 core sense amplifier. That bad-boy left Earth back when a 1024 Bit, 500 mS static ram was exotic, and yes that is bits not bytes and milliseconds not nanoseconds. Ferrite Core memory was the state of the art back in 1977, when hard-disk drives were the size of washing machines and I was a young'un myself punching Fortran code on to cards.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds