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Voyager 1 Beyond Solar Wind
healeyb noted that Voyager 1 has now reached a distance from the sun where it is no longer able to detect solar wind. Launched in 1977 to get up close and personal with our solar system's gas giants, scientists estimate that in another 4 years it will cross the heliosphere.
Denied!
We don't get good ping times out here in the Oort cloud.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At what point does it become sentient, call itself V-ger, and return to destroy earth?
Developers: We can use your help.
The little men on board will never need to smell another solar fart again!
It's going to fall off the edge of the universe. I just know it.
17.5 billion kilometres and counting, over 3 decades spent hurtling away from from the sun, and still less than 0.05% of the way to the nearest star
We humans are really really really small.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The fact we are still able to communicate with a piece of 33 year old technology (I'm only a few years older myself, and possibly not in as good a shape either) further away than any man made object ever launched, and are still getting useful science from it is nothing short of remarkable - matched only Spirits extended mission time so far, IMHO. And then, sometimes we can't even launch a satellite or two properly..
are still probably cheaper per kB than sending an SMS ...
Anyone seen Voyager 1?
Last I saw he was heading out of the solar system with some bald chick. I really didn't think too much about it at the time, but it did look a little weird.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I would say that the ping time is probably at par with the ping time of the protocol described in RFC 1149, a.k.a. IPoAC.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Since it is almost the same age as me, I feel a kinship with the little guy. It's amazing that it's still sending back readings after all theses years and millions of miles travelled in the deep dark infinite space. Onward to interstellar space! Godspeed!
With how well NASA's gear works long after their mission is complete perhaps they should start selling toys and cars to fill in all those budget holes that they have.
It's fascinating to think that in just about four years the first man-made object will leave our solar system. And to think that only a little over 100 years ago we were still trying to get ourselves airborne. We've come a long way. I wish I knew what we'd be doing 100 years from today.
but we think big.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome joke here in 3....2....1....
Ready to cut funding so they can pay for their tax breaks.
Four more years!? This trip is taking me forever!
Bon voyage, Voyager 1
It's going places I dream about while I'm stuck back here on this rock. Granted its traveling really slow but still it's getting there.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Does anyone else remember with wonder those extended TV broadcasts where they spent all night on prime-time network TV to show off the latest incoming photos? And they even interviewed actual scientists about what the data meant.
It's amazing and truly sad how far we've fallen since then.
cause some dude with pointy ears changes history and allows his race to gt popped by some green rays....
8 bits to the byte silly....
Whom ever is telling you 1120 needs there head examined.
Voyager probes are frigging HUGE. why cant we launch the same thing twice, but have them assemble in orbit and give it a chemical kick in the ass to get the slingshotting down and then when it get's it's last slingshot around juipeter kick in the Ion engines to do a long hard burn for a few years to get the thing really hauling ass.
I'll bet with current tech we can get past Voyager 1 within 10 years AND have better instruments, a stronger transmitter, far more sensitive receiver, etc.... Seriously. NASA could do this right now and we might see a flyby of another star within a 200 year window.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What I want to know is, what frequencies are the S-band uplink and X-band downlink? My neighbor has one of those giant old-ass DirecTV dishes in his yard... Wouldn't it be cruel to command it to shutdown or veer off course? Mwah hah ha...
That Voyager 1 broke wind.
The oort cloud is speculation with absolutely nothing to back it up.
I am not an astrophysicist, so I don't understand the subtelties of this, but it should be noted that NASA press release says the probe has measured a solar wind decline, not that the probe is beyond the solar wind. Specifically, it says the solar wind has 'no outward motion'. The probe's environment is still dominated by the solar wind because it is still in the heliosphere, or, as NASA says, 'Crossing into interstellar space would mean a sudden drop in the density of hot particles and an increase in the density of cold particles.'
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20101213.html
Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 17.4 billion kilometers (10.8 billion miles) from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.
...
Scientists believe Voyager 1 has not crossed the heliosheath into interstellar space. Crossing into interstellar space would mean a sudden drop in the density of hot particles and an increase in the density of cold particles. Scientists are putting the data into their models of the heliosphere's structure and should be able to better estimate when Voyager 1 will reach interstellar space. Researchers currently estimate Voyager 1 will cross that frontier in about four years.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
How exactly do they know that Voyager can no longer detect solar wind? Let me guess, since they turned off the entire scan platform on Voyager 2 and all of Voyager 1 except for the UVS, they haven't gotten that data since the year 2000?
but we fund poorly!*
*only on projects that progress humanity
http://xkcd.com/695/
Warning: may make some readers cry.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Voyager is travelling 38,000 mph, directly away from the Sun. If its sensors no longer feel the push of the Solar Wind its because the wind is now going slower, say 37,999 mph, but not yet zero mph as the article title might imply. The wind is most likely still there, we just can not sense it anymore with the technology aboard the spacecraft.
Remotely "manned", no need to retrieve it, no risk to humans, and exceeded its projected lifespan.
Send up a few generations of machines and let the tourists follow far in the future.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The venerable Voyager spacecraft are truly going where no one has gone before. Voyager 1 has now reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where it is no longer detecting the solar wind. At a distance of about 17.3 billion km (10.8 billion miles) from the Sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.
“The solar wind has turned the corner,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. “Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space.”
The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1s passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun’s sphere of influence, and the spacecraft’s upcoming departure from our solar system.
Since its launch on Sept. 5, 1977, Voyager 1’s Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument has been used to measure the solar wind’s velocity.
When the speed of the charged particles hitting the outward face of Voyager 1 matched the spacecraft’s speed, researchers knew that the net outward speed of the solar wind was zero. This occurred in June, when Voyager 1 was about 10.6 billion miles from the sun.
However, velocities can fluctuate, so the scientists watched four more monthly readings before they were convinced the solar wind’s outward speed actually had slowed to zero. Analysis of the data shows the velocity of the solar wind has steadily slowed at a rate of about 45,000 mph each year since August 2007, when the solar wind was speeding outward at about 130,000 mph. The outward speed has remained at zero since June.
“When I realized that we were getting solid zeroes, I was amazed,” said Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator and senior staff scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “Here was Voyager, a spacecraft that has been a workhorse for 33 years, showing us something completely new again.”
Scientists believe Voyager 1 has not crossed the heliosheath into interstellar space. Crossing into interstellar space would mean a sudden drop in the density of hot particles and an increase in the density of cold particles. Scientists are putting the data into their models of the heliosphere’s structure and should be able to better estimate when Voyager 1 will reach interstellar space. Researchers currently estimate Voyager 1 will cross that frontier in about four years.
Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath.
A sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, was launched in Aug. 20, 1977 and has reached a position 8.8 billion miles from the sun. Both spacecraft have been traveling along different trajectories and at different speeds. Voyager 1 is traveling faster, at a speed of about 38,000 mph, compared to Voyager 2s velocity of 35,000 mph. In the next few years, scientists expect Voyager 2 to encounter the same kind of phenomenon as Voyager 1.
The results were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Source: NASA
Sounds like it's really high up. Must be above the clouds. The view from up there must be sooo stunning.
I would say that the ping time is probably at par with the ping time of the protocol described in RFC 1149, a.k.a. IPoAC.
Perhaps that should be "IP over Alien carriers"...
Wow, just wow! Not even a 6502. The Voyagers used a trio of 1802s clocked at 6.4MHz. Just goes to show what you can do with a specific bit of hardware and tight code.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
"...4 years it will cross the heliosphere" Pretty sure you meant Heliopause, or "it will leave the heliosphere"
You are off by a factor of 10. It comes out to less than $0.20 per SMS equivalent. Not too bad.
I remember seeing photos of Jupiter in Aviation Week magazine at a library (hey kids, this was the first time people saw such details of Jupiter's clouds, Red Spot, etc. so it was really impressive). I was seriously thinking of stealing those pages, but backed off. I later got nice prints from NASA (which they gave away back in the 20th century). It was so cool to see such detail when best we had were images from ground based telescopes, or nice paintings from artists.
When Pioneer 11 past Saturn, they discussed the E ring, F ring, G ring, then debating designations of other rings. Then Voyager passed by and they just gave up naming all the rings (maybe they did, but Voyager images showed "thousands" of rings).
Also back then NASA still had the best "special effects."
mfwright@batnet.com
If the galaxy is moving is fast as you say, how about just plant a stationary platform, and let a star COME TO IT? It would be quicker than trying to reach it.
Also your galaxy moving thing has a hole in it. If that were the case, wouldn't all our spacecraft be left behind because the entire galaxy moved away from it?
are you joking? earth is spinning pretty fast, why not 'plant stationary platform' in it and easily make a trip around the world? because there is inertia and other things, spacecraft would need a lot of fuel and time to become 'stationary'
I read TFA and thought cool! I wonder how many light years that is. Imagine my disappointment when Google told me it was 0.0018286505 light years. Boy space is big, I thought it was a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's nothing..... etc.
Yeah, except to catch it in 10 years would require it to average .03% the speed of light. Do the math- the probe has a 10.8B-mile headstart and is going like 14m/s every second you're trying to catch up to it.
Sure, this is all back-of-the-napkin, but I'm pretty sure that's way too fast to expect us to manage.
I hope NASA keeps listening to Voyager 1 until it either dies and cant talk anymore or it gets too far away for even the biggest antenna to pick up.
We should expect the change of "wind" direction, once the craft is out of the heliosphere. Is there any estimate of the speed and direction of interstellar wind? Could that significantly affect Voyager 1's course?
Why don't we send a sail-equipped craft out, to map the outside of heliosphere and perhaps reach another star's heliosphere faster then using just gravitational slingshot and inertia? Of course, after entering another heliosphere, local solar wind would actually brake the craft, so it should be umbrella-like, able to completely retract its sails.
What if we could combine sails and gravitational slingshot method (around systems' stars!) to achieve even greater speeds and explore our neighboring part of Galaxy? Perhaps even sling "above" the Milky way disc and take a snapshot (and find out about intergalactic wind, if there is one, too)!
All you need is an aether anchor, drop that sucker in space and watch the cosmos fly by!
loose: not fitting closely or tightly != lose: to suffer the deprivation of
It's there all right - just above the joke.