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.

Comments

Edge

[Metabolife]

It's going to fall off the edge of the universe. I just know it.

17.5 billion kilometers

[oldspewey]

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.

Re:17.5 billion kilometers

[crunchygranola]

True, Voyager 1 has only travelled a short way between stars within our galaxy -- but here is a cool fact (I think).The Milky Way Galaxy is moving relative to the rest of the Universe (as defined by the Cosmic Microwave Background frame of reference) at 279 ± 68 km/sec, just under 0.1% the speed of light. This is the speed with which we are moving through the Universe. Thus if you live to be 80 years old (a typical lifespan today) you will die in a region of the Universe 0.074 light years from where you were born, and the first pyramids were built in Egypt in a region of the Universe more distant than Alpha Centauri.

An amazing achievement

[Colourspace]

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..

Re:An amazing achievement

[troon]

ITYM "Opportunity". Spirit's been silent, and I'm guessing dead, since March.

Re:An amazing achievement

[Chris Burke]

If we had the collective courage [read - no enviro-wackos] to use RTGs [wikipedia.org] on our Mars probes, we wouldn't have lost Spirit to freezing temperatures brought on by low power from the solar cells.

LOL, that's why you think Spirit and Opportunity didn't use them? Enviro-wackos?

The real reason is simply optimizing for the mission profile. The MERs were relatively small devices with very tight mass budgets, and an RTG of sufficient power would have been too heavy compared to the solar panel/battery combo they went with instead. It was an engineering trade-off. They did, by the way, use RHUs to heat components but this was not sufficient to stave off freezing by itself.

The Mars Science Laboratory is going to use an RTG. It is a much larger rover, with power demands beyond what solar panels could provide, and with a more generous amount of mass to dedicate to the power system.

We used 'em on quite a few spacecraft [wikipedia.org] - why they aren't used more often for solar power-limited missions escapes me.

Yeah, which I would think would have suggested that maybe enviro-wacko objection to the concept of RTGs had nothing to do with it. This is a lobby with surprisingly less power than you might think. :)

Data transfers

[Picardo85]

are still probably cheaper per kB than sending an SMS ...

Re:Data transfers

[john83]

From here,

The total cost of the Voyager mission from May 1972 through the Neptune encounter (including launch vehicles, radioactive power source (RTGs), and DSN tracking support) is 865 million dollars.

and

A total of five trillion bits of scientific data had been returned to Earth by both Voyager spacecraft at the completion of the Neptune encounter.

That's $0.001384 per bit. There are 1120 bits in an SMS message. That's about $1.55 per SMS. Not exactly cheap, but then Vodafone don't have coverage beyond Pluto.

I feel a kinship with voyager

[arcite]

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!

We humans may be small

[arcite]

but we think big.

Re:Go Voyager 1!

[dogsbreath]

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.

er... picking through radioctive rubble and looking for a scrap to eat? ... avoiding Triffids?

Re:8 bits to the byte silly

[john83]

Yes, there are, but SMS uses a reduced character set and so seven bits per character. It's 140 bytes to represent 160 characters. That's my understanding at least, backed up by a cursory google. I could of course be wrong.

CPU - lowly RCA 1802

[Sooner Boomer]

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.