Slashdot Mirror
Voyager and the Coming Great Hiatus In Deep Space
MatthewVD writes "Some time in the next decade, the Voyager probes will run out of juice and finally go silent after almost a half century of exploration. John Rennie writes that the lack of any meaningful effort to follow up with a mission to interstellar space shows the "fragile, inconsistent state of space exploration." It's particularly frustrating since the Voyagers have tantalized astronomers with a glimpse into about how the sun's magnetic field protects us from (or exposes us to) cosmic rays. Have we gone as far as we're willing to go in space?"
I respect Mr. Rennie's effort in encouraging further efforts in deep space exploration, but I think his argument may go a little away from principle. The Voyager probes were not designed to be deep space probes. As I recall having learned, the Voyager probes were designed to photograph the planets and record relevant non-visual data, during the recent "grand conjunction" phase in the solar system.
I'm afraid I must apologize for my evident lack of citations, here. As my own specator knowledge of it holds, and anyone may wish to correct me: It's been a pleasant suprrise that the Voyager probes have continued functioningm, for so many years since after they completed their assigned missions.
Personally, I think it also may serve in making a constructive comment towards the niceties of reliable manufacturing practice in the construction of space exploration systems. "But maybe that's just me" ;}
Very unfortunately, that's impossible. There isn't enough Plutonium left for all those probes, and the politics are not in favour of investing in nuclear power plants that can produce it.
Unfortunately, while New Horizons left at the fastest speed ever, it's currently moving at 15km/s (and slowing) and Voyager 1 is cruising at a bit over 17km/s. Per Wikipedia, when NH is at the distance that V1 is now, it'll only be moving at 13km/s.
You want the greatest specific impulse possible, so an ion engine is the best option.
Those things may have been true of (IBM Compatible) PCs in the early 1990s, but my Amiga would definitely beg to differ.
The reason for not building interstellar probes is that there is nothing interesting between stars. A good telescope can tell us much more than a deep space probe.
>boot times where 5+ min. never worked right. plug and play didn't work, no standards on HW.Drivers sucked.
All that has worked since the 1980's you were just on the wrong platform.
It's not pessimistic. You actually don't want it going quite so fast. Voyager 2's trajectory and velocity were set - it had to be moving at a certain speed in order to meet up with Uranus and Neptune. Consequently, the gravity assists had sped up Voyager 2 so much that by the time it reached Neptune, the entire close encounter was pretty much over in a day. They had to pre-program it to take pictures and measurements and store it on tape, hope that everything worked, and wait for the data to be sent back to Earth. By the time we got it, Voyager 2 was already leaving Neptune. There were no second chances, and we were fortunate that some of the pan-slew timed exposure tricks worked perfectly.
The New Horizons flyby of Pluto is pretty much going to be the same thing. All the close-up observations of Pluto and its moons are going to happen on 14 July, 2015. One day. No second chances if it turns out someone forgot to send the command to remove the lens cap. If it had been moving at 17 km/s instead of 13 km/s, we'd have about 25% less observation time. Better to wait a few years longer for the spacecraft to get there, in order to get a few more hours and days observation time.
In the future, with an ion engine, maybe we'll be able to send probes which speed up the first half of the trip, and slow down the second half. That would allow us to extend the encounter times, or even enter into orbit around the outer planet(oid), without extending the travel time to decades.