Slashdot Mirror
It's Official: Voyager 1 Is an Interstellar Probe
astroengine writes "After a 35-year, 11-billion mile journey, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft left the solar system to become the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, new evidence from a team of scientists shows. 'It's kind of like landing on the moon. It's a milestone in history. Like all science, it's exploration. It's new knowledge,' long-time Voyager scientist Donald Gurnett, with the University of Iowa, told Discovery News. The first signs that the spacecraft had left the solar system's heliopause was a sudden drop in solar particles and a corresponding increase in cosmic rays in 2012, but this evidence alone wasn't conclusive. Through indirect means, scientist analyzing oscillations along the probe's 10-meter (33-foot) antennas were able to deduce that Voyager was traveling through a less dense medium — i.e. interstellar space." You can watch NASA's briefing on the probe's progress here.
http://xkcd.com/1189/
With everything going on in the world I'm reminded of a hopeful quote:
... let us despise the barbaric neighings which echo through these noble lands, and awaken our understanding and longing for the harmonies."
"In vain does the God of War growl, snarl, roar, and try to interrupt with bombards, trumpets, and his whole tarantantaran
- Johannes Kepler
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
In a few billion years, some distant alien's house is going to have this thing pummeling through the roof.
NASA appears to have a nice visualization of the spacecraft's position and the particle flux...
http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/voyager/voyager_exit.html
We have plenty of our own problems here on Earth! Why is a government-built probe going into interstellar space? Is Obama trying to make health-care truly "universal"? I suppose if our own "illegal aliens" get free health care, why shouldn't Andromedans?
Keep alien overlords out of my health care!
They use the same math behind the Vista file copying progress bar to judge its distance.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Voyager is nuclear.
It has about 10 years of power left.
in fairness
Well, in fairness, there are good estimations, and there are bad estimations.
And then there's Vista.
Seems like every few months, for the last 5 years, there's been a new claim that it has left the solar system.
Putin to America: You're Not Special
I'm sorry, Mr. Putin. I can't hear you over the sound of our own awesome.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Seventy four year old Harold Lippschitz, chief proponent and designer of Voyager's antenna oscillation meters, was quoted as saying, "Ha ha! They laughed at me years ago at NASA! I told them, 'You're gonna want those damn oscillation meters, they're important!', but the other guys just rolled their eyes and shook their heads. 'There goes Harold again,' they said. 'Jabbering about his damn little meters.' Well, who's laughing now, motherf***ers? Ha HA!"
Proverbs 21:19
You'd be wrong. Voyager's power source is radiothermal. Past... not sure, Jupiter's orbit? there's not enough sunlight for photovoltaics to work effectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Why? Do you/"we" know the helipause isn't spherical, or did you just assume it isn't? Or are you using another definition of "interstellar space"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It wasn't. The real work was done as it past the gas giants.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
By now its definitely running on Unicorn farts.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Nasa launches this probe, about the same year that I was born, to study Saturn and Jupiter. Everything goes beautifully so it just keeps on flying. On Valentine's day 1990 just as it's about to leave the solar system they spin the camera around to take the "family portrait". Today it exits the solar system(I know for the 12th time or whatever). Now it just wanders off into the darkness while it's reactor runs down and it's systems shut off one at a time. Who knows, in a few billion years when the sun bakes this planet the golden record might be all that's left of us. Kind of like "The Inner Light" episode of Star Trek, but with less flute.
This story has already appeared on Slashdot multiple times:
March 2013
December 2011
December 2010
May 2005
November 2003
Is it too much to ask that the editors do their jobs and search for dupes before approving a submission?
Imagine the world we'd live in if the "Voyager" kind of engineer had more say in how society worked?
Mostly random stuff.
What they are actually announcing is that the data shows that it left the solar system in August of 2012. The news over the last year was that they weren't sure if it had left yet. The news now is that it did leave, a little over a year ago.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
XKCD is great but I'm with you on this...Voyager's data *literally* defined the solar system for us (i'm sure Randall Munroe is up on this and appropriately stoked)
IMHO there is a greater point here about space exploration.
What *is* space exploration? When something like the humble Voyager 1 probe can continue giving usable data for such a long time, it should cause us to ask, why haven't our other missions been as successful?
The Mars rovers are another example. When you consider the scale and complexity of their task, the rovers comparatively performed on par with Voyager 1.
You might say, "We can't plan for what it does after the mission is over, that's kind of the point of having a defined *mission plan*" and to that I say 'hogwash'
It is my firm belief that humans should be taking vacations on Luna *now* and soon stepping foot on Mars. We could do it.
Why aren't we?
I see the same answer in both questions I posed. The best way I can say it is 'operational space research'...
I'm not dogging the Hubble or satellites made to find WIMPS or w/e...I think that it is more a failure of VISION.
Everything we do in space should be based around the notion of iterative progression. Each mission serves a primary function but also has a *secondary* function which is to provide the basis for the **NEXT STEP OUT**
We've been chasing our tails for 20+ years with most of our NASA projects. Don't get me started on the Shuttle and ISS. I won't get into it b/c I get huge downmods every time...
No...my criticism is systemic.
NASA is a tool. Are we using it to its fullest?
Voyager 1's quiet incessant pinging tells me 'no'
Thank you Dave Raggett
It is my firm belief that humans should be taking vacations on Luna *now* and soon stepping foot on Mars. We could do it.
Why aren't we?
Fact is, it's not profitable. Don't read this as merely a critique of our current quarterly-results-focused society (that's another conversational tarpit I'm usually happy to discuss to death), but more as in, will it ever be profitable. With the discovery of H3 reserves in the Moon, you'd think we'd have all the need we could to send folks to stake claims. Realistically, the "in the black" date for such a mission looms decades or centuries in the future. Does any country or corporation have that kind of planning horizon? I challenge you. The US has abdicated any role of spending any money apparently (see sequester), and corporations are living quarter to quarter.
Face it, traditional exploration and exploitation of the unknown world really rested on the fact that it was generally considered habitable (after the "dragons be here" and flat-earthers were proved wrong) and most importantly, profitable - many natural resources and other humans to exploit and then fight over, and finally trade with.
What resources exist on Moon/Mars/A.belt that really get our conquistador types' blood flowing (and the purses loosened)? Will we as a society ever really mature to the point that even inter-planetary discovery and travel become feasible?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Dude! Add a Spoiler alert before you let out a secret like that!!!
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Who knows, in a few billion years when the sun bakes this planet the golden record might be all that's left of us. Kind of like "The Inner Light" episode of Star Trek, but with less flute.
Should be pointed out that this is the first, not the only, man made object on a straight course for interstellar space. It will be joined not only by it's sister Voyager probe, but also the Pioneer 10 & 11 probes with their golden plaques, and the New Horizons mission with its CD. All in all, we're getting pretty good at littering the cosmos with our civilization's mementos.
Velcro was conceived in 1941, invented in 1948, and patented in 1955.
Thank you for playing "Fraudulent Reasons to Praise the Space Program". Please take your place behind teflon.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
If Voyager was sent far outside the orbital plane it couldn't have used gravity boost from the planets. Substantial speed disadvantage.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Since the Oort cloud lies beyond the heliopause, and is bound to our sun by gravity, how can we say that Voyager has "really" entered interstellar space? Shouldn't true interstellar space be a distance from the sun where nothing is bound directly to Sol by gravity? Where another star has equal pull on an object? Voyager I is currently far from that point in space.
The claim is that it is in interstellar space: i.e. the interstellar medium that pervades the space between star systems. This has nothing to do with gravitational binding of other distant objects. The Oort Cloud is without question in interstellar space, despite very weak gravitational binding to the sun (solar escape velocity there about 100 mph).
Going by the gravitational binding argument you could claim that all five probes "left the solar system" the instant they achieved solar escape velocity and was no longer bound to the sun.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Does anyone know what direction it's headed? Towards any particular star?
The relative motions of stars in our vicinity is many order of magnitudes higher than the velocity of the probes relative to the sun. They have no meaningful velocity toward any other star system. The future encounters with star systems have to be projected statistically through the theory of random processes.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
is the mother of invention...
exactly my point...pushing ourselves to other worlds is the next logical step
you really proved my point for me there...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Summary appears to be wrong.
"...were able to deduce that Voyager was traveling through a less dense medium — i.e. interstellar space."
Interstellar space is apparently 40 times more dense than space in the solar system. The solar wind pushes the particles back to the edge of the solar system, making the plasma more dense at the edge (not less dense).
To quote from NASA
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-277
"Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument detected the movement. The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma. The particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere. Density of this sort is to be expected in interstellar space."