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
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
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
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
Woosh...
The sound of Voyager leaving the solar system..... over your head. :-)
Yeah so awesome. Now try to get your astronauts off the international space station without using a Soyuz capsule. Awesome.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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?
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