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Celebrate Voyager's 40th Anniversary By Beaming A Message Into Outer Space (nytimes.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Noryungi writes:
NASA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launch of the twin Voyager probes next month. So let us celebrate both the probes and the people who are still working on them, and nursing them in their final years.
The New York Times fondly profiles Voyager's nine aging flight-team engineers who "may be the last people left on the planet who can operate the spacecraft's onboard computers, which have 235,000 times less memory and 175,000 times less speed than a 16-gigabyte smartphone." NASA reports that now "Voyager 1 is in 'Interstellar space' and Voyager 2 is currently in the 'Heliosheath' -- the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. " But the Times notes that the probes "are running out of fuel. (Decaying plutonium supplies their power.) By 2030 at the latest, they will not have enough juice left to run a single experiment."
NASA is now inviting the public to submit positive messages to be considered for beaming into space on September 5th -- the 40th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch. "Messages can have a maximum of 60 characters and be posted on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ or Tumblr using the hashtag #MessageToVoyager," until August 15th, after which humanity will vote on which message should be sent.
The New York Times fondly profiles Voyager's nine aging flight-team engineers who "may be the last people left on the planet who can operate the spacecraft's onboard computers, which have 235,000 times less memory and 175,000 times less speed than a 16-gigabyte smartphone." NASA reports that now "Voyager 1 is in 'Interstellar space' and Voyager 2 is currently in the 'Heliosheath' -- the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. " But the Times notes that the probes "are running out of fuel. (Decaying plutonium supplies their power.) By 2030 at the latest, they will not have enough juice left to run a single experiment."
NASA is now inviting the public to submit positive messages to be considered for beaming into space on September 5th -- the 40th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch. "Messages can have a maximum of 60 characters and be posted on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ or Tumblr using the hashtag #MessageToVoyager," until August 15th, after which humanity will vote on which message should be sent.
They should send up two more probes to refuel them.
V-ger
?
Earth Rules! Your planet drools.
#DeleteChrome
Sounds meaningful.
Also, what are they talking about? "Fuel"?! It doesn't need fuel to travel in space, and the on-board equipment surely gets its power from solar cells?
"Bye Voyager McVoyagerface" is the winner.
My recommended message from the people of Earth: "Send Help."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Whatever that even means. Is this how we measure things now?
Just call a duck a friggen duck. The Voyagers have 68kB of memory and the CPUs are GE devices that run 80K insns per second.
god dam you made me feel old for a second then! I thought it was about Star Trek Voyager. I should go bed
"Nothing to see here keep on going". Too positive?
"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down."
Not sure how long it would take for ET to realize...
Don't pollute the outer space with your useless signals.
“Hide yourself well; cleanse well.”
Maybe it is time to have those 9 compile complete documentation on it, as well as help some computer scientists write a full simulator of the two probes systems and run through known test cases, potential problems, etc with them so the broader community could start training support for them, even if the odds of further communication/necessity are slim.
Personally for Voyager's 50th Anniversary, I would like to seem them replicate the systems in it (NOT modernized, except maybe the engine designs if we can get longer burns out of an alternative propulsion system) and send a couple more probes out in other directions.
"My God, it's full of stars."
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Aliens... send help! We've been infested with SJWs!
504-329-317-510-
Dear aliens, our most powerful elected leader is now donald trump. If anything happens to us, it was his fault.
Hey I haven't met you
this is crazy
here's my coordinates
call me maybe
and some sampling of movies we watch for entertainment.
Cause we love to shoot the hell out of Aliens.
Otherwise we can hatch and latch some capitalistic trade deal on them, build spacewalls, have them pay for it while we dump out all their resources.
Then when the Aliens complain, put their leaders on a drone kill list, create civil unrest, get them to pay for a war of liberation and pave the way for our McDonalds, WalMarts, Amazons and Facebooks.
Oh and Microsoft can offer some Philanthropist support of course.
Maybe some Alien efficient toilets or something.
we sincerely apologize for putting an insane idiot in charge of our planet,
Love, the sane majority.
#MessageToVoyager
The highest estimate I have seen on when the radioisotope generator outputs drop to the point that they fall silent is 2030. Until the probe actually goes silent we need to keep in touch with the probes so they better be setting up a complete training system to keep qualified personnel around for the next 13 plus years. It might surprise us a go a little longer than expected.
We don't have anything else we can contact that will be that far out, and may not again in this century. At the point where they will probably go silent they will have been in transit for 53 years, and 50 years since they got their full energy kick - the largest any probes have ever received due to a double gas giant slingshot manuever*. There are no new super high-velocity missions even being floated that I can find, so it may be decades before anything of similar or greater speed is launched.
Future probes beyond Saturn will probably be orbiters instead of fly-bys, and all such trans-Saturnian missions will probably use advanced electromagnetic propulsion (ion, plasma, maybe even solar sail) that is still being developed or in the early stages of roll-out. An ion driven interstellar space probe would be neat, I'll bet there are a lot of interesting observations even of our own system, and experiments, that can only be made at great distances.
*Or velocity vector rotations if you want to be pedantic.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
We are the creator...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My vote would go for "If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion," but unfortunately it's far more than 60 characters long. (For those unfamiliar with the context, read the complete passage here.
I suppose then, my recommendation is: "Voyager, the first step. Flying beyond it shall be the next."
I almost torn out those pages from Aviation Week magazines the university library (I didn't as I know others will want stare at the photos for an hour or so). I remember KQED devoted the whole day covering Pioneer Saturn flyby, all the scientists debating "we have F and G rings, but some have doubts. We will try to enhance to determine if there is a H ring." Then comes Voyager showing a bizillion rings... so much for finding the H ring.
mfwright@batnet.com
42.
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Donald Trump destroying all aliens. Recommend attacking now.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
"Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"
...and thanks for all the pictures.
This is just a commercial disguised in the form of a competition.
Why can't they use an email address or some other method? I don't want a Twitter account and I don't want Twitter to know anything about me. Thanks so much, NASA.
"You're going the wrong way!!!"
Enough said.
Hello world!
So long, and thanks for all the fish!!!!!!!
40 years and still works... imagine if we had outsourced it!
"Save yourselves!"