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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.
Earth Rules! Your planet drools.
#DeleteChrome
My recommended message from the people of Earth: "Send Help."
You are welcome on my lawn.
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?
Ha ha ha. No.
It doesn't get its power from solar cells, and it had propellant (fuel) for attitude adjustment.
Did someone give Rick Perry an account on /. ?
The sunlight is mighty dim in that neighborhood. They get their power from RTGs - radiothermal generators. PU238 generates a lot of heat as it decays and semiconductor junctions turn it into electricity. But the PU238 decays, and the semiconductor junctions take a beating from the radiation sleeting through them, so the power package has a finite lifetime - which is just about done.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
There's no air in space you big dumbass.
They should have used hydro-electricity.
#DeleteFacebook
Solar panels won't work - too far from the Sun. Wind turbines? No Wind. Tidal barrages? No water, gravity or tide. Nuclear power? About the only option, unless someone invents a scramjet that uses magnetic fields to scoop in interstellar gas and compress it.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"My God, it's full of stars."
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
68kB of memory? Don't you mean 64kB?
According to the Wikipedia article, the AC is right. Each probe has six computers; four with 4096 18-bit words each, and two with 8198 16-bit words each (not sure why its six over 2^13; maybe they're including CPU registers). That adds up to 557248 bits, or 68.02 KiB.
Hey I haven't met you
this is crazy
here's my coordinates
call me maybe
It's disingenuous to suggest that ONLY those 9 people can operate it. They may be most familiar (but, hey, can you remember the details of what you were doing 40 years ago?), but they're certainly not the only people precisely BECAUSE such documentation exists.
Hey, don't forget, we are still communicating with Voyager.
The problem is not that the tech was inherently more reliable back then, but it has a 40 year head-start. Sending out a probe today would give you pretty much the same kind of lag in technology by the time it gets to where these are, and nobody will really care much about what it's saying.
The problem we have is not that we can't go anywhere, or send another probe, or don't have the technology or know-how. It's that nobody wants to pay for it any more. You can't do much about that problem without finding someone willing to pay.
Not to mention - the designers WERE NOT DESIGNING IT TO DO THIS. It was supposed to visit the outer planets. Everything since is a bonus.
But, fuck, if you can find a power source that powers a craft like this for 40 years and that you can launch into space, please go tell NASA. I'm sure they'd love it.
Solar is useless when the sun is basically a dot. If you don't understand the words "inverse square law", then maybe you shouldn't be instructing others that do on how to power their spacecraft.
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
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
First, the Voyagers did actually have a small amount of fuel for attitude adjustment and maneuvers around the planet. You know, the mission they were actually designed for. That fuel is pretty much gone now.
And no, solar power is useless where these probes operate. Solar panels would actually even have been useless as a power source in their actual mission, there is a reason that Juno is the first probe sent to Jupiter (the innermost of the "outer" planets, the gas giants) to use panels instead of RTGs, because only now we not only have managed to create solar panels that can output sensible amounts of energy at that distance to the sun, but we also managed to build electronic devices that can run on power requirements that are 3+ orders of magnitude smaller.
We are after all talking about probes that were launched four decades ago.
And finally, these probes were supposed to take a look at Jupiter and Saturn (and Uranus and Neptune in the case of Voyager2). And that's it. Anything past that is bonus. And these two probes have been handing out way, WAY more information than what could possibly be dreamed of.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.