Voyagers at 12,000 Days, The Super-Marathon Continues |
Voyagers at 12,000 Days, The Super-Marathon Continues |
Jun 29 2010, 05:16 PM
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
JPL release on Voyagers operating continuously for 12,000 days!
Voyager 2 at 12,000 Days: The Super-Marathon Continues -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Jun 29 2010, 06:19 PM
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#2
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
And Astro0 strikes again with a sporty new forum banner! Sweeeeet.
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jun 29 2010, 06:49 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 655 Joined: 22-January 06 Member No.: 655 |
I have a huge affection for these two spacecraft - I was ten years old when they launched.
It will be a sad day (or sad pair of days) when the hydrazine finally runs dry and their antennae drift off Earth-lock. Voyager 2 is for me still the most accomplished planetary space mission ever (in a strong field), and it's testament to the engineers and planners that science is still being returned by this emissary at the edge of the solar system. I sometimes wonder what they both look like now, up-close. Voyager 2 has had three decades of bombardment by cosmic rays, has traversed the asteroid belt, braved Jupiter's dangerous radiation environment, and dust hazards in the Saturnian, Uranian and Neptunian systems, not to mention the crippling near-absolute-zero temperatures at 14 billion kilometres from the sun. I wonder if it looks a bit battered? |
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Jun 29 2010, 10:52 PM
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
<spacecraft-hugger-mode>
I love it at work when I can stand in front of our 70-metre antenna while we are 'receiving' telemetry from Voyager 2 and know that I am being showered in its radio transmissions. Weird, I know, but there's a feeling that you get standing there looking out into the void and knowing that there's a little piece of humanity's ingenuity heading into the vastness of the universe. Well done Voyager(s) and all that have sailed with you! </spacecraft-hugger-mode> Another great thing about Voyager 2 is that unlike her sibling, she can 'tweet' http://twitter.com/Voyager2 |
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Jun 30 2010, 02:16 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 340 Joined: 11-April 08 From: Sydney, Australia Member No.: 4093 |
Incidentally, today is day # 2,500 for Spitzer and Voyager 1's 12K is just 15 days away.
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Jun 30 2010, 04:19 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 753 Joined: 23-October 04 From: Greensboro, NC USA Member No.: 103 |
... I love it at work when I can stand in front of our 70-metre antenna while we are 'receiving' telemetry from Voyager 2 and know that I am being showered in its radio transmissions. ... Almost as amazing to me as the longevity of these spacecraft is that we can continue to detect their signals from so far away. A JPL press release from 1998 said, QUOTE That signal, produced by a 20 watt radio transmitter, is so faint that the amount of power reaching our antennas is 20 billion times smaller than the power of a digital watch battery. And that was 12 years ago! -------------------- Jonathan Ward
Manning the LCC at http://www.apollolaunchcontrol.com |
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Jul 1 2010, 05:50 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 754 Joined: 9-February 07 Member No.: 1700 |
Those watts, at the current distance = what?
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Jul 1 2010, 06:21 PM
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
The drop off in power is relative to the distance squared - the good old inverse power law thing - which means that the drop off in power over is not as much as you might think. Since Voyager 1 (I found that article and the reference was to Voyager 1 not 2) is now about 17 billion km from the sun vs 10.4 billion km at the time of the press release the received power is now between 2.6 and 2.7 times lower depending on where the earth is in its orbit.
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Jul 1 2010, 07:24 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 754 Joined: 9-February 07 Member No.: 1700 |
thanks helvick
It'd be fun to see a tracing of Voyager's radio signal. Would it have an arc due to the sun's gravity or 13 hours of earth's movement? |
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Jul 2 2010, 05:43 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 754 Joined: 9-February 07 Member No.: 1700 |
Is there a chance one of the Voyagers might encounter an Oort cloud object?
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Jul 3 2010, 05:59 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 259 Joined: 23-January 05 From: Seattle, WA Member No.: 156 |
Chance << 1. (Or maybe <<<<<< 1.) And since the Oort cloud is ~50K AU away, the Voyagers' power supplies will be long dead, and we'll never know.
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Jul 3 2010, 08:05 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
Average distance between Oort cloud objects is roughly 10 AU, so not very likely even if it still had power, unless you are referring Sedna type objects.
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Guest_Lunik9_* |
Sep 18 2010, 07:33 AM
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Guests |
The complete Voyager mission story in scanned mission bulletins: http://planetary.org/explore/topics/voyager/msb.html
Does anyone know if Tom already found the N° 43 as I have one? |
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Sep 18 2010, 02:59 PM
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
I have #43 now, so no worries, the set will be completed soon. I hope to post them in two more batches, one next week, one the following week.
-------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Sep 18 2010, 07:07 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
-------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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