Voyager Spacecraft Hardware Options

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Some questions on the basic hardware of the Voyager spacecraft:

1. From which material was the decahedral space bus made ( Aluminium ? )
2. Exact weight of the spacecraft - literature gives numbers between 792 and 825 kilograms ?


Some additional questions:

1. The Deep Space Network of worldwide antenna sites wasn't sufficient to collect the faint signal of the distant spacecraft once beyond Saturn ... I know that the twenty-seven 25-meter steerable radio antennes of the Very Large Array in New Mexico were linked with DSN ... when was this done exactly?
( 1989 Neptune encounter only ? )
2. What is the actual telecommunications time-lag 1-way to Earth (after having passed the bow-shock )

[ZorkFox]

That's an awesome site. I tried to find a copy of the CD-ROM, but was stymied, so this was a nice substitution treat. (I did manage to locate a copy of the hardback book.)

I did a little digging to find out why the record is plated with gold, but didn't find any definitive information. Is it just because gold is shiny and might attract the attention of anyone examining the spacecraft, saying, "Hey! We, the people who built this emissary, value the contents of this box! Pay close attention to (possibly worn) diagrams."

I've always thought of gold as being very soft, and therefor not exactly ideal material to withstand space travel and its variety of unmitigated rigors.