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Voyager Enters Final Frontier Of Solar System
Guest_Sunspot_*
post Jun 3 2005, 10:47 PM
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http://planetary.org/news/2005/voyager-upd...ation_0524.html

Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object in space, has crossed the termination shock, the last major threshold in the solar system, team members announced today at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Guest_spaceffm_*
post Jun 4 2005, 01:45 AM
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Do You think it is possible to see a picture towards the sun wikthout magnifictaion?
Is Voyager still this functionial?
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djellison
post Jun 4 2005, 05:51 AM
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QUOTE (spaceffm @ Jun 4 2005, 01:45 AM)
Is Voyager still this functionial?
*


No, basically smile.gif

Doug
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edstrick
post Jun 4 2005, 08:35 AM
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The instruments on the scan platforms have been turned off. The last camera use was the look back across the solar system that caught the "pale blue dot". The ultraviolet spectrometer was in use as a poor-man's ultraviolet astronomy spectroscopy satellite for some years, but was finally retired. Heaters on the instruments and scan platform gear-boxes are off so they've all cooled to various near-cryogenic temperature levels, far outside their design survivability ranges. Thermal contraction of materials has probably broken solder joints and the like.

The voyagers probably have not enough power to run anything on the scan platforms now, anyway, even if they weren't probably broken by the cooldown.
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Guest_PhilCo126_*
post Nov 13 2005, 05:48 PM
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I thought it would last untill 2015 before the first VOYAGER spacecraft will be in interstellar space ...
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ljk4-1
post Nov 14 2005, 03:52 PM
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QUOTE (PhilCo126 @ Nov 13 2005, 12:48 PM)
I thought it would last untill 2015 before the first VOYAGER spacecraft will be in interstellar space ...
*


I went to the official NASA/JPL Web site on the Voyagers and found this:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/weekly-reports/index.htm

And if you go to the home Voyager page, they have links to the latest science data from the probes from this year. Go here and look on the left column under Latest Browse Data:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

This page has a rundown of what the Voyagers will be doing through the year 2020, when it is thought they will finally be unable to power even a single instrument:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/spacecraftlife.html


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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The Messenger
post Nov 14 2005, 07:08 PM
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QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Nov 14 2005, 08:52 AM)
I went to the official NASA/JPL Web site on the Voyagers and found this...

I pulled up some of data, the increase in cosmic ray count is an eye opener, at least doubling, if not more over the last two years. I am also intregued by the the fact that the plutonium powered system is producing more energy than expected. Over the short term, this can be written off as better-than-expected aging of the thermalcouples; but the trend looks like it is gnawing away at three sigma limits.

Wouldn't it be a hoot if radioactive half-lifes turn out to vary as a function of AU? Could the increase in cosmic rays be effecting the decay rate?
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deglr6328
post Nov 14 2005, 08:23 PM
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3-Sigma limits of what? Has anyone ever even studied thermoelectric junction degradation rate fluctuations over a period of 30 years?
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mike
post Nov 14 2005, 08:41 PM
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I wouldn't complain if the increase in cosmic rays (or something else out there) was somehow recharging the power supply (employ a more scientific-sounding explanation if you like)..
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ljk4-1
post Jan 11 2006, 10:32 PM
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http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/weekly-reports/index.htm

Voyager Mission Operations Status Report # 2005-11-11, Week Ending November 11, 2005

Command Transmission & Verification Operations

Voyager 1 command operations consisted of the uplink of a command loss timer reset on 11/08 [DOY 312/1625z]. The spacecraft received the command.

There were no Voyager 2 command operations due to the extended downtime of DSS-43.

Sequence Generation Operations

Continue sequence development of CCSL B131.

Data Return Operations

Voyager 1 Data Processing and Operations:

There were 83.2 hours of DSN scheduled support for Voyager 1 of which 28.1 hours were large aperture coverage. There was one schedule change made on 11/09 [DOY 313] when 3.5 hours of DSS-65 support was released to support MUSC. The total actual support for the period was 79.7 hours of which 28.1 hours were large aperture coverage. There were no significant outages during the period

Science instrument performance was nominal for all activities during this period. One frame of GS-4 data was recorded this week. A second frame of GS-4 data was recorded on day 309. The EDR backlog is 9 days.

Voyager 2 Data Processing and Operations:

There were 54.5 hours of DSN scheduled support for Voyager 2 of which 0 hours were large aperture coverage. There was one schedule change made on 11/09 [DOY 313] when 2.5 hours of DSS-45 support was released to support MUSC. The total actual support for the period was 52.0 hours of which 0 hours were large aperture coverage.

There was one significant outage of 0.7 hours on 11/08 [DOY 312] due to a sub-reflector problem at DSS-45 [DR C104604].

Science instrument performance was nominal for all activities during this period. One frame of GS-4 data was recorded this week. The EDR backlog is 8 days.

Flight System Performance

Voyager 1 performance was nominal during this report period. Activities included a PMPCAL and switching to Band Low Power on 11/9 (DOY 313/314).

Voyager 2 performance was nominal during this report period.

PROPELLANT/POWER CONSUMABLES STATUS AS OF THIS REPORT

Spacecraft
Consumption

One Week (Gm)
Propellant

Remaining (Kg)
Output

(Watts)
Margin

(Watts)

1
50.34*
28.58
292.9
35

2
7.87
30.49
294.5
41


*MAGROL 05-308/21:45

RANGE, VELOCITY AND ROUND TRIP LIGHT TIME AS OF 11/11/2005

Voyager 1
Voyager 2

Distance from the Sun (Km)
14,558,000,000
11,671,000,000

Distance from the Sun (Mi)
9,046,000,000
7,252,000,000

Distance from the Earth (Km)
14,669,000,000
11,736,000,000

Distance from the Earth (Mi)
9,115,000,000
7,292,000,000

Total Distance Traveled Since Launch (Km)
17,312,000,000
16,308,000,000

Total Distance Traveled Since Launch (Mi)
10,757,000,000
10,134,000,000

Velocity Relative to Sun (Km/sec)
17.162
15.610

Velocity Relative to Sun (Mi/hr)
38,390
34,919

Velocity Relative to Earth (Km/sec)
40.552
41.500

Velocity Relative to Earth (Mi/hr)
90,711
92,832

Round Trip Light Time (hh:mm:ss)
27:10:20
21:44:54


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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Rob Pinnegar
post Jan 12 2006, 01:12 PM
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QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jan 11 2006, 04:32 PM)
Distance from the Sun (Mi)
9,046,000,000
7,252,000,000


Looks like Voyager 1 will pass 100 AU pretty soon. Not a scientifically important point, but significant in its own way.
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ljk4-1
post Feb 15 2006, 03:30 PM
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Voyager Mission Status 11/18/2005 and 11/25/2005:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/weekly-reports/index.htm

Feature video in the main Voyager page:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

'Voyager enters the Heliosheath' by the Voyager Project Scientist, Dr. Ed Stone.


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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ljk4-1
post Feb 22 2006, 05:12 PM
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COSMIC RAY MYSTERY SOLVED
-------------------------

When Voyager 1 finally crossed the "termination shock" at the edge of
interstellar space in December 2004, space physicists anticipated the
long-sought discovery of the source of anomalous cosmic rays. These cosmic
rays, among the most energetic particle radiation in the solar system, are
thought to be produced at the termination shock - the boundary at the edge
of the solar system where the million-mile-per-hour solar wind abruptly
slows. A mystery unfolded instead when Voyager data showed 20 years of
predictions to be wrong.

...

The paper, "An Explanation of the Voyager Paradox: Particle Acceleration at a
Blunt Termination Shock," is available in the February 17 issue of the Geophysical
Research Letters.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0602/19voyager/


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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ljk4-1
post Mar 14 2006, 04:00 PM
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Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0603318

From: Merav Opher [view email]

Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:30:59 GMT (539kb)

Effects of a Local Interstellar Magnetic Field on Voyager 1 and 2 Observations

Authors: Merav Opher, Edward C. Stone, Paulett C. Liewer

Comments: 12 pages, 5 figures

Journal-ref: Astrophysical Journal Letters v.640, 71, 2006

We show that that an interstellar magnetic field can produce a north/south asymmetry in solar wind termination shock. Using Voyager 1 and 2 measurements, we suggest that the angle $\alpha$ between the interstellar wind velocity and magnetic field is $30^{\circ} < \alpha < 60^{\circ}$. The distortion of the shock is such that termination shock particles could stream outward along the spiral interplanetary magnetic field connecting Voyager 1 to the shock when the spacecraft was within $\sim 2~AU$ of the shock. The shock distortion is larger in the southern hemisphere, and Voyager 2 could be connected to the shock when it is within $\sim 5~AU$ of the shock, but with particles from the shock streaming inward along the field. Tighter constraints on the interstellar magnetic field should be possible when Voyager 2 crosses the shock in the next several years.

http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603318


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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dilo
post Mar 16 2006, 11:32 PM
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From updated solar wind speed diagram, Voyager-2 experienced a repentine increase (more than 100 Km/s) at the end of February/beginning of March.
In my understanding, transition through termination shock should produce a dramatic wind speed decrease, so this is not the case... Anyway still intriguing, because even if in the past Voyager-2 already observed speed close to 500 Km/s, now increase seems more repentine and appear associated to one of the largest ions density spikes ever observed by the spacecraft...
Any suggestion?


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