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 )

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Only some gif images labeled "unknown" ( = no NASA photo-number )
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/image/assembly.html

[dilo]

Amazing pictures, Phil.
Can someone explain why the dark color of the blankets, contrary to the usual gold cover? Which material they used?

[Paolo]

Amazing pictures, Phil.
Can someone explain why the dark color of the blankets, contrary to the usual gold cover? Which material they used?

JPL started using black thermal blankets on Mariner 4. They had had many issues with thermal control on Mariner 2.
From the paper "Mechanical evolution of the Mariner spacecraft" by J.N. Wilson (1966)
"Although the black shields absorbed more solar energy than did the Mariner II white shields, the uncertainty in the amount of energy absorbed was less. Increased layers of insulation allowed the total heat transmitted through the shield to be reduced to a minimum"

[dilo]

JPL started using black thermal blankets on Mariner 4. They had had many issues with thermal control on Mariner 2.

Grazie, Paolo!
Is a strange motivation, anyway I like very much this black dressing: it looks somewath alien today!