It must be feeling really lonely.
Voyager goes off a (helio) cliff
Probably the most-loved survivor of 1970s space optimism, Voyager, has sent back signals indicating that it's left the heliosphere. Scientists are now discussing whether they should consider the 35-year-old probe to be in interstellar space, or to have entered a new region of space that hasn't been previously described. The …
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Thursday 21st March 2013 00:34 GMT Herby
Pretty good!!
For a transmitter with about as much power as a refrigerator light bulb. I believe it has about 15 watts or so in the transmitter. Nice to have a good antenna here on earth, and a slow data rate.
Now everyone apply the inverse square law, and incorporate path loss.
MJS77 is alive and well!
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Thursday 21st March 2013 08:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Pah
11 beeelion miles = 0.0018712 of a light year.
A piffling figure which highlights a few things. Just how slow even a fast vehicle like Voyager is and how fucking VAST the universe is....
Voyager is still one of our best acomplishments ever. Ever.....
Roll on mankind. We have a lot to do.....
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Thursday 21st March 2013 09:15 GMT John Smith 19
It's an impressive feat.
As for the IT angle.
1 of the first NASA processors to use CMOS for the logic and the memory (no core store. Even the Shuttle GPCs were not prepared to go that far).
4Khz processor. <64KB of RAM. Try writing an image compression routine in that space.
Bulk data storage by reversible tape drive.
BTW it's true the parabolic aerial radiates about 15W but radio engineers talk in term of EIRP, effective isentropic radiated power, which would be the power you would need to deliver the same energy density in the beam across the surface area of a whole sphere. That number is quite impressive because the beam is such a small fraction of a sphere.
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Saturday 23rd March 2013 17:50 GMT John Smith 19
Re: It's an impressive feat.
Actually neither is correct.
Re-checking Computers in spaceflight, the NASA experience indicates the main cycle was 28 microseconds, or 35.714kHz. It's about 9% better than the Apollo AGC, which weighed about 90lbs (Voyagers was about 20lbs but only doubly redundant). Using COTS parts (albeit the rad hard SOS versions of 4000b parts) also probably made it a lot cheaper.
The 4kHz signal is something I read in an E&WW article and was described as the "heartbeat" but the NSA book describes it as being about 0.5-1 Hz.
TTFN
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Thursday 21st March 2013 09:55 GMT FrankAlphaXII
JPL is raining on this paper and author's parade
See http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-107. A very dry and not very informative press release written by some bureaucrat droid, but JPL and the Voyager project's official position.
Wired's also being snarky about it, as they usually are. Though their point about how this is semantics is kind of how I feel about it. Everything the instruments see is brand new. We have never encountered this area of space before and it will be awhile before we do again, and even then I kind of doubt New Horizons will still be communicating 28 years from now, when its roughly the same age as Voyager-1. They don't build em like they used to. Hell, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it'll beat the odds and work better than the Voyagers in relative terms I strongly doubt it though.
But honestly, being conservative about things that humanity has never encountered before, only speculated and theorized about would probably the better course of action and if the people who work on this thing at the very least weekly say they aren't seeing what they're expecting when they are truly into interstellar space, I'm kind of inclined to listen to them. It just amazes me they aren't hyping it to try and seek more money.
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Thursday 21st March 2013 10:15 GMT Psyx
Re: JPL is raining on this paper and author's parade
"It just amazes me they aren't hyping it to try and seek more money."
They're too busy hyping asteroid DOOM on the back of the Russian impact. As we know from watching the news: People are more motivated and enraptured by fear than they are by curiosity.
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Thursday 21st March 2013 11:16 GMT TeeCee
For that I prefer to think of Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" series. The title of the first, "Maker of Universes", rather gives the game away.
In that case, it wouldn't hit a wall and go <tink>, it would hit the surrounding field that provides the impression of squillions of lightyears of shit, all packed into a few metres and be vapourised. We've still got a bit of a wait though, that was a light-year or so out IIRC.
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Thursday 21st March 2013 12:42 GMT Andus McCoatover
Sorry, nay-sayers..
But after all these years, I think it's a freaking bit of what we can do, when we try. Thing's lasted longer then my (late) washing machine, and in a vastly more hostile environment. OK, doesn't have to cope with the missus' overload (Clothes, not weight). Bejeezus, the thing's been out there since I left technical college in 1977 and I aint that far from retirement! Bugger is still going, and so am I (just). I think it'll outlive me!
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Thursday 21st March 2013 16:08 GMT Beachrider
It is only operational for a few more years...
Voyagers probably won't make it to 2020. They still use fuel to keep that antenna pointed back at earth AND they use power to keep the 'brains' going. Both of which will exhaust in the next 7 years (they say).
And then it inexorably goes on quietly into nothingness for centuries...
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Friday 22nd March 2013 15:52 GMT Assumed Name
Epic FAIL
Voyager has been out there screwing around for 35 years and hasn't found one alien civilization. What a joke. I want the nearly $1000 the project cost us plus the $75 they spent on that stupid gold record. What were they thinking sending a record into space? It makes us look like a bunch of waiting-to-be enslaved, pre-iPod cavemen. As soon as that lazy little probe gets it act together, aliens will be headed our way to rape our animals and eat our women- using that gold record like a freaking menu. Probably wearing Sony Walkmen listening to 80s music. Great. Thanks, NASA. Oh yeah, and unlike the drones we send into hostile environments on Earth, Voyager is UNARMED. We are doomed. Unless these aliens underestimate our capabilities based upon that record. Then we will enslave THEM with HD TV and hybrid cars. Maybe the NASA boys (and that one girl is name Dale who looks like a dude) are actually brilliant.