5 ms·
I rather look forward to a time when that's less necessary - the odds are slim, but non-zero, that the probe may have passed by something interesting while powe
by eponeponepon 9y ago
I rather look forward to a time when that's less necessary - the odds are slim, but non-zero, that the probe may have passed by something interesting while powered down, but we can never know.
I really have no idea what advances might enable that, though.
- KGIII 9y agoStronger RTGs, maybe?
- Wingman4l7 9y agoMore resilient electronics.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoOne thing that would enable that is cheaper cost to orbit, which would let us build heavier probes with more rugged hardware.
- rlanday 9y agoThe plutonium decays at a fixed rate regardless of how much power the spacecraft is currently using.
- emiliobumachar 9y agoI think we'll always prefer to make three probes that need to sleep rather than one that doesn't. Until we begin to run out of targets we can know or strongly suspect beforehand will be interesting.
- planteen 9y agoFirst, the amount of data this would generate is huge. The Pluto encounter was about a day worth of measurements that took over a year to downlink. The link is slow, about 1 kbit per second. What instrument do you watch? The cameras are more like telescopes with very narrow fields of view. Slewing the spacecraft around aimlessly snapping pictures isn't doing science. Next, space is big and empty. Many people have visions of dodging asteroids, planets, comets, and moons, but you only encounter these things when you aim for them. A typical journey across the solar system would encounter nothing larger than a grain of sand.