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Would it be possible to use these thrusters, or even the main thruster, to speed Voyager or slingshot it around something right before it loses power to communi

Would it be possible to use these thrusters, or even the main thruster, to speed Voyager or slingshot it around something right before it loses power to communicate back to us? It'd be cool if right before we lose contact of it for good, we got it to go as fast as possible so that it will reach who knows where someday... just slightly faster.

ssijak 9y ago
It has long past sling shot phases around planets
ceejayoz 9y ago
> slingshot it around something It's in interstellar space. Barring a really lucky encounter with another interstellar body, it'll be another 40,000 years before it's close to anything.
- Cshelton 9y ago
  I mean, we are finding Pluto sized objects right outside our solar system all the time now.
  - db48x 9y ago
    You forget how big space is.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    It doesn't seem like it's all the time. Pluto is the largest, Eris is close. Haumea, (225088) 2007 OR10 and Makemake are the only others at least 1/2 the diameter of Pluto. We are finding more trans-Neptunian objects. There's about 2,500 of them. But as Adams said, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is." Voyager can only be angled a smidgen from it's current path. There's nothing it can reach to do a slingshot. If Voyager could change its path by 0.1 degree (which it can't), and if all of the trans-Neptunian objects were equally distributed around the Sun (which they aren't - and Voyager is going out of the plane of the ecliptic), then that's still only a 0.2% chance of having something in its path. Even if there were, Pluto gave New Horizons about 5-6 m/s boost. That's effectively nothing compared to Voyager's 17 km/s speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6ga-g9ACU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6ga-g9ACU via https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/did-the-pluto-flyby-give-new-horizons-any-significant-gravitational-boost https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/did-the-plut... .
- fhars 9y ago
  "Close" here meaning it will be 700 times farther away from that something than it is from the sun now.
  - dmurray 9y ago
    That puts it in perspective. Space really is huge.
eesmith 9y ago
As ssijak pointed out, there's nothing to slingshot around. The additional speed we might get out of it is tiny compared to the 17km/s it already has. If they used what little fuel was left to go faster, then wouldn't be able to communicate with the Earth. The current goal is to get information about what's at the edge of the solar system. We know it's not going anywhere close to anything, any time soon. Wikipedia says "in about 40,000 years, it will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445". And for all we know, if it goes faster it might pass by some destination it would reach now.
deleted 9y ago
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ssijak 9y ago

It has long past sling shot phases around planets

ceejayoz 9y ago

> slingshot it around something It's in interstellar space. Barring a really lucky encounter with another interstellar body, it'll be another 40,000 years before it's close to anything.

Cshelton 9y ago
I mean, we are finding Pluto sized objects right outside our solar system all the time now.
- db48x 9y ago
  You forget how big space is.
- eesmith 9y ago
  It doesn't seem like it's all the time. Pluto is the largest, Eris is close. Haumea, (225088) 2007 OR10 and Makemake are the only others at least 1/2 the diameter of Pluto. We are finding more trans-Neptunian objects. There's about 2,500 of them. But as Adams said, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is." Voyager can only be angled a smidgen from it's current path. There's nothing it can reach to do a slingshot. If Voyager could change its path by 0.1 degree (which it can't), and if all of the trans-Neptunian objects were equally distributed around the Sun (which they aren't - and Voyager is going out of the plane of the ecliptic), then that's still only a 0.2% chance of having something in its path. Even if there were, Pluto gave New Horizons about 5-6 m/s boost. That's effectively nothing compared to Voyager's 17 km/s speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6ga-g9ACU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6ga-g9ACU via https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/did-the-pluto-flyby-give-new-horizons-any-significant-gravitational-boost https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/did-the-plut... .
fhars 9y ago
"Close" here meaning it will be 700 times farther away from that something than it is from the sun now.
- dmurray 9y ago
  That puts it in perspective. Space really is huge.

eesmith 9y ago

As ssijak pointed out, there's nothing to slingshot around. The additional speed we might get out of it is tiny compared to the 17km/s it already has. If they used what little fuel was left to go faster, then wouldn't be able to communicate with the Earth. The current goal is to get information about what's at the edge of the solar system. We know it's not going anywhere close to anything, any time soon. Wikipedia says "in about 40,000 years, it will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445". And for all we know, if it goes faster it might pass by some destination it would reach now.

deleted 9y ago

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