6 ms·

Voyager 1 Has Outdistanced the Solar Wind

80 points by iuguy 16y ago

ars 16y ago
It's awesome that they have a second probe to repeat and confirm the data from the first one. The Voyagers just leave me astonished - something that far and we are still communicating with it. I hope we are able to collect them one day.
- mironathetin 16y ago
  Yes, if the Klingons don't destroy them... ;o). Just kidding. I still remember the launch. A remarkable instrument indeed. Like Pioneer. Two of the most impressive space missions.
Swizec 16y ago
Initial reaction: Now that's reliable hardware! Somebody forgot about the warranty expiring ... More serious thoughts: This is really amazing, I would never have imagined it would even be possible to keep contact with a probe for this long. Makes you wonder, way back then we could launch a probe that runs for several decades and reaches the absolute edge of the solar system ... nowadays we can ... make missions into space on several decades old hardware ... Something isn't right here guys, I thought rocket science was supposed to be bleeding edge?
- ugh 16y ago
  Well, there is New Horizons on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Juno will launch in 2011 to Jupiter. Cassini will have explored Saturn for 13 years at the end of its mission in 2017. (Cassini is in many ways more impressive than the Voyager spacecrafts.) Then there are of course Spirit and Opportunity on Mars and their successor, Curiosity, is scheduled to land in 2012. It sucks a bit that not much else is planned at the moment, though. (Probably no Mars Sample Return before 2020, no missions to Europa, …)
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - robryan 16y ago
    It's kind of surprising there is no mission to Europa in any form of advanced planning, the idea certainly seems to have been around for a long time. You would imagine to that there would be much to learn from Cassini like missions to Uranus and Neptune.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      There have been a couple of Europa missions which got cancelled in the planning stages, which is why we don't have one in the works right now. Europa missions have a habit of getting extremely elaborate and expensive and then getting cancelled. We'll get there eventually. In the meantime, the big (and very expensive) mission in the works which the grandparent didn't mention is the Titan Saturn System Mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission which is currently planned to have a Titan orbiter, a Titan lake lander, and a Titan hot air balloon. If this one launches in its planned form it's going to be impressive. Mind you, it's not due to launch 'til 2020 and it's got a nine-year flight to Saturn, so don't hold your breath either way.
  - prewett 16y ago
    Cassini is doing some awesome work. I've been watching the website ever since orbital insertion in 2004, and it keeps returning gorgeous images of the moons and really interesting science. Apparently it still has lots of propellant left, since it's been approved to continue to about 2017. The web site doesn't have a photo gallery of the best pictures, but the daily pictures, which have some interesting write-ups are archived at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/.
- mironathetin 16y ago
  I thought rocket science was supposed to be bleeding edge? It is not. The main problem in space are the high energy particles. They penetrate everything (and I mean everything, also metal, processors, they cause bit flips and can do a lot of harm). So a first priority objective is reliable (=tested) hardware. There is little tested hardware for obvious reasons. I work in ESAs Herschel project. Herschel runs on 16 MHz processors (Mega - not Giga!) - like your good old Atari St. You don't wan't to risk a 1 Billion Euro Spacecraft, because of one failing chip. The detectors of the instruments, of course, are another story. These are indeed bleeding edge. Their readout electronics on the other hand, good old stuff again. So the whole thing is a funny mixture of old but fool proof hardware combined with new developments.
  - Swizec 16y ago
    Couldn't you just shield against high energy particles with a strong magnetic field like Earth does? Or would that be too heavy to lug around and/or too difficult to supply with enough energy?
    - mironathetin 16y ago
      How should we do that? You would need superconducting coils on board and an extra 1000 liters of helium to cool the coils. Then run 200 Amperes through them. You see yourself... Earths magnetic field stretches far into space. So the particles have to be diverted from their original course only a little bit. Impossible to do that for a spacecraft. Magnetic field strength decreases with 1/(r to the power of 3). In fact, for a small spacecraft, there are only a few hits into the electronics per day. I know a funny story from an astronaut, who was on the ISS for a while. He told us, even with eyes closed at "night", he could see light flashes, when a particle was absorbed within his eyeball. Nice place out there...
    - fhars 16y ago
      Another "simple" solution would be to surround the probe with a 5m thick shell of water, the protons in there will absorb most of the high enerqy particles. It might just make it a bit difficult to accelerate the whole contraption to escape velocity...
- dantheman 16y ago
  I think you forget about how awesome the mars rover is. It was only supposed to do a mission that 90 days and lasted more than 1800 [1] and that Martian environment is really tough. Though I still think it's amazing that the voyager is still kicking ass, I just wanted to point out that their is still some awesome work being done. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Mission_overview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Mission_overview
  - run4yourlives 16y ago
    And most importantly it was built cheap. Voyager was best of the best, but the rovers were built to break and still outlived their expected life cycles.
J3L2404 16y ago
Graphic of locations of Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Outersolarsystem-probes-4407.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Outersolarsyst...
- wlievens 16y ago
  From 2007. Would love to see something updated!
  - J3L2404 16y ago
    Add four pixels to each line. ;)
- J3L2404 16y ago
  Also Heliographic Latitudes for the spacecraft: http://cohoweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/helios/book2/b2_12.html http://cohoweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/helios/book2/b2_12.html
patrickgzill 16y ago
This is especially cool for me, in that I remember the day in grade school I told the other kids about how Voyager 1 was passing Saturn and was the farthest-away man made object; now, some 30 years later, it is still making news and performing a useful scientific function.
kingsidharth 16y ago
Just wondering about two things: [1] If speed of the space-craft(craft) and solar-wind (wind) become equal that doesn't mean winds have stopped? That means they are same or slower than the craft. Right? [2] The time that signal from craft takes to reach us, is that accounted for in their estimation of 'how much time in...' equation? Dummy questions but just very curious.
- lutorm 16y ago
  [1] True. But the default speed of the charged particles are a lot faster than a spacecraft, so effectively they've stopped. [2] The light travel time is on the order of hours, not significant on these scales.
rickr 16y ago
Since it's such a large number and difficult to comprehend Voyager 1 is about 116 AU away. 1 AU is the distance from earth to the sun (150,000,000 km). Earths circumference is 40,000 km. Space is big. Also, a neat summary of the computers on Voyager can be found here: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html I'm still trying to track down the article on the comm used.
- wil2k 16y ago
  Great websites to browse around. I can only heavily recommend the "did you know" [ http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/didyouknow.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/didyouknow.html ] and "fast facts" [ http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/fastfacts.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/fastfacts.html ] pages. It makes one truly appreciate and wonder about the amazing accomplishments of this machine (and it's sister, Voyager 2) and the men and women who made this 'grand tour' mission possible. Sometimes I've wished I was born a few decades earlier so I could have been a part of the team that really pushed mankind's space boundaries and knowledge.
dstein 16y ago
But has it forgotten who its creator is yet?
SwaroopH 16y ago
Almost about to jump into hyperspace!

80 points by iuguy 16y ago

ars 16y ago

It's awesome that they have a second probe to repeat and confirm the data from the first one. The Voyagers just leave me astonished - something that far and we are still communicating with it. I hope we are able to collect them one day.

mironathetin 16y ago
Yes, if the Klingons don't destroy them... ;o). Just kidding. I still remember the launch. A remarkable instrument indeed. Like Pioneer. Two of the most impressive space missions.

Swizec 16y ago

Initial reaction: Now that's reliable hardware! Somebody forgot about the warranty expiring ... More serious thoughts: This is really amazing, I would never have imagined it would even be possible to keep contact with a probe for this long. Makes you wonder, way back then we could launch a probe that runs for several decades and reaches the absolute edge of the solar system ... nowadays we can ... make missions into space on several decades old hardware ... Something isn't right here guys, I thought rocket science was supposed to be bleeding edge?

ugh 16y ago
Well, there is New Horizons on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Juno will launch in 2011 to Jupiter. Cassini will have explored Saturn for 13 years at the end of its mission in 2017. (Cassini is in many ways more impressive than the Voyager spacecrafts.) Then there are of course Spirit and Opportunity on Mars and their successor, Curiosity, is scheduled to land in 2012. It sucks a bit that not much else is planned at the moment, though. (Probably no Mars Sample Return before 2020, no missions to Europa, …)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- robryan 16y ago
  It's kind of surprising there is no mission to Europa in any form of advanced planning, the idea certainly seems to have been around for a long time. You would imagine to that there would be much to learn from Cassini like missions to Uranus and Neptune.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    There have been a couple of Europa missions which got cancelled in the planning stages, which is why we don't have one in the works right now. Europa missions have a habit of getting extremely elaborate and expensive and then getting cancelled. We'll get there eventually. In the meantime, the big (and very expensive) mission in the works which the grandparent didn't mention is the Titan Saturn System Mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission which is currently planned to have a Titan orbiter, a Titan lake lander, and a Titan hot air balloon. If this one launches in its planned form it's going to be impressive. Mind you, it's not due to launch 'til 2020 and it's got a nine-year flight to Saturn, so don't hold your breath either way.
- prewett 16y ago
  Cassini is doing some awesome work. I've been watching the website ever since orbital insertion in 2004, and it keeps returning gorgeous images of the moons and really interesting science. Apparently it still has lots of propellant left, since it's been approved to continue to about 2017. The web site doesn't have a photo gallery of the best pictures, but the daily pictures, which have some interesting write-ups are archived at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/.
mironathetin 16y ago
I thought rocket science was supposed to be bleeding edge? It is not. The main problem in space are the high energy particles. They penetrate everything (and I mean everything, also metal, processors, they cause bit flips and can do a lot of harm). So a first priority objective is reliable (=tested) hardware. There is little tested hardware for obvious reasons. I work in ESAs Herschel project. Herschel runs on 16 MHz processors (Mega - not Giga!) - like your good old Atari St. You don't wan't to risk a 1 Billion Euro Spacecraft, because of one failing chip. The detectors of the instruments, of course, are another story. These are indeed bleeding edge. Their readout electronics on the other hand, good old stuff again. So the whole thing is a funny mixture of old but fool proof hardware combined with new developments.
- Swizec 16y ago
  Couldn't you just shield against high energy particles with a strong magnetic field like Earth does? Or would that be too heavy to lug around and/or too difficult to supply with enough energy?
  - mironathetin 16y ago
    How should we do that? You would need superconducting coils on board and an extra 1000 liters of helium to cool the coils. Then run 200 Amperes through them. You see yourself... Earths magnetic field stretches far into space. So the particles have to be diverted from their original course only a little bit. Impossible to do that for a spacecraft. Magnetic field strength decreases with 1/(r to the power of 3). In fact, for a small spacecraft, there are only a few hits into the electronics per day. I know a funny story from an astronaut, who was on the ISS for a while. He told us, even with eyes closed at "night", he could see light flashes, when a particle was absorbed within his eyeball. Nice place out there...
  - fhars 16y ago
    Another "simple" solution would be to surround the probe with a 5m thick shell of water, the protons in there will absorb most of the high enerqy particles. It might just make it a bit difficult to accelerate the whole contraption to escape velocity...
dantheman 16y ago
I think you forget about how awesome the mars rover is. It was only supposed to do a mission that 90 days and lasted more than 1800 [1] and that Martian environment is really tough. Though I still think it's amazing that the voyager is still kicking ass, I just wanted to point out that their is still some awesome work being done. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Mission_overview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Mission_overview
- run4yourlives 16y ago
  And most importantly it was built cheap. Voyager was best of the best, but the rovers were built to break and still outlived their expected life cycles.

J3L2404 16y ago

Graphic of locations of Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Outersolarsystem-probes-4407.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Outersolarsyst...

wlievens 16y ago
From 2007. Would love to see something updated!
- J3L2404 16y ago
  Add four pixels to each line. ;)
J3L2404 16y ago
Also Heliographic Latitudes for the spacecraft: http://cohoweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/helios/book2/b2_12.html http://cohoweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/helios/book2/b2_12.html

patrickgzill 16y ago

This is especially cool for me, in that I remember the day in grade school I told the other kids about how Voyager 1 was passing Saturn and was the farthest-away man made object; now, some 30 years later, it is still making news and performing a useful scientific function.

kingsidharth 16y ago

Just wondering about two things: [1] If speed of the space-craft(craft) and solar-wind (wind) become equal that doesn't mean winds have stopped? That means they are same or slower than the craft. Right? [2] The time that signal from craft takes to reach us, is that accounted for in their estimation of 'how much time in...' equation? Dummy questions but just very curious.

lutorm 16y ago
[1] True. But the default speed of the charged particles are a lot faster than a spacecraft, so effectively they've stopped. [2] The light travel time is on the order of hours, not significant on these scales.

rickr 16y ago

Since it's such a large number and difficult to comprehend Voyager 1 is about 116 AU away. 1 AU is the distance from earth to the sun (150,000,000 km). Earths circumference is 40,000 km. Space is big. Also, a neat summary of the computers on Voyager can be found here: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html I'm still trying to track down the article on the comm used.

wil2k 16y ago
Great websites to browse around. I can only heavily recommend the "did you know" [ http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/didyouknow.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/didyouknow.html ] and "fast facts" [ http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/fastfacts.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/fastfacts.html ] pages. It makes one truly appreciate and wonder about the amazing accomplishments of this machine (and it's sister, Voyager 2) and the men and women who made this 'grand tour' mission possible. Sometimes I've wished I was born a few decades earlier so I could have been a part of the team that really pushed mankind's space boundaries and knowledge.

dstein 16y ago

But has it forgotten who its creator is yet?

SwaroopH 16y ago

Almost about to jump into hyperspace!