4 ms·
> Do we get radar bounce back? There may be factor working in the Voyagers favor, but I think that would be quite a challenge. Pluto is 2,376 km in diameter;
by Someone 4y ago
> Do we get radar bounce back?
There may be factor working in the Voyagers favor, but I think that would be quite a challenge.
Pluto is 2,376 km in diameter; the main dish of the Voyagers 3.66 m.
In frontal area, that’s a factor of over 100 billion, if that dish keeps pointed at earth, which it won’t once power is gone.
Pluto is 5 billion km away; Voyager 2 is over three times as far away.
Also, reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy#History, we haven’t bounced radar of Uranus (3 billion km away; diameter 50,000 km), Neptune (4.4 billion km away; diameter 49,000 km) or Pluto yet.
- ggm 4y agoIn 300 years it reaches the Oort cloud. Maybe it can get an airconditioning re-gas, and the windscreen rubbed by an old newspaper then.
- dTal 4y agoSome back of the envelope calculations on diffraction limits suggests that we'd be very lucky to get 10^-18 of our transmitted energy back, even if we used the entire planet as a transceiver dish and Voyager was a perfect reflector. I would put this into the "very, very impossible" category.