3 ms·

159 AU is about a day's travel for light (~22 light hours). Something designed to get that far quickly would be a tiny payload with a lot of fuel and a weak but

by Kye 4y ago

159 AU is about a day's travel for light (~22 light hours). Something designed to get that far quickly would be a tiny payload with a lot of fuel and a weak but efficient engine behind it to accelerate constantly for a very long time. Voyager benefited from a rare alignment of planets that let them send it on a long, wandering journey around gravity wells, so it's very slow compared to what's possible with existing technology.

shagie 4y ago
If you watch DSN... https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html (and as I type this, its got a downlink from VGR1) you can occasionally see communication links to Voyager (and others). And since its there now... SPACECRAFT NAME Voyager 1 RANGE 23.80 billion km ROUND-TRIP LIGHT TIME 1.84 days SOURCE VOYAGER 1 FREQUENCY BAND X DATA RATE 160.0 b/sec POWER RECEIVED -160 dBm (1.0 x 10-22 kW)
- Kye 4y ago
  Was Google wrong (159 AU in light hours), or was the 159 AU I pulled from their comment off? Google answered with a conversion box, so I assumed it had a human checking the formulas and wasn't from their notoriously unreliable auto-snippets.
  - shagie 4y ago
    DSN is interested in the round trip time - they're both right. How long does it take to ACK the data that was sent? 1.84 days. How old is the data that was sent? 0.92 days (22 hours). Communication protocols at that distance are kind of interesting. Things like dropped data and delays can make it challenging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/technology/disruption_tolerant_networking_overview https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/techn... https://ipnsig.org/tag/deep-space-network/ https://ipnsig.org/tag/deep-space-network/ https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/02/science/spacecraft-passes-a-critical-test.html?unlocked_article_code=hBBXhY68kw4onDAZ8jc8tjxF-ORQ3xyKQyIvfWBEmk1eUMyFXpFK26qBShUdhulioha7gfO7szqFVsg5uDOioXq8QSCCPMQB8xUCObxJiELfJziUUfrVTvzTQciT6WLP8t7bC_hL5McmXeH7tvH7Huqyj__Viv7DcO-IQljkErZrP2mhTXaUnVrlxLZOpZE0qRFxY__Eq7tCCoEdEcCRoTqwcLjDGuuv8xR2cWnNxBd-J2dpSYWsWZicLw1-1yh3aoV0bYWInS86FfmxWF1VhMbG83R_Ef5-uBDkRSe_XQOX46QTdCXpltygGm7ziGBZjvTeyP0JS0OYQtP6zseY3g5cqspn8xLOR9Xm&giftCopy=1_CurrentCopy&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/02/science/spacecraft-passes...

by Kye 4y ago

shagie 4y ago

If you watch DSN... https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html (and as I type this, its got a downlink from VGR1) you can occasionally see communication links to Voyager (and others). And since its there now... SPACECRAFT NAME Voyager 1 RANGE 23.80 billion km ROUND-TRIP LIGHT TIME 1.84 days SOURCE VOYAGER 1 FREQUENCY BAND X DATA RATE 160.0 b/sec POWER RECEIVED -160 dBm (1.0 x 10-22 kW)

Kye 4y ago
Was Google wrong (159 AU in light hours), or was the 159 AU I pulled from their comment off? Google answered with a conversion box, so I assumed it had a human checking the formulas and wasn't from their notoriously unreliable auto-snippets.
- shagie 4y ago
  DSN is interested in the round trip time - they're both right. How long does it take to ACK the data that was sent? 1.84 days. How old is the data that was sent? 0.92 days (22 hours). Communication protocols at that distance are kind of interesting. Things like dropped data and delays can make it challenging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/technology/disruption_tolerant_networking_overview https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/techn... https://ipnsig.org/tag/deep-space-network/ https://ipnsig.org/tag/deep-space-network/ https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/02/science/spacecraft-passes-a-critical-test.html?unlocked_article_code=hBBXhY68kw4onDAZ8jc8tjxF-ORQ3xyKQyIvfWBEmk1eUMyFXpFK26qBShUdhulioha7gfO7szqFVsg5uDOioXq8QSCCPMQB8xUCObxJiELfJziUUfrVTvzTQciT6WLP8t7bC_hL5McmXeH7tvH7Huqyj__Viv7DcO-IQljkErZrP2mhTXaUnVrlxLZOpZE0qRFxY__Eq7tCCoEdEcCRoTqwcLjDGuuv8xR2cWnNxBd-J2dpSYWsWZicLw1-1yh3aoV0bYWInS86FfmxWF1VhMbG83R_Ef5-uBDkRSe_XQOX46QTdCXpltygGm7ziGBZjvTeyP0JS0OYQtP6zseY3g5cqspn8xLOR9Xm&giftCopy=1_CurrentCopy&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/02/science/spacecraft-passes...