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50 Years Later, This Apollo-Era Antenna Still Talks to Voyager 2
- walrus01 3y agohere's an older file with some more detailed info on the microwave path loss to/from voyager: https://voyager.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/DeepCommo_Chapter3--141029.pdf https://voyager.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/DeepCommo_Chapter3--14...
- guidedlight 3y agoThere’s a fun movie about this particular antenna, starring Sam Neill (from another famous historic movie, Jurassic Park). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish Worth a watch.
- Smoosh 3y agoNo, that was about the dish at Parkes, this is about the Tidbinbilla dish, near Canberra.
- 78zeros 3y agoI agree it's a good watch, however they're different antennas. The radio telescope at Parkes was built prior to DSS-43 that is the article's subject, they're located approx. 4 hours drive apart.
- jamesbfb 3y agoNot necessarily related, but it’s a fantastic Aussie film nonetheless.
- greenish_shores 3y agoCable Guy flashbacks, anyone? :P
- kqbx 3y agoDave from EEVblog made a nice series of interviews about this station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA
- nullhole 3y agoNice link - thanks! Related, Deep Sky Videos did a series of large-telescope tours / interviews a few years back. For example, this is their one on Alma; there are a number of others in their channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAQZp6yTR2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAQZp6yTR2Q
- thriftwy 3y agoA lot of high tech around us is 50 years old now. Some of that we would have trouble replacing.
- krallja 3y agoIt’s a Dish of Theseus, though. The electronics have been replaced, and the dish has been widened. I wonder how much of it is actually 50 years old besides the superstructure.
- thriftwy 3y agoVery often in such projects, The Stuff Not There Anymore is visibly contributing to the overall quality of the installation.
- mgkimsal 3y agoI thought I'd noticed this documentary on HN a few weeks ago, but I'll re-add it here. "It's Quieter in the Twilight": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/ Interesting piece on a bit of the history of the Voyagers, as well as recent interviews with the handful of remaining folks dealing with Voyager today (well, as of 2021/2022).
- jgalt212 3y agoSeconded. It was an enjoyable watch for any Voyager fan.
- wglb 3y agoAlso available here https://www.amazon.com/Its-Quieter-Twilight-Suzanne-Dodd/dp/B0BX2CQMXS https://www.amazon.com/Its-Quieter-Twilight-Suzanne-Dodd/dp/...
- rbanffy 3y agoExtra points for that nice Sun setup. That keyboard isn't my favorite - I prefer the squarer ones, models 5 and 7.
- uxjw 3y agoLooks really interesting. Found it free to stream on Plex: https://l.plex.tv/mR6jp https://l.plex.tv/mR6jp
- greenish_shores 3y agoAvailable via BitTorrent as well.
- edwarbd 3y agoIf someone wanted to learn antenna design and eventually sigint, what resource would you start with?
- subhro 3y agoYou can try to go through the amateur radio extra class.
- runjake 3y agoI would get my ham license and do everything I could with that hobby, especially digital. While doing that I’d either enlist in the US Navy or US Army and work my way into a SIGINT job. Once you’re in a SIGINT job, you’ll be far too busy with radio for ham. This would be a fast track into SIGINT. After that I’d use my military career to get into the private sector SIGINT world, as there’s a well-worn path there.
- NKosmatos 3y agoWe, as a species, need the Deep Space Network(DSN) in order to keep communicating with everything man made that’s out there exploring our neighborhood. This should be a global effort and I’ve read many articles about the lack of funding for the DSN. It’s getting more and more difficult to “juggle” and do proper time sharing in order to keep communicating with all the existing (and coming) spacecraft. More resources and funding should be put together, by all space agencies (NASA, ESA, JAXA, ISRO…) so as to continue having means of communicating with all these space probes. https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- makerdiety 3y agoIf the global free market doesn't want to spend capital in space stuff, then space is probably not worth it. Capitalism is an effective filter for economics and resource allocation. Soviet Union styled failed management occurs otherwise.
- zettabomb 3y ago>Capitalism is an effective filter for economics and resource allocation It really isn't a good filter for anything except "makes money quickly". Plenty of science returns zero economic benefits for years, even decades, but that doesn't mean it's useless.
- akira2501 3y ago> It really isn't a good filter for anything except "makes money quickly". How do you figure? We stand in a nation built on giant economic long shots and in the only one that managed to put humans on the moon in a joint government commercial venture. I'm using an open source product to write this to you. Running on an open source operating system. Also on an open source hardware device. Where's the "quick money" in any of this? > but that doesn't mean it's useless. It doesn't mean it's useful either. You can't use a simple "expectation factor" divorced from all other reality to decide how to spend tax money.
- semireg 3y agoIt’s hard for me to understand the arc seconds and degrees. Is there some kind of illustration available that shows the transmission from earth as a megaphone cone expanding out into to space?
- mikewarot 3y agoDraw an equilateral triangle. The internal angle at a corner is 1/6 of a circle, 1.0471975511965 radians. That can be divided by 60 into degrees, which are 0.0174532925199 radians Those can be divided by 60 into minutes, which are 0.0002908882086 radians Those can be divided by 60 into seconds, which are 0.00000484813681109 radians Those can be divided by 60 into thirds, which are 8.08022801849E−8 radians I think going any further is likely to be meaningless in a modern context, but fourths and fifths were used in the past. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_(angle) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_(angle)
- semireg 3y agoI understand the division of units, what I’d like to see is an illustration of the signal’s cone at the astronomical distances in the article.
- marcosdumay 3y agoWell, the area taken by a cone with angle "a" at the distance "r" is pi * r^2 * sin(a)^2. For an arcsec, the square sin is ~85e-9. At the distance of the Moon, that means the signal occupies ~400km^2. At the distance of the Sun, ~5 billions of km^2 (5Mm^2). The signal intensity is inversely proportional to that area.
- semireg 3y agoFor example, if the screw/servo controlling one axis of the dish is turned by a minimum adjustment, how many hundreds or thousands of miles does it throw the cone’s target at the distance of the probe? What’s the remaining margin for error at these scales?
- mikewarot 3y ago
- wglb 3y agoSlightly related, here are radio astronomy antennas: https://www.vlba.nrao.edu/sites/SITECAM/ https://www.vlba.nrao.edu/sites/SITECAM/
- ooterness 3y agoFor deep technical info on DSN, I highly recommend the DESCANSO book series: https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/mono.html https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/mono.html Thirteen volumes about everything from deep-space tracking and navigation to cryogenic low-noise amplifiers, all available for free online. It's an amazing resource.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoWhenever I read stuff like this I find it strange that as a species we do this and also kill each other in wars.
- bejk44 3y agoAlice: All I want is to stand tall, looking at the sun. Bob: All I want is to stand tall, looking at the sun. Alice: Your shade hits me, Bob. Prepare to die.
- makerdiety 3y agoSuccessful space travel and rocket science being a contemporary of war and violence is only strange if you find toys to be fascinating objects. And didn't a human land on the Moon because of a cold war between two superpowers? What's strange is acknowledgement of the possibility of scarce resources necessitating conflict is considered invalid criticism that needs to be silenced or given negative reviews by the majority opinion. But that's not really surprising when things like ascetic religion were created as a reaction to what is popularly called criminal or antisocial mental models of the world.
- ngcc_hk 3y agoAs said Buddha has evil nature. It goes hand inn hand.
- andai 3y agoVon Braun designed both the V-2 and the Saturn V.
- squarefoot 3y agoAlso, Alfred Nobel which left almost all his fortune to create the famous prizes, was the inventor of dynamite.
- andai 3y agoWell they had to make a separate Peace prize, to distinguish it from the regular one ;)
- wumms 3y agoDigital watch for power.
- dramm 3y agoAs a science (and science fiction) nerd kid growing up in Australia in the 1970/80s I got a kick out of tracking station 43 mention in Epilogue 2 of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds (1978)... [NASA unmanned landing craft just touches down on mars] [Houston Control]: "What's that flare? See it? A green flare, coming from Mars, kind of a green mist behind it. It's getting closer. You see it, Bermuda? Come in, Bermuda! Houston, come in! What's going on? Tracking station 43, Canberra, come in, Canberra! Tracking station 63, can you hear me, Madrid? Can anybody hear me? Come in, come in!" [instrumental music suddenly stops] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPHEbh7cnr561iJqxno3qXsgf8nW5w8vxz https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPHEbh7cnr561iJqxno3q... The Viking missions to mars had started planning in the late 1960s and Viking 1 and 2 landed on Mars in 1976 so the inclusion of a NASA Mars landing in Epilogue 2 was pretty neat.
- ngcc_hk 3y agoStill ned an emulator if nothing just to pay respect and in remembrance of these two. Especially how the whole programming change.
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoI had never heard of deep space 43, only deep space 9