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It continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed
by anigbrowl 6mo ago
It continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed than Voyagers). One new operating deep space probe in nearly 50 years is just embarrassing. I mean yay space telescopes and everything, but we seem to have given up anything that isn't a state-of-the-art prestige project. I was hopeful about projects like Breakthrough starshot but that seems to have stalled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
- nmbrskeptix 6mo agoThe voyagers had a planetary alignment working for them
- bombcar 6mo agoIsn't a big part of the problem that the voyager slingshot is one of the best you can get, and it's a once in multiple-lifetimes event? Even if we launch a new deep space probe as best we can they're gonna be real slow?
- monocasa 6mo agoFor Voyager 1, Jupiter's gravity assist was the only one that increased velocity, the flybys ultimately sapped velocity.
- NooneAtAll3 6mo agoapparently not so https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/70473 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/70473
- dylan604 6mo agoNew Horizons is faster than Voyagers and did not require an alignment.
- bombcar 6mo agoIt was launched faster but the final speed is slower - it'll never catch up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Speed
- dylan604 6mo agoHmm, I definitely remembered it being referred to as the fastest human made thing. Just missed the salient "launched" detail
- karlgkk 6mo agoMaybe that was Parker? Parker and new horizons often get lumped together for some reason
- dylan604 6mo agoBy who? The Parker is doing everything it can to get closer to the sun by dipping into the sun's atmosphere while New Horizons went to Pluto and is getting further and further away from the sun. I don't think you could have a more opposite mission than these two.
- NooneAtAll3 6mo agoParker probe is fastest relative to Sun Horizons has been fastest when it left Earth
- karlgkk 6mo agoIDK a lot of media. I think they’re two surface level similar missions. It’s not so much about what they’re doing, but rather how they’re built and represented to the public IDK, my point is I can see how some people might get confused about the more Guinness book style factoid around these missions
- lostlogin 6mo ago
- pavon 6mo agoWhat was unique about the Voyager flight path is that the alignment of planets allowed us to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in a single trip using gravity assists. From what I've read, the final velocity they obtained allowing them to reach interstellar space during their lifetime could be obtained with less rare gravity assists.
- simonebrunozzi 6mo agoYes, but we could install different tools and measuring instruments and make it worthwhile.
- dylan604 6mo agoWhat else are you looking to see from such deep space? Nothing we launch will ever reach anything anything interesting in probably the life of humanity. Just to get to Pluto in our life times meant going so fast that it could only fly by. Maybe flying around in the Oort cloud might, unlikely though, be interesting.
- philipswood 6mo agoExoplanet closeups? You can use the sun as a gravitational lens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens You need to be about 550 au out.
- dylan604 6mo agoVeeger is currently less that 200 AU, and it's dying. For us to build a craft that could stay alive long enough to make it to 550AU and still be functioning would take an incredible leap in technology. This plan also has a fatal flaw in that you can only ever hope to look at one thing. You can't just slew that craft to be able to line up the next target.
- johnbarron 6mo agoYou mean V'ger
- johnbarron 6mo agohttps://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/V%27ger https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/V%27ger
- burnerRhodov2 6mo agowhoa... why aren't we doing that?
- philipswood 6mo ago
- jvm___ 6mo agoIf we launched a second New Horizons when the last one passed Pluto, the second one would already have passed Pluto as well. Crazy to think how much time has passed since that flyby. Also, one of the program managers was on The Moth podcast describing the panic when new Horizons rebooted days before the flyby. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft launched on January 19, 2006, and performed its historic flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015. This journey took 3,463 days (approximately 9.5 years). 3,932 days July 14, 2015–April 19, 2026
- 14 6mo agoThis might explain the Fermi paradox. If life isn't as common as we think it might be and say there are only a few other intelligent alien civilizations in the milky way then if they are a bit farther away like 70000 light years then what are the odds that they sent some sort of hello signal off into the universe which would take 70000 years at the speed of light to reach us and in the exact time it reached earth we had the technology to receive their signal. We have only had the capability to detect signals for not even 200 years. Next think about what effort we have done to send a galactic hello. We don't have any deep space probes sent off in the universe constantly sending a hello message. So if all we did was fire a hello message away from earth for 24 hours what are the odds that some alien life picked it up verses they had that day off and missed our signal. I think this is a much more plausible explanation to the Fermi paradox. If we want to do our part to prove it wrong we need to begin sending a universe hello from earth transmission and run it for not years, not decades, not centuries but from now and for the rest of humanity. Hopefully some other alien civilization has realized the same and they too begin sending a continuous transmission we might get lucky and pick up.
- bblb 6mo agoYour explanation is just as good as the Fermi paradox. In Futurama, the Omicronians know about the Earth from old TV show signals, that's been constantly sent from Earth by then. Would any alien civilization have the patience to constantly send hello world for a millenia or maybe hundred thousand years. Both assume that there _is_ some other life, but that it's hard to reach. We don't know if there is anything else. Earth could be completely unique in the existence, even with all the endless multiuniverses. Mathematical propabilities are not proof that there _must be_ life somewhere else. The answer could just as well be '0'. Only life that was, is and will ever be. When we are eventually gone, that's it. No more life. edit: sorry about the negativity in my reply; just pondering out loud :D
- 14 6mo agoNo need to be sorry I really enjoy discussing all thoughts and beliefs regarding our existence and the question of if we are all alone. Our very existence makes absolutely zero sense. I just can't understand how we exist. How did our universe come into existence. I am not talking about the big Bang if that is actually accurate but before that. And if the big Bang comes from singularity of almost infinite dense energy or whatever then what was before that and why did it come into existence. And so on. Obviously we will never know. I am also fairly confident that most likely there is more life across the universe but that we will also never confirm that to be true. The size of the universe is just too immense and unless we discovered some new physics breakthrough like some sort of particle or way to transmit a signal much faster then the speed of light, milky way is like 100000 light years across and next galaxy over 2 million light years away, so even something going 10 times the speed of light is massively too slow to be significant. We would need to be able to send a signal at minimum 1,000,000 times the speed of light and even at that speed it would still be extremely slow and not likely fast enough to matter. I do believe there is life out there but most likely it is millions or billions of light years away. And at that distance with our current technology and knowledge it would be impossible for us to find them.
- _blk 6mo agoTotally agree with you. What a shame. But when I look at the national debt that seems even more out of reach, I do tend to consider that maybe the stars should wait till we have our s..tuff together here on earth. Privately funded, no issues, go for it at warp speed!
- ben_w 6mo agoPrivate has all the same problems as public: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DearMoon_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DearMoon_project
- johnbarron 6mo ago>> But when I look at the national debt that seems even more out of reach Of course, I would like to note, you have just spent 20 times the NASA annual budget, in a 3 week war of choice...
- romperstomper 6mo agoI've read that there were very rare conditions to launch Voyagers which gave them tremendous advantage with gravitational maneuvers. It happens very rarely, I don't remember the exact periods but maybe it happens once per hundreds of years.