Wow...
18.5 billion miles from Earth and we can still get a picture of it from up close!
Boffins still aren’t sure just when the deep-space Voyager probe will cross the line into interstellar space, but new data from the spacecraft makes them believe it’s close. Voyager 1 Explores the 'Magnetic Highway' Voyager 1, which is now more than 18 billion kilometres from the sun, has now experienced two out of the three …
Nah, it will be worse. You will still get asked that every 10 seconds (or how ever often NASA is asking Voyager 1).
Just with a 17 hour delay.
So if you do arrive their and you tell them "we are here!!!!", you will continue to get asked "Are we there yet?" for another 34 hours (17 hours for the question to get to you and another 17 hours for your reply to get back to them).....
And the delay just keeps increasin'!!!
Nah, poor Voyager will have to endure a further 34 hours of questions after finally being able to answer "We're here!".
I.e. 17 hours of questions whilst the answer flitters back to Earth; but of course *during* those hours NASA have still been asking more questions. So assuming NASA stop asking on receipt of "We're here" there is still a further 17 hours of questions in-flight towards Voyager.
Once looked up about the error correcting methods they use to encode the signals and think they've changed the method once or twice as it got further away to take account of greate error rate. Anyway, when I did my maths degree *30* years ago I did a final year option on error-correcting codes and the lecturer even then said it was amazing that NASA were able to get signals from what amounted to a 60W light bulb somwhere near the outer planets ... even more amazing they are still in contact when it must be 4-5x further away!
Probably further now, they've increased receiver power for radio telescopes by linking up the receivers, so receiving won't be an issue.
The problem will be the power supply or system failure, i.e. when the power gets so low that the transceiver stops working (or fails).
"The problem will be the power supply or system failure, i.e. when the power gets so low that the transceiver stops working (or fails)."
More likely a system failure or power supply regulator problem. The probe is powered by three RTG's.
To steal documentation, "The power output of the RTGs does decline over time (halving every 87.7 yrs), but the RTGs of Voyager 1 will continue to support some of its operations until around 2025."
Now, *that* is reliable circuitry! The RTG isn't amazing as is the ability of those ancient circuits of yesteryear to survive such an incredibly harsh environment and continue functioning.
This tiny vessel, this minute speck of metal coasting through the gaping vastness of space, is a symbol of how we human beings, despite our fragile bodies, and our short and puny lives on this planet, have managed to harness our imagination and ingenuity to overcome once unthinkable odds, and lay claim to immortality...
"We're not exactly getting anywhere yet with clever tricks to beat the physics involved, are we?"
Make it a question of, do it or you are extinct, we'd solve the problem in a New York minute, which is well documented to be sub-quantum time.
The time unit is why I'll stick with the threat of being shot in Philadelphia over either having a stroke or throttling half of NYC...
Damn! But, I really should have retired to New Zealand...
" I wonder how long the plutonium powerpacks are good for on them?"
They're rated to 2025. Even money, there'll be a few more years out of them due to over-engineering.
I can kludge together some really robust designs for circuits, but... Damn! That is REALLY good designs, considering the resources available back then.
"Whilst I admire the feat of engineering that is Voyager, I've never seen it have to avoid a controller hurled at it before due to Street Fighter rage.... though, to be fair to it... it is almost older than the controller concept."
Erm, even the mythical Incredible Hulk couldn't manage an arm sufficient to reach either Voyager.
Though, I, the Incredible Bulk may well be able to, due to gravitational boosting... ;)
A decade ago, I retired my father's kitchen television from a year before the probe was launched.
Our very first color television.
It was a GE television, hybrid transistor and kludged solid state circuitry that had a mysterious arc that I never figured out until I scrapped the damned thing and found the carbon trail that would otherwise have never been found.
It finally failed and was replaced.
Interestingly enough, our 1964 B&W console stereo-television still operates. With vacuum tubes in the television and germanium transistors in the stereo. The CRT is gassy in the extreme, the high voltage "flyback" transformer is dodgy at best, due to melting of the insulation, but the thing still works.
Lost out on a bid for a first run RCA television, pure vacuum tube unit. Didn't share the information on how to adjust the ion trap with the bastard that won it by crook. May the neck arc through on him... :/
Old tech isn't bad tech, only dated. Though, dated technology ideas aren't necessarily obsolete. :D
Not quite. It isn't just fading away with 1/r^2 or something like that. The solar wind (blowing outwards) means that the solar system is a bubble with a shockwave on the outside. Give or take a few squillion miles, that bubble has a defined edge and that edge is in a physically meaningful way the limit of the Sun's domain.