Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!
- Thread starter Turboomni
- Start date
Heard it landed today
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
It is very hard to appreciate the scale of the universe looking that diagram. It represents only a tiny fraction of our own Milky Way Galaxy's immediate neighbourhood. Our galaxy is approximately 200 thousand light years across with approximately 400 billion stars. The estimated number of galaxies in the universe keeps going up with the current count being about 4 trillion. I subscribe to Anton Petrov on Youtube who does a nice job putting this topic into perspective.
Tomorrow night ... 800 years since last time we saw this. Weather might suck where I am .. gonna try.
hope others of you with interest and good visibility get a chance to snap a shot.
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
There is rain in the forecast here too.
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
Reading through the competing theories on Wiki of which real celestial event could account for the description of the Star of Bethlehem the following is my favourite only because it corresponds with December 25th.
"Jupiter next continued to move and then stopped in its apparent retrograde motion on December 25 of 2 BC over the town of Bethlehem.[89] Since planets in their orbits have a "stationary point",[82][84] a planet moves eastward through the stars but "As it approaches the opposite point in the sky from the sun, it appears to slow, come to a full stop, and move backward (westward) through the sky for some weeks. Again it slows, stops, and resumes its eastward course," said Chester.[82] The date of December 25 that Jupiter appeared to stop while in retrograde took place in the season of Hanukkah,[82] and is the date later chosen to celebrate Christmas."
"Jupiter next continued to move and then stopped in its apparent retrograde motion on December 25 of 2 BC over the town of Bethlehem.[89] Since planets in their orbits have a "stationary point",[82][84] a planet moves eastward through the stars but "As it approaches the opposite point in the sky from the sun, it appears to slow, come to a full stop, and move backward (westward) through the sky for some weeks. Again it slows, stops, and resumes its eastward course," said Chester.[82] The date of December 25 that Jupiter appeared to stop while in retrograde took place in the season of Hanukkah,[82] and is the date later chosen to celebrate Christmas."
hope somebody can/did get better of this "last one 800 years ago" event than i did on my old 4G phone
roughly same view, 6 pm, and at 6:40 pm this evening, southwest sky. bright light in lower middle is a street light for reference.
I can see ancient men seeing this at night and being awed. without all the light pollution, it would be spectacular on a starry, clear night.
roughly same view, 6 pm, and at 6:40 pm this evening, southwest sky. bright light in lower middle is a street light for reference.
I can see ancient men seeing this at night and being awed. without all the light pollution, it would be spectacular on a starry, clear night.
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
China has made major advancements in space technology and seems to be jumping into a new space race with both feet. I foresee the need for a international treaty that sets ground rules for dividing up celestial resources or things could get ugly fast. Any treaty would need to set limits similar to the NPT.
China launches new Long March-8 rocket in step towards reusable space vehicles
China launches new Long March-8 rocket in step towards reusable space vehicles
Agree with you.
Start with the moon, mars, and the asteroid belt. I mentioned here that I invested in helium 3 technology and "mineral rights" (post #165). it'll boom or bust .. but i will be long gone either way.
staying out of the politics/religion of it all, the economics of coordination/cooperation in "space" makes the most sense. i would favor that approach vs. the age old fighting over "real estate" that was here for billions of years before us, and will be for billions more after us.
we'll see. the Chinese are working on cool stuff though.
Start with the moon, mars, and the asteroid belt. I mentioned here that I invested in helium 3 technology and "mineral rights" (post #165). it'll boom or bust .. but i will be long gone either way.
staying out of the politics/religion of it all, the economics of coordination/cooperation in "space" makes the most sense. i would favor that approach vs. the age old fighting over "real estate" that was here for billions of years before us, and will be for billions more after us.
we'll see. the Chinese are working on cool stuff though.
A bit old news but hope it wasn't already posted.
NASA re-establishes contact with Voyager 2 spacecraft | EarthSky.org
On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched from Earth in 1977. The craft is now traveling more than 11.6 billion miles (18.8 billion km) from Earth. It is beyond the heliopause, or boundary region, where the sun’s influence ends and the interstellar medium begins. The 43-year-old space probe was left flying solo for 7 months while repairs were made to the radio antenna that commands it. The only radio antenna that can command the space probe – the Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) antenna in Canberra, Australia – has been offline since March.
Mission operators sent a series of test commands to Voyager 2 using the DSS43 antenna, which established a signal confirming the “call” was received. The spacecraft executed the commands without issue, according to a NASA statement.
Voyager 2 has been traveling through space since its launch in 1977, and is now more than 11.6 billion miles ( 18.8 billion km) from Earth. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space two years ago, in November 2018, when the spacecraft exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the sun that surrounds the planets and the Kuiper Belt (the collection of small, icy bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit).
Crews conduct critical upgrades and repairs to the 230-foot-wide (70-meter-wide) radio antenna Deep Space Station 43 in Canberra, Australia. In this photo, one of the antenna’s white feed cones (which house parts of the antenna receivers) is being moved by a crane. Image via CSIRO/ NASA.
Since DSS43 went offline in mid-March for repairs, mission operators have been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but they haven’t been able to send commands to the probe. The recent call to Voyager 2 was a test of new hardware installed on DSS43, which is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, a collection of radio antenna facilities spaced equally around the globe in Canberra; Goldstone, California; and Madrid, Spain.
Among the upgrades to DSS43 are two new radio transmitters. One of them, which is used to talk with Voyager 2, hasn’t been replaced in over 47 years. Engineers have also upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supply equipment, and other electronics needed to run the new transmitters. NASA said that the successful call to Voyager 2 is just one indication that the dish will be fully back online as planned in February 2021.
Artist’s concept of Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers are identical. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.
Although both of the Voyager probes – Voyager 1, launched September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2, launched 16 days before its twin – have left the heliosphere, neither spacecraft has yet left the solar system, and won’t be leaving anytime soon. The boundary of the solar system is considered to be beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, a collection of small objects that are still under the influence of the sun’s gravity. The width of the Oort Cloud is not known precisely, but it is estimated to begin at about 1,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun and to extend to about 100,000 AU (1 AU is the distance from the sun to Earth). It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it.
Both Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 have traveled well beyond their original destinations. The spacecraft were built to last five years and conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn. However, as the mission continued, Voyager 2 was able to accomplish additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming was used to give the Voyagers greater capabilities than they possessed when they left Earth. Their two-planet mission became a four-planet mission. Their five-year lifespans have stretched to 43 years, making Voyager 2 NASA’s longest-running mission.
Bottom line: On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft. The probe had been flying solo since March 2020 while repairs were made to the radio antenna in Australia used to control it.
Via NASA
NASA re-establishes contact with Voyager 2 spacecraft | EarthSky.org
On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched from Earth in 1977. The craft is now traveling more than 11.6 billion miles (18.8 billion km) from Earth. It is beyond the heliopause, or boundary region, where the sun’s influence ends and the interstellar medium begins. The 43-year-old space probe was left flying solo for 7 months while repairs were made to the radio antenna that commands it. The only radio antenna that can command the space probe – the Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) antenna in Canberra, Australia – has been offline since March.
Mission operators sent a series of test commands to Voyager 2 using the DSS43 antenna, which established a signal confirming the “call” was received. The spacecraft executed the commands without issue, according to a NASA statement.
Voyager 2 has been traveling through space since its launch in 1977, and is now more than 11.6 billion miles ( 18.8 billion km) from Earth. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space two years ago, in November 2018, when the spacecraft exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the sun that surrounds the planets and the Kuiper Belt (the collection of small, icy bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit).
Crews conduct critical upgrades and repairs to the 230-foot-wide (70-meter-wide) radio antenna Deep Space Station 43 in Canberra, Australia. In this photo, one of the antenna’s white feed cones (which house parts of the antenna receivers) is being moved by a crane. Image via CSIRO/ NASA.
Since DSS43 went offline in mid-March for repairs, mission operators have been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but they haven’t been able to send commands to the probe. The recent call to Voyager 2 was a test of new hardware installed on DSS43, which is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, a collection of radio antenna facilities spaced equally around the globe in Canberra; Goldstone, California; and Madrid, Spain.
Among the upgrades to DSS43 are two new radio transmitters. One of them, which is used to talk with Voyager 2, hasn’t been replaced in over 47 years. Engineers have also upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supply equipment, and other electronics needed to run the new transmitters. NASA said that the successful call to Voyager 2 is just one indication that the dish will be fully back online as planned in February 2021.
Artist’s concept of Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers are identical. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.
Although both of the Voyager probes – Voyager 1, launched September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2, launched 16 days before its twin – have left the heliosphere, neither spacecraft has yet left the solar system, and won’t be leaving anytime soon. The boundary of the solar system is considered to be beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, a collection of small objects that are still under the influence of the sun’s gravity. The width of the Oort Cloud is not known precisely, but it is estimated to begin at about 1,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun and to extend to about 100,000 AU (1 AU is the distance from the sun to Earth). It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it.
Both Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 have traveled well beyond their original destinations. The spacecraft were built to last five years and conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn. However, as the mission continued, Voyager 2 was able to accomplish additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming was used to give the Voyagers greater capabilities than they possessed when they left Earth. Their two-planet mission became a four-planet mission. Their five-year lifespans have stretched to 43 years, making Voyager 2 NASA’s longest-running mission.
Bottom line: On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft. The probe had been flying solo since March 2020 while repairs were made to the radio antenna in Australia used to control it.
Via NASA
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
Next stop the Oort cloud! Thanks for posting.
"Are we there yet?"
A brief description of Voyager's computers built in the 1970'scutting edge tech 8 track tape storage and all.
Voyager Deconstructed
More info if interested.
The Brains of the Voyager Spacecraft: Command, Data, and Attitude Control Computers - News
Voyager program - Wikipedia.
Scientific American
Those computer systems are impressive both for their primitive nature in today's electronic world, and for their capabilities. For example, each Voyager's computer hardware totals 69.63 kilobytes of memory. Barely enough for a crummy cell-phone image these days, heavily compressed. Although the Voyagers did actually employ volatile CMOS memory to match the cracking speed of their CMOS processors in the Flight Data System - capable of about 81,000 operations a second.
That sounds okay, until you realize that a recent iPhone has a processor capable of roughly 200 billion floating point operations a second.
For slightly longer term data storage the information was written onto 8-track digital tape - moving parts and all - before trickling back to the Earth at around 160 bits per second. The capacity of the tape? About half a megabyte.
Voyager Flight Data System hardware. Credit: NASA, JPL
But these were marvelous pieces of electronic hardware - heavily customized, finely tuned and designed. Just what you needed to go through interplanetary space for decades.
The science instruments are labeled in the schematic above. They range from imaging systems that are built out of slow-scan tv cameras (not the fully digital detectors we're all used to now, but equipped with 8 color filters on a wheel), to a host of detectors for sensing magnetic fields, plasmas, cosmic rays, and planetary radio waves.
By now though, with power dwindling in the Voyager probes' radioisotope generators, most science instruments have been switched off. Those operating include the plasma wave detectors, magnetometers and cosmic ray instruments.
Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters.
Voyager Deconstructed
More info if interested.
The Brains of the Voyager Spacecraft: Command, Data, and Attitude Control Computers - News
Voyager program - Wikipedia.
Scientific American
Those computer systems are impressive both for their primitive nature in today's electronic world, and for their capabilities. For example, each Voyager's computer hardware totals 69.63 kilobytes of memory. Barely enough for a crummy cell-phone image these days, heavily compressed. Although the Voyagers did actually employ volatile CMOS memory to match the cracking speed of their CMOS processors in the Flight Data System - capable of about 81,000 operations a second.
That sounds okay, until you realize that a recent iPhone has a processor capable of roughly 200 billion floating point operations a second.
For slightly longer term data storage the information was written onto 8-track digital tape - moving parts and all - before trickling back to the Earth at around 160 bits per second. The capacity of the tape? About half a megabyte.
Voyager Flight Data System hardware. Credit: NASA, JPL
But these were marvelous pieces of electronic hardware - heavily customized, finely tuned and designed. Just what you needed to go through interplanetary space for decades.
The science instruments are labeled in the schematic above. They range from imaging systems that are built out of slow-scan tv cameras (not the fully digital detectors we're all used to now, but equipped with 8 color filters on a wheel), to a host of detectors for sensing magnetic fields, plasmas, cosmic rays, and planetary radio waves.
By now though, with power dwindling in the Voyager probes' radioisotope generators, most science instruments have been switched off. Those operating include the plasma wave detectors, magnetometers and cosmic ray instruments.
Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters.
The strange case of
Oumuamua.
This thing is haulin ***!! 5 times faster than Voyager.
5 things we know – and 5 we don’t – about ‘Oumuamua | EarthSky.org.
1. We know it’s not from around here.
The object known as 1I/2017 U1 (and nicknamed ‘Oumuamua) was traveling too fast (196,000 miles per hour, that’s 54 miles per second or 87.3 kilometers per second) to have originated in our solar system. Comets and asteroids from within our solar system move at a slower speed, typically an average of 12 miles per second (19 km per second) . In non-technical terms, ‘Oumuamua is an interstellar vagabond.
Oumuamua.
This thing is haulin ***!! 5 times faster than Voyager.
5 things we know – and 5 we don’t – about ‘Oumuamua | EarthSky.org.
1. We know it’s not from around here.
The object known as 1I/2017 U1 (and nicknamed ‘Oumuamua) was traveling too fast (196,000 miles per hour, that’s 54 miles per second or 87.3 kilometers per second) to have originated in our solar system. Comets and asteroids from within our solar system move at a slower speed, typically an average of 12 miles per second (19 km per second) . In non-technical terms, ‘Oumuamua is an interstellar vagabond.
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wow... at that speed, it must "sling-shotted" (she probably said that) around a few, massive gravity wells on its journey through space. NASA used the technique on Voyager, Cassini, Galileo ..others probably.
Basics of Space Flight - Solar System Exploration: NASA Science
What is a gravity well?.
Gravity assist | The Planetary Society
During the Jupiter encounter, Voyager 2 gained enough speed to enable it to leave the solar system - the blue curve stays above the red curve beyond
"Jupiter. It gained about 10 km/s at Jupiter, about 5 km/s at Saturn, about 2 km/s at Uranus, and lost about 2 km/s at Neptune."
During the Jupiter encounter, Voyager 2 gained enough speed to enable it to leave the solar system - the blue curve stays above the red curve beyond
"Jupiter. It gained about 10 km/s at Jupiter, about 5 km/s at Saturn, about 2 km/s at Uranus, and lost about 2 km/s at Neptune."
btw .. big landing on Mars today. Most ambitious yet. Rover the size of a compact car.
source: Landing Toolkit: Perseverance Rover
source: Landing Toolkit: Perseverance Rover
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