Engineers investigating NASA’s Voyager 1 telemetry data
jpl.nasa.gov
jpl.nasa.gov
This happened to Voyager 2 not too long ago, where it was returning invalid and random data. Turns out, it was a bit flip [1].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/voyager-2-likely-suffering...
This also happen to the Magellan probe. Larry Wall was at NASA at that time and added the hex and bit string format specifiers to the pack function in perl so they could fix and recover the data: https://github.com/Perl/perl5/commit/24f4b7dabc8
NASA also has the burden of generating public support and interest in their projects. NASA will cease to exist if it does not receive financing; the only way to get that funding is for people to vote in representatives who care about this.
Stories like this can be crafted in such a way to help drum up public support in addition to coming off "mysterious" or "puzzling" to have a better chance of more coverage.
This story serves more than one purpose.
Yes, that's a really long time, but 20'000 years ago humans already existed. In fact it's "only" 10% back into the history of humans.
This gives me hope that actually while yes out of reach of humans, not out of reach of humanity. Even without FTL.
Or in other words: There will be humans out there for whom it's normal that we have sent equipment a light year away.
(I choose to believe we'll survive that long)
> New Horizons has been called "the fastest spacecraft ever launched" because it left Earth at 16.26 kilometers per second [...] However, it is not the fastest spacecraft to leave the Solar System. As of January 2018, this record is held by Voyager 1, traveling at 16.985 km/s relative to the Sun. Voyager 1 attained greater hyperbolic excess velocity than New Horizons due to gravity assists by Jupiter and Saturn. When New Horizons reaches the distance of 100 AU, it will be travelling at about 13 km/s, around 4 km/s slower than Voyager 1 at that distance.
And then you have multipliers like million/billion. I kinda just lose perspective over there.
There is plenty of interesting stuff within ten light years, so don't lose perspective too much ;)
There are about 5k visible stars, most indeed pretty close... but if you manage to make out Andromeda, I suppose you're technically seeing about a trillion, and they're all pretty far off...
[Edit] Including how on one mission he developed a software hack that an astronaut had to type in, correctly, or else, in the few minutes between the LM emerging from the lunar far side and reaching the point where a landing burn was initiated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Computers_and_...
Consider that this is in the same band as broadcast satellite TV but with a fraction of the power of for example the Astra 2 satellites. Think in terms of looking out for the brake light of a motorbike in orbit around Jupiter ;-)
Surely yes, I can't imagine the technology working without those.
The example of the light bulb cartel that had unquality assurance, spot testing, and a formal structure of fines and penalties for any members who made too long of lasting lightbulbs is just hilariously dystopic.
But one of the major reasons is probably that products have become much more complex. A 30 year old fridge had few components that could break. Modern fridges are much more complex (because extra features sell well), thus more stuff that can break.
In our society the brilliant engineer is not the one who makes a thing that last for 50 years, but one that lasts for just long enough to avoid damaging your brand image, and also fails in a way that makes the consumer more incentivized to buy a new thing than try to repair their current one. The guy who came up with the idea of slowing old iPhones "to save battery life" is who the bonus+promotion is going to.
One of the biggest problems that has to be understood is that there is every incentive for money-driven governments to actively support planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence drives factors that we believe are indicators of a strong economy, like GDP. If people were able to stop endlessly buying the same things over and over, the "economy" would take an absolutely massive hit. And with it there would also be declines in employment, tax revenue, and everything else. This is one of the many examples where the socially detrimental relationship between government and big business isn't just based around corruption.
Of course our system, for all its flaws, also has its benefits. Like the old Soviet joke goes, "It may be true that the Americans have the biggest skyscrapers, but we have the biggest transistors!"
I guess all other things being equal, I'd still rather have something fully functional replaced because there's something new and preferable, than having to replace something that just breaks. But if the cost of the "lifetime" good is a lot more money due to its quality, than the replacement costs of the less durable good that you'd replace anyway due to improved function, it becomes harder to say. Even harder given uncertainty about all of the variables involved.
In the early 20th century GM wanted to sell cars but the problem is that the market was already saturated with cars that were well functioning and built to last. And so they needed to develop a way to convince people to buy another thing that does effectively the same as some other thing they already own. And so instead of working on creating better cars, they worked on marketing, persuading people that round edges were better than square were better than round were better than square. Hey, look at this new color!
I quite like the quote referenced in Wiki, describing this all as "the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals."
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence#History
Yes ... away from Earth at 38,210 mph
You can do stuff with a continuous wave, analyse the doppler shift, align to it, irrespective of the bitstream.
I imagine at some stage, we will lose signal. Do we get radar bounce back? (some early astronomy was about bouncing radar off planets, Robert Buderi talks about it) -The dish, if it stays in some kind of alignment, might reflect enough to be detected.
There may be factor working in the Voyagers favor, but I think that would be quite a challenge.
Pluto is 2,376 km in diameter; the main dish of the Voyagers 3.66 m.
In frontal area, that’s a factor of over 100 billion, if that dish keeps pointed at earth, which it won’t once power is gone.
Pluto is 5 billion km away; Voyager 2 is over three times as far away.
Also, reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy#History, we haven’t bounced radar of Uranus (3 billion km away; diameter 50,000 km), Neptune (4.4 billion km away; diameter 49,000 km) or Pluto yet.
Voyager 1 flew beyond the heliopause in 2012; Voyager 2 in 2018: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar-mission/
Watching the distances crawl up by many miles/second is kinda bonkers, and the 3D view allows the mind's eye to imagine a new pale-blue dot photo that encompasses every planet we've ever known.
> "Wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras off to save power (Feb. 14, 1990)"
One of the last photos Voyager 1 took back then was looking back at Earth as a Pale Blue Dot [0]
Makes me wonder if those cameras could be turned back on, in case one of the Voyagers comes across something interesting?
[0] https://www.space.com/pale-blue-dot-voyager-1-photo-30th-ann...
> the spacecraft [Voyager 1] will take about 300 years to reach the inner boundary of the Oort Cloud and probably another 30,000 years to exit the far side [1]
> The inner edge of the Oort Cloud (...) is thought to be between 2,000 and 5,000 AU [astronomical units] from the Sun. The outer edge might be 10,000 or even 100,000 AU from the Sun [1]
> Voyager 1 (...) Distance from Sun: 156.42163354 AU [2]
[1] https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/oort-cloud/overvie...
The scale is incredible.
We're referencing Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought series.
It's really good. So is the prequel, but it doesn't have the Zones concept.
Why haven't we launched more since they proved so useful?
Interesting problem nonetheless.
Very relevant recent thread:
Basically sun both gives out radiation but also keeps it out.
But today I know I’ll never work on a project as cool as interacting with hardware at the edge of our solar system.
Or maybe some kind soul will return it.
From: Mr. Boss, CEO (mr_boss9735@hotmail.com)
Hey John, are you busy? I need you to do something for me. Need you to wire some money. Don't call Mary, this is a personal matter for me. I'm not at my desk, so just email me back and let me know when it's done.