Voyager Still Going

That is the coolest dang thing I've ever read. I mean really. This will be the first time we've pierced the bubble of our solar system and probably will be the only time I'm around to see such a thing too considering how long it takes to get there.

Barring hardware failure, Voyager I and II boast enough power and communications capability to keep radioing back to Earth until 2020, NASA says.

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That's a lot of potential information coming back in the next 15 years. It will be interesting to see what Voyager finds out once it gets out into interstellar space. It still boggles my mind that these spacecraft are still out there after all of these years, sending information back to us. Something we created is now 8.7 billion miles from here, potentially on a path to meet up with some other life form. Wow.

Now as a grown man, I shouldn't find this comment humorous, but I succumbed to a Beavis and Butthead moment and chuckled in spite of myself:

Voyager II, which observed Uranus...

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I don't think that's an appropriate use of government funding.

Cliché alert: They don't build 'em like they used to..

Keep going Vee-Juh!

was reading that this morning, pretty neat! Just hope it never becomes "V"ger!

yellow said:

Keep going Vee-Juh!

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stubeeef said:

Just hope it never becomes "V"ger!

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We are both such dorkis malorkiseseses.

yellow said:

Cliché alert: They don't build 'em like they used to..

Keep going Vee-Juh!

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Yah I was thinking the same thing. Just didn't want to jinks it.

Wow- I don't even think I knew it was still going. Amazing!

Mr. Anderson said:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/05/25/voyager.space/index.html

I'm loving this - it will be in true interstellar space sometime soon (I hope, they haven't really said when) out of influence from the Sun. I wonder what sort of surprises they might find out there....

D

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Unless the Klingons get to it first.

dammit i was hopeing for a new series of star trek.

Hector said:

dammit i was hopeing for a new series of star trek.

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No just references to the first movie...

Does any one know about how long it takes the signals from the Voyager crafts to make it back to Earth from those distances?

leftbanke7 said:

Does any one know about how long it takes the signals from the Voyager crafts to make it back to Earth from those distances?

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I believe at 8.7 billion miles, it takes about 13 hours for the signal to get back here (speed of light = 186,000 miles per second).

At 6.5 billion miles, it's 9.7 hours.

Top 10 "V"ger facts..........Link

Item 10

10

Outta Here!

As of March 2002, Voyager 1 was 7.7 billion miles (12.4 billion kilometers) from the Sun. That's 84 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. It's the farthest (known) human thing, and it takes about 23 hours for a radio signal, moving at the speed of light, to make the round-trip. The craft adds more than 3 Earth-Sun distances to the separation every year as it continues to speed away.

If you calculate that out it's, well, fast.

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stubeeef said:

Top 10 "V"ger facts..........Link

Item 10

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For a little perspective, I believe the nearest star is 4.3 light years from Earth.

Based on the information above, V'ger travels about 1 light-hour every 2 years. That means that it will be 75336 years before V'ger could possibly make it to the next nearest star, assuming it was headed in the right direction....

Mr. Anderson said:

Very cool stuff - you have to wonder if we'll ever make a probe in our lifetime that will go farther. Making something faster wouldn't be that hard and using newer technologies I'm sure we could get an order of magnitude increase in speed.

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As well as information gathering. I don't know if we'd ever foot the bill for it. Voyager was just 8 years after landing on the Moon. Those heady days of space exploration are gone for the moment. I'd love to see them come back, I'd even foot my portion of the bill!

I suspect it's chocolate pudding beyond the heliopause. It's just a feeling..

Mr. Anderson said:

I'm wondering if there will be any communication issues once it passes through the heliopause and what will space look like out there....

Very cool stuff - you have to wonder if we'll ever make a probe in our lifetime that will go farther. Making something faster wouldn't be that hard and using newer technologies I'm sure we could get an order of magnitude increase in speed.

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I'm gonna guess it is dark and cold, probably a bit quiet too. Or chocolate pudding.

Here is an old picture of earth as Vger was saying bye bye. It was taken 14 years ago.

Here's the original press release from NASA/JPL if any one is interested:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-084

And the Voyager homepage: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/