V'ger Exits The Solar System

[jav6454]

Originally Posted by quagmire

They are powered by RTG's. The plutonium in them will be used up.

Ah, I see. Had to Google RTG before I understood why.

[MacNut]

Originally Posted by joepunk

It would be interesting to know what equipment they are now using. It would also be awesome of we (non-nasa people) could pickup V'gers signals on "homemade" equipment Just like the amateur radio operators could pickup the signal from Sputnik.

All you need is a big enough antenna.

The radio communication system of Voyager 1 was designed to be used up to and beyond the limits of the Solar System during the extremely long flight of this space probe. The communication system includes a 3.7 meter diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna (see diagram) to send and receive radio waves via the three Deep Space Network stations on the Earth. These modulated waves are placed in the S-band (about 13 cm in wavelength) and X-band (about 3.6 cm in wavelength) which provided a bit rate as high as 115.2 kilobits per second when Voyager 1 was at the distance of Jupiter from the Earth, and many fewer kilobits per second at larger distances.

When Voyager 1 is unable to communicate directly with the Earth, its digital tape recorder (DTR) can record up to 62,500 kilobytes of data for transmission at another time.[11] The length of time needed to send messages to Voyager 1 or to receive messages on the Earth depends on the straight-line distance between the two according to the simple equation t = D/c, where D is the distance and c is the speed of light (about 300,000 km/s).

[MuddyPaws1]

Originally Posted by joepunk

It would be interesting to know what equipment they are now using. It would also be awesome of we (non-nasa people) could pickup V'gers signals on "homemade" equipment Just like the amateur radio operators could pickup the signal from Sputnik.

I think they are just using a iP 3GS now.