- cross-posted to:
- space@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- space@lemmy.world
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nasa is back in full contact with its lost Voyager 2 probe months earlier than expected, the space agency said.
A signal was picked up on Tuesday but thanks to an “interstellar shout” - a powerful instruction - its antenna is now back facing Earth.
Staff used the “highest-power transmitter” to send a message to the spacecraft and timed it to be sent during “the best conditions” so the antenna lined up with the command, Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd told AFP.
After communications were lost, the probe had been unable to receive commands or send back data to Nasa’s Deep Space Network - an array of giant radio antennas across the world.
On Monday, the space agency said its huge dish in Australia’s capital, Canberra, was trying to detect any stray signals from Voyager 2.
The probes were designed to take advantage of a rare alignment of outer planets, which occurs about every 176 years, to explore Jupiter and Saturn.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I just created the summary! You can find it at https://lemmings.world/comment/969745.
Once both spacecraft run out of power - expected sometime after 2025 - they will continue roaming through space.
Why does thinking about this make me a bit sad?
The cool thing about Voyager is that it has a record of information about Earth, etched in gold, with instructions on how to read the data it contains back.
Even once it powers down, it’s still on a mission. If millions of years from now intelligent alien life ever encounters it, they will know who we were and that we existed.
It’s our handprint on the cosmic wall.
It’ll be back as Vger after a couple hundred years and try to kill us, no biggie.
Well the last Voyager came back from deep space with a sexy borg lady, so I for one look forward to their return.
They will likely be the last evidence that the human race ever existed.
In 2-3 billion years the sun will leave the main sequence steady state it has been in. This will end in it turning into a red giant, and engulfing earth and destroying all record we existed.
Meanwhile, the journey of Voyager 1 and 2 will have only just begun. They will continue moving through the expanding universe for at least 3,000,000 Billion years.
If we never send a spaceprobe ever again that is
Wouldn’t friction (however little in deep outer space) eventually decay the crafts way before Earth is engulfed by the Sun?
Interspace is empty on a level that is hard to imagine.
There are 2.652×10^25 molecules in one m^3 of air.
That is 26520000000000000000000000.
In intellar space?
The is 1.
IE: the probe would hit more atoms in one second on earth moving at 1 m/s than it would travelling the entire age of the universe so far through interstellar space.
Even the space between the planets is thick with matter by comparison.
interstellar shout
Seems like they haven’t read the “remembrance of Earth’s past” trilogy, otherwise they might have known better than to shout into the universe
I’d recommend anyone interested in the Voyager program to check out “It’s Quieter in the Twilight”. A film about the people involved in the project and how they’ve dedicated their lives to make it happen.
