After 35-year trip, NASA’s Voyager is Entering Deep Space

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

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It has been an almost impossible journey for the Voyager space craft, being launched in 1977 when the technical side of space travel was in its infancy, but somehow the craft managed to do its job and a whole lot more than was ever expected of it. Voyager is now poised on the brink of interstellar space and is still on the job sending back more unexpected data.

NASA scientists say Voyager 1 has actually reached those borders, a previously uncharted region that acts as a highway for magnetically charged particles between the magnetic field lines of our own sun and the field lines in interstellar space.
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Seems like these stories come out every year "it's about to go into interstellar space" "It's almost to interstellar space" "it's a stone's throw from interstellar space"
 
Too bad I won't live long enough to see Voyager return after being found by that planet of machines :)
 
sfsuphysics said:
Seems like these stories come out every year "it's about to go into interstellar space" "It's almost to interstellar space" "it's a stone's throw from interstellar space"
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This time its almost there though. Only a couple hundred or so million more miles to go.
 
I wonder how long it would take a probe made today of the most powerful engines we could make to reach the same location. There's got to be some kind of improvement in speed in 35 years, right?

....Right?
 
ballistic90 said:
I wonder how long it would take a probe made today of the most powerful engines we could make to reach the same location. There's got to be some kind of improvement in speed in 35 years, right?

....Right?
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I mean I'm sure we have increased the efficiency of the initial burn and acceleration but most of the times these probes are put on a course to have gravity of the objects in our local solar system to speed it up further. I'm not sure if having a greater initial speed would affect using the gravity to slingshot the object. It may increase it's final speed exponentially or it may not.
 
randomdean100 said:
I mean I'm sure we have increased the efficiency of the initial burn and acceleration but most of the times these probes are put on a course to have gravity of the objects in our local solar system to speed it up further. I'm not sure if having a greater initial speed would affect using the gravity to slingshot the object. It may increase it's final speed exponentially or it may not.
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They have improved it a bit, but given how astronomical the distances are it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

The fastest probe going now is the "New Horizons" probe that's going to Pluto:

Quoting from:



"New Horizons does hold a speed record of its own, however, but it is much more specific than simply the "fastest spacecraft." New Horizons is instead the fastest spacecraft launched from Earth to date. In other words, New Horizons was traveling faster as it left Earth orbit than any previous vehicle launched into interplanetary space. New Horizons attained an escape velocity of about 35,800 mph (57,600 km/h) as it departed Earth orbit. This speed is so fast that the probe reached the distance of the Moon in only nine hours (compared to three days for the Apollo missions) and will reach Jupiter in just 13 months."

Fast right? Too bad even at that speed and a slingshot maneuver using Jupiter it's still going to take it over 9 years to reach Pluto.

Fortunately it's done most of its journey so we'll be able to see what Pluto and Charon look like sometime in 2015.
 
ballistic90 said:
I wonder how long it would take a probe made today of the most powerful engines we could make to reach the same location. There's got to be some kind of improvement in speed in 35 years, right?

....Right?
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There has only been a handful of probes set on trajectories to leave the solar system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_probe

Most recently was New Horizons in 2006, but it's currently slower than Voyager 1 and both are slowly slowing down... New Horizons will never catch Voyager 1. Also it is not just about the engines used that determines their speed, the use of gravity assist makes a significant difference. I imagine if you wanted to catch Voyager 1 you'd it would be less about the engine and more about finding optimal path to gain the greatest amount of speed via gravity assist. I'm guessing this ends up being less important than other goals.
 
It'll be like Warhammer 40,000 where we will only fine more and more Orks...
 
ballistic90 said:
I wonder how long it would take a probe made today of the most powerful engines we could make to reach the same location. There's got to be some kind of improvement in speed in 35 years, right?

....Right?
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Actually a very very very slow engine (ion engine) might be better for this purpose. Because no inertia is lost when traveling in space a super-efficient engine lets you get far greater total speed out of the same amount of fuel. It might take 2 months to get past the moon instead of 2 days, but you will be accelerating for 20 years instead of 20 hours, so after 12 years or so you will be going more than twice as fast as the fast-burn rocket, and after a few more years you will be going 10 times faster and will quickly pass it by.
 
NickJames said:
And yet I still can't get more than 2 bars on my phone.
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No doubt. Stupid terrestrial networks. On the upside, you don't experience the send/receive lag times they do.

Vicinity said:
Nasa needs to go into telecommunications.

I have a blind spot in my garage and these fools are getting signal from like 10 light years.
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Yeah right. If they could hammer together a reasonably affordable successor to satellite phones they could become self funding. Who doesn't want an "Unlimited Galaxywide Calling Plan"? :D
 
It's only 0.02 light years away.

Also, it was Voyager VI that the Borg discovered. Sorry, no V'ger precursor yet.
 
Vicinity said:
Nasa needs to go into telecommunications.

I have a blind spot in my garage and these fools are getting signal from like 10 light years.
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I know you are kidding but seriously if the heliosphere is at 120AU and light travels 1 AU in 8 1/2 minutes then Vger is only 17 light hours away...
 
arentol said:
Actually a very very very slow engine (ion engine) might be better for this purpose. Because no inertia is lost when traveling in space a super-efficient engine lets you get far greater total speed out of the same amount of fuel. It might take 2 months to get past the moon instead of 2 days, but you will be accelerating for 20 years instead of 20 hours, so after 12 years or so you will be going more than twice as fast as the fast-burn rocket, and after a few more years you will be going 10 times faster and will quickly pass it by.
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Why ion engines certainly are better suited, there's still the issue of fuel. It takes fuel to get the fuel into space which is where much of the expense is actually at. And they'd still need to use the gravitational slingshot anyways
 
The Voyager probes got slingshots off both Jupiter AND Saturn, and by the time they line up again Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho will be president, the answer to when something will catch voyager 1 is never.
 
Just think about how precise the spacecraft has to be when beaming back data. The Earth ceased to exist even as a spec of light millions of miles ago.
 
Its gonna be a few more decades before NASA will say its in interstellar space.
 
the-one1 said:
It wasn't the Borg.
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Gene Roddenberry joked in an interview shortly after "Q Who" that the machine planet seen by Spock might have been the Borg homeworld. (Star Trek Encyclopedia) This idea was further developed in the William Shatner novel The Return, where Spock's mind meld with V'Ger not only protected Spock from being assimilated (since the Collective was already present in Spock's mind, the Borg assumed he was already one of them), but provided the Federation with the coordinates of the Borg homeworld for a final attack. It may also be significant that Spock, when referring to V'Ger, says, "Resistance would be futile." In the game Star Trek: Legacy, it is said that V'Ger itself created the Borg to gain the knowledge by assimilation. The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dragon's Teeth" seems to contradict the game's storyline, as the character of Gedrin states to Seven of Nine that his species, the Vaadwaur, had encountered the Borg over nine centuries prior to his revival, placing the Borg's genesis at least as far back as around the year 1400 AD. The story writers for Star Trek: Legacy, however, claimed on the official game forum that Voyager 6 was meant to have been thrown back in time as well as across the galaxy, an aspect mentioned in the "extras" cut-scenes of the game itself. Star Trek Online also hints at a connection to the Borg, as vessels closely resembling V'Ger are featured as Borg mini-bosses, even including the disintegrating plasma weapons and the V'Ger-style low-pitched sound effects.
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Mmk.
 
-Dragon- said:
The Voyager probes got slingshots off both Jupiter AND Saturn, and by the time they line up again Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho will be president, the answer to when something will catch voyager 1 is never.
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Naw man, because we use like, electrolytes, which will like make the probe go faster. Huh huh..."probe..."

Man that was a great movie. Thanks for spelling out his name too, I appreciate the extra effort.
 
We just need to find a flight path that will allow a probe to use the sun's gravity along with at least one or two of the gas giants.
 
Eisenblut said:
Mmk.
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I was going to agree with him, but after reading that I have to bow out. Pretty interesting stuff.

I remember first watching ST: TMP. First time was on Laserdisc. I loved that movie, and still one of my favorites.
 
BoogerBomb said:
Just think about how precise the spacecraft has to be when beaming back data. The Earth ceased to exist even as a spec of light millions of miles ago.
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Its actually more about how sensitive ground based systems are to receive it.


Amazing milestone though for Voyager. Its even more amazing that its functional , mostly. Considering how hostile interstellar space is likely to be though , I wonder how long it can last even before its power source fully decay's.
 
Yep, I'm still waiting on my hover board and flying car damnit...
 
ballistic90 said:
I wonder how long it would take a probe made today of the most powerful engines we could make to reach the same location. There's got to be some kind of improvement in speed in 35 years, right?

....Right?
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Right now our space craft is just coasting through space, occasionally being sling shot by planet's gravity but that's about it.

There's just no way to carry enough fuel to have a propulsion system pushing the space craft continuously. If we could that would be many many times faster.
 
ballistic90 said:
I wonder how long it would take a probe made today of the most powerful engines we could make to reach the same location. There's got to be some kind of improvement in speed in 35 years, right?

....Right?
Click to expand...
F=ma hasn't changed and energy content in the fuels haven't changed. The whole point to the space program up to that point at launch was to get the most of the the fuel. So I suspect the situation isn't hugely different today.

Maybe they can allow it to burn to higher temps today if that gives them more efficiency, but otherwise it probably comes down to fuel of choice and payload to fuel mass ratio.
 
I still have newspaper clippings from the launch. I suppose not many people would have thought it would still be headed out 35 years later. The power could last another 70 years, but I don't know when the power would be so low that the systems would stop working.

Time will tell.
 
randomdean100 said:
We just need to find a flight path that will allow a probe to use the sun's gravity along with at least one or two of the gas giants.
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Problems:

To use a 'gravity slingshot' you need to pass pretty close for maximum effect. The Sun is like REALLY HOT and puts a lotta stress on the equipment shortening the life of the probe. Additional slingshots at high speeds are gonna be dangerous.

Voyager is currently 119 AU out. The nearest star is 271,000 au

http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/cosmic/nearest_star_info.html

Even if we can quadruple the speed we get 13.6 au / year, a little shy of 20,000 year voyage to Proxima Centauri.

Where exactly do you think your going? I think you needa different engine.
 
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