Posted on 05/08/2010 6:33:55 AM PDT by Dallas59
The first hint of a problem came on April 22, when engineers first spotted the data pattern change. Since then, they've been working to fix the glitch and began sending commands back to Voyager 2 on April 30.
Because Voyager 2 is so far from Earth, it takes 13 hours for a message to reach the spacecraft and another 13 hours for responses to come back to NASA's Deep Space Network of listening antennas around the world.
"Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later," said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery."
Voyager 2 took a so-called "grand tour" of the solar system when it visited the gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s by taking advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs once every 176 years.
The two space probes were built primarily to study Jupiter and Saturn, but Voyager 2 also swing by Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 during its extended mission.
NASA launched Voyager 2 on Aug. 20,1977, just two weeks before Voyager 1. Together, the two spacecraft are the most distant human-built objects in space. Voyager 1 is about 10.5 billion miles (16.9 billion km) away from Earth and in perfect health, mission managers said.
My 1972 Wheelhorse lawn tractor still runs. They don’t make them like they used to.
This was NASA, 25 years ago.
-455 Fahrenheit...average
It's pretty obvious what happened. Voyager 2 saw something that the government doesn't want us to know about, so they commanded Voyager to encrypt its transmissions. It's quite possible that NASA indeed can not decrypt the transmissions, but certain other agencies within the government sure as hell can. I wonder what they saw?
Obama’s spaceship....
NASA 1967:
“Apollo 1 (official designation Apollo/Saturn-204) was planned to be the first manned mission of the Apollo manned lunar landing program to launch in February 1967. Its flight was precluded by a fatal fire on January 27, which killed all three crew members (Command Pilot Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee), and destroyed the Command Module cabin. This occurred during a pre-launch test of the spacecraft on Launch Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral. The name Apollo 1 chosen by the crew, was officially assigned retroactively in commemoration of them.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1#Incident
>>>Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth
If I did the math correctly
0.0014629270371999592 Light Years in 33 years.
And the next closest star is Alpha Centauri, at about 4.37 light-years distant.
-455 Fahrenheit...average
"Absolute zero is the theoretical temperature at which entropy would reach its minimum value. The laws of thermodynamics state that absolute zero cannot be reached because this would require a thermodynamic system to be fully removed from the rest of the universe. A system at absolute zero would still possess quantum mechanical zero-point energy. While molecular motion would not cease entirely at absolute zero, the system would not have enough energy for transference to other systems. It is therefore correct to say that molecular kinetic energy is minimal at absolute zero.
By international agreement, absolute zero is defined as 0(K) on the Kelvin scale and as −273.15°C on the Celsius scale.[1] This equates to about −459.67°F on the Fahrenheit scale. Scientists have achieved temperatures very close to absolute zero, where matter exhibits quantum effects such as superconductivity and superfluidity."
So it would take Voyager... um, carry the one... a little less than a hundred thousand years to reach Alpha Centauri? If it were even going that direction...
If I did the math correctly:
[8.6 billion miles = ] 0.0014629270371999592 Light Years (in 33 years).
Well, one light year, the distance light travels in a year at its constant speed of 186,000 miles per second, works out to about 5.9 trillion miles.
And so,
8.6 divided by 5,900 = 0.0014
So you are correct.
now bad for something prolly running what, a 8088 or 286 wi 64k or 128K ram???
So it would take Voyager... um, carry the one... a little less than a hundred thousand years to reach Alpha Centauri? If it were even going that direction...
Correct.
33 years/0.0014629 LYs x 4.37 LYs = 98,500 years
Absolutely. Despite a few flaws along the way.
Can you imagine the mileage charge on the service call?
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