by nashashmi
1 subcomments
- > One of the Voyager scientists, Dr Garry Hunt, told The Register that the idea of doing a Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune mission had never really gone away, and engineers fueled the spacecraft fully expecting to be granted an extension.
> "We knew that if you filled up to brimming point the spacecraft with all the fuel it ever needed, it'd be OK," recalled Hunt. "We did. But we never told anybody."
The mission was supposed to only do two planets even though it was known to be the only opportunity to do 4 planets in one launch. But the new Nixon Administration was not excited by a rapidly changing field of science. So the NASA administrators proposed limiting it two planets. In the next administration, they were like OK keep exploring. And sure enough the launch went on to explore four planets.
- I really wish these bon voyage articles about Voyager would talk more about science learned after the planet flybys. There were plenty of unknowns regarding the heliopause and the readings before and after crossing it[0]. The readings showed it wasn't just a fade to black kind of experience, and proved to be quiet a bit of activity going on there.
[0]https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/voyager-1-2-discovers-evidence...
by MattSayar
1 subcomments
- The power from a digital watch is billions of times more powerful than the signal we get from Voyager 1. It blows my mind that we're still able to sense it.
https://public.nrao.edu/ask/how-strong-is-the-signal-from-th...
by captainkrtek
1 subcomments
- “The Farthest” is a great PBS doc on Voyager, some amazing photos and history of the program.
https://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/
by LABerthier
0 subcomment
- Are there any recs for books on the history/science of these space programs? Akin to The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes?
- I don't think it passed the "light day" marker yet but close?
centuries from now we'll launch a drone that will pass by it in 50 days
then many more centuries someday in 50 minutes
- Some questions I've had since forever:
1. Would our current technology be able to detect life on EARTH ITSELF from "just" as far as Pluto?
2. If an alien probe was sending pings towards Earth, deliberately or not, from as far away as Voyager, would we be able to, detect of course, but notice it?
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