NASA's Voyager 2 Probe Enters Interstellar Space

a reply to: toysforadults


They are powered mostly down and fly in what direction they are headed. V2 has a device that is meant to read the interstellar wind. V1's stopped functioning years ago so it is mostly quiet. They told V1 to turn on to make a reorientation so the hot/cold was evenly spread (iirc) then it went back to mostly dormant.

V2 will probably see more use to take readings outside the heliosphere. I expect it to remain mostly silent too. The poor deap space network having to keep their ears open will get reports (my guess, it is already scheduled out for a few years). They will run until 2020 as is. Then, one by one the systems will be shut off until they cease operation in 2025 (no more fuel).

Kind of poetic!

Voyager Program.

It only cost a cool 30 million to tag on the interstellar portion!

a reply to: watchitburn

I think they're gonna want something that doesn't require 200x magnification

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

what do they use to send communication it seems like a crazy distance for it to travel, I wish my wifi router worked better...

originally posted by: toysforadults
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

what do they use to send communication it seems like a crazy distance for it to travel, I wish my wifi router worked better...

They just communicate by radio, as I recall.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Voyager 2 was launched when I was 6 weeks old and Voyager 1 when I was 8 weeks 2 days old, they've been exploring space almost as long as I've been exploring earth. I look forward to hearing about the data it gathers as it continues on it's 50 year Mission....

a reply to: djz3ro


Strange how those years work out!

I was birthed during the Summer of Love which had both Woodstock and Man Walking on the Moon!

If you can't find it in space or in music, man, where can you??

It's a great milestone in any spacecraft's journey. But I'd like to point out that, while both Voyagers have now entered interstellar medium, they haven't left the Solar System yet.

It sounds like a paradox, I know, but we have to consider that the Voyagers are still well within the orbit of Sedna and some other bodies, and are thousands of years from reaching the Oort cloud.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

If you can't find it in space or in music, man, where can you??

Amen to that, there aren't enough stars for that comment.

I also pride myself on being the same age as Star Wars

originally posted by: wildespace

It's a great milestone in any spacecraft's journey.

I do worry about them now, after all we're told space is a dangerous place and they are no longer protected by the Sun's influence that keeps us safe

Voyager seems to be a perspective project, it's only left to hope that aliens are not gonna shoot it down))

I can't say that I'm much of a scientist but to be honest, I like space related things and topics, so Voyager is a huge project in my imagination

Born 1965 at 3 remember Armstrong stepping out of the ship .
. To dream the impossible dream .
To boldly go ware no one has going before .

With luck I may be one of a few 100 thousand who can remember BOTH the first moon landing and the First mars landing .
voyager well lets hope she don't come back in 300 years looking for her maker .

a reply to: Gargoyle91

Knowing what we know now from distant starsystems I doubt that they've already seen us from a distance with their slightly more advanced telescopic devices.

And are busy building something to sent our way like maybe oumuamua kind of visit?

I've heard rumors science thinks there are more of those wandering our solarsytem.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

A few years ago there was a study on crow memories and facial recognition. Researchers would wear masks and go out and be assholes to crows. One of the masks was a devil image with the horns and crows learned to get belligerent when they saw it. We've had cargo cults and mythologies borne of stuff we didn't understand at the time. Demons and/or gods were thought to be rolling the planets through the 'heavens.'

Voyager 2 will almost certainly drift away into eternity and never be seen again. But! Just imagine if some nascent intelligence ever crosses paths with it? A butterfly flaps its wings in a corner of 1977 Earth and causes a storm millions of years after humans have gone. Yeah I'm in the sci-fi zone. We should send paperbacks of Clarke's Rama into space.

a reply to: Kandinsky


Let's start the Cargo Cult of Nirvana (or anyone, really! Like you said, millions of years after we're gone!). These gold disks floating around the vastness of universe (we'll launch them in carbon black ships that can survive anything but a black hole or a star).

(English translation of alien language): Please open your good book to Zappa-23. (Congregation): Don't eat the yellow snow!

Makes you wonder what will be said of this strange time in our history. Hum? Maybe those "its all simulated" people are actually right but it is not a prison but a time capsule where we live the sim of some random monkey man/woman/etc. from aeons gone pass "to learn their culture"! "A lifetime here" is just "lunch time" (in real, reality) and we go back to work after our visit!

Nah! It is a cold, dark, uncaring universe out to get us in the end! To entropy and beyond!



ETA: Can you tell I haven't slept in a while?! Usually happens when I get sick. I have been up since midnight and we are hitting 3 PM. Punch drunk and going down hard!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
That's cool I guess. But you know the motto of this site. Ya! that's right. Pictures or it didn't happen. Or is that the motto of NASA? Anyways forget which has which motto.

They should have put a camera on it though, sure it would be a long time before we get back some live feed given the distances and all that static of space. But out of the 895 million and some change, that they spent on it, well at the least give it a try, they should have stopped at radio shack and pick one up and set it up somewhere, before they launched that thing up.

Oh well, at least in 40,000 years we will get the next update. See you all then.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Let's start the Cargo Cult of Nirvana (or anyone, really! Like you said, millions of years after we're gone!). These gold disks floating around the vastness of universe (we'll launch them in carbon black ships that can survive anything but a black hole or a star).

It'd be a very cool idea like those T-shirt guns at concerts. Pop. Pop. Pop. Books, USB drives, MP3 players etc.

Unless we attracted the attention of deep space predators which would have the opposite result.

Maybe those "its all simulated" people are actually right but it is not a prison but a time capsule where we live the sim of some random monkey man/woman/etc.

Yeah and NDEs are really the lab staff saying, "Oh no you don't! Get back in. Session ain't over yet asshole!!"

we should be setting up a space network so we can beam messages quicker to each other until we can sort out our FTL data transfer !

Like set up relay stations between earth and mars , earth and titan , earth and europa
any other places in the solar system where we can expand!

a reply to: gortex

I´m not sure if I remember correct, but isn´t this a vinyl/grammophone record?

I first thought it´s some kind of description for a communication device and then I saw it. The plate, the reading head, it all makes sense, except for the star like thing. Could this be an error correction algorithm of some sort?

The point I´m trying to make is, that I tried to figure out what the hell this would mean, on my own first. Sort of simulating the alien experience, although I knew it´s a message etc.

I could google but why ruin the fun?

a reply to: verschickter

I´m not sure if I remember correct, but isn´t this a vinyl/grammophone record?

That's right but it's made of copper and gold plated , aside from the pictures it also contains messages from dinner or as we call ourselves Humans , I hope whoever finds it only make a shiny hat of it.