Voyager 1 still transmits data... what is that like at NASA?

Factual Questions
1

I am fascinated with Voyager 1, because a piece of equipment that can operate that long in such an environment beyond designed specifications is just awesome. According to wikipedia and other websites I have read, it still transmits data to earth:

What I would like to know is:

  1. Is this data useful, or is it so primitive and returning data that we already know about with more modern instruments?

  2. At NASA what resources are used to receive this data? Is it someone’s fulltime job, or did someone write a script to collect the data on a PC that people look at occasionally etc?

2

July 2012 article. Somebody is still monitoring the data.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/final-frontier.html

3

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, thus built with 1977 technology. The on-board technology can never be updated, but the earth-side receiving and processing equipment has been been upgraded over the years.

I read about this stuff once. Rather than do the research again myself, I’ll mention a few vague details. It’s all there on-line for the interested to find.

The transmitter is primitive by modern standards. It transmits at a baud rate that would be laughable today. It was deliberately slow even by 1977 standards, to make the transmissions more reliable. Each bit is transmitted for a long period of time (some fraction of a second), the the receiver judges each bit to be 0 or 1 according to whichever state it sees each bit being in “most of the time”. This is necessary since the signal is so faint and “noisy”. The pictures are smallish, low-resolution, and black-and-white. At its present distance, out at the edge of the solar system, the transmission time is about 16 hours. The signal wattage as received on earth is some small fraction of the wattage of a modern digital wristwatch. (Meaning, some small number of billionths as strong, or some such outrageous statistic.)

Earth-side, the signals are received by several antenna networks. I think each receiving station (of which there are several around the world) consists of a whole field full of antennas, and with each technology upgrade, they cover more acreage with ever-more-sensitive antennas.

Lately (or recently?), NASA is starting to get data from the edge of the solar system. There’s a special name for that region – Heliosheath, according to Wikipedia.

For further research, start with the Voyager 1 wikipedia, the source I used for a few of the above details, and take it from there. I see the OP has already read and cited that Wiki – But there’s plenty more out there!

4

Another question, for a story:

Say an alien species or humans in the distant future DO encounter Voyager 1, where is the Golden disc? Is it inside the craft? Do you need tools to open it? What is it like to get to the disc? A quick googling doesn’t reveal this to me.

5

The disc is just pasted on the side of the vehicle:

6

And in a whimsical act of practical jokery, the CD was surreptitiously swapped out for a recording of “Meat Loaf’s Greatest Hits” just before launch.

7

CD?

Hah. Kids.

8

Just a hopeful-WAG here, but I’m guessing it requires hammer, chisel, blasting caps, and opposable thumbs (by deliberate design). This is to encourage aliens reasonably like ourselves to come visit, but discourage aliens with lots of tentacles.

He’s confusing V’ger with the ending scenes of “Escape From Manhattan”.

9

As aceplace57 said, that data is still being monitored. It’s useful data too, as we have nothing else out that far. It’s being used to find one of the boundaries of the solar system, the heliopause. Once it crosses that, Voyager 1 will be in interstellar space.

In 1990, ten years after it’s last planetary encounter, Voyager took the Pale Blue Dot picture, which is one one of my favourite astronomical images. Visually, it’s not very striking, but that blue pixel to the right is Earth.

10

Even if the instruments themselves weren’t recording data, just the transmitter itself is useful. Noticing subtle changes in track over time is interesting. For a while there an anomaly was detected with Pioneer spacecraft that was thought to indicate our understanding of gravity was off a bit, but that’s been resolved by normal means. But there is still a chance that we might detect something gravitationally in the future. So tracking it is still worthwhile.

11

So, is NASA actually sending command signals to Voyager, or is it only on the receiving end at this time.

12

It is (well, they are, since there are two Voyagers) still being monitored.

I recently heard an interview on RadioLab called “Is there and Edge to the Heavens” with Ann Druyan , who picked the sounds on the Voyager record, and another scientist, Marev Opher, part of the current Voyager monitoring team. The first half of the RadioLab story is about Isaac Newton. The Ann Druyan part starts at about 11 minutes.

(Here: Podcast | Radiolab | WNYC Studios).

Druyan described checking on the Voyager using Google Alerts and described how the Voyager is still been being monitored and still responds.

Initially, because there were long periods of not very interesting news, the monitoring team would get together every time Voyager got near a planet to look at the pictures.

Carl Sagan personally requested they turn the Voyager after it passed Neptune to take that final picture that caught the famous ‘Pale Blue Dot’ picture that Alka Seltzer linked to above, and then cameras were turned off.

But the other sensors are still operational. The monitoring team still loans the receiving antennas to other people for other uses.

Druyan said they would ping the ship periodically: Control: “Hey, Voyager, whaddaya see”. Voyager: “Nothing”.

Then one day, about 14 years into the trip, the solar winds dropped from 400-800 kilometer per second to 380 k/s. They thought they had reached the ‘edge’.

In 2004, it happened again. The solar wind dropped from 380 k/s to 100 k/s and the particles and the magnetic fields were behaving differently. They thought they were out of the solar system, but now think they are ‘in the edge of the bubble’. Apparently, the edge is thick and the Voyagers have traveled in this edge for several years now.

Then another change- the wind stopped completely.

But they think the Voyagers are still not ‘out of the edge’, or have not yet left our solar system, but that they will soon.

They think they are in the ‘edge of the edge’- what they are calling a ‘stagnation layer’.

I think the Voyagers have traveled about 11 billion miles now. It takes 15 or 16 hours for the radio signals to travel to us.

13

How long before the signals drop to the level of background radiation?

14

I just hope the instructions tell them to hold the record by the edges.

“Send more Chuck Berry.”

15

Be sure to read what Sagan wrote. Sheer brilliance: Pale Blue Dot - Wikipedia

16

That is beautiful.

The 1970’s still rocks!

17

Sagan rocks:

“If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?”

18

Then you can meander over to the pit, or our news media, and be told of people in this country who honestly DO believe that we should outlaw science that deflates our conceits.

19

That’s dependent to a large degree simply upon the size of the receiving antenna. I’ve read that a with a dish the size of Arecibo, original broadcasts of ‘I Love Lucy’ originals could be received out to a few light-years. With a larger dish, perhaps an orbiting array, signals could be picked up at further distances.

20

There seems to be debate recently about whether or not Voyager has left the solar system.

Still, it’s 18.5 billion kilometers away. Far out.