Voyager 1 is now into 26 years of being monitored and is 8.7 billion miles passed sun. How long would it take an object traveling at light speed right off the bat to catch up to it in a galactic game of tortoise v. hare?
When you enter “8.7 billion miles divided by the speed of light” into Google, it returns 12.9731349 hours for an answer.
I’d have thought this craft would be dead by now.
“Both Voyagers are capable of returning scientific data from a full range of instruments and have adequate electrical power and propellant to keep operating until 2020.”
Apparently no. Unless NASA just quits bothering with them for budget reasons.
Don’t underestimate the power of the Force.
Or NASA over-engineering.
I kinda doubt analyzing telemetry from V1 and V2 makes a significant dent in the budget.
Of ourse, that could change if we get a close-up picture of a curious alien.
And that will always be a threat. This story came out in April, saying NASA was looking to cut Voyager funding (and a few other extended missions) in order have money to pay for the startup costs for the more sexy Big Manned Boondoggle To Mars.
Hopefully the news of them hitting the termination shock is enough publicity to keep the funding going. And yeah, it costs only $4.2 million a year to keep track of the Voyagers.
I was at a short astronomy course not so long ago. The lecturer (who works at Armagh Planetarium) reckoned that it would take much to keep listening to the Voyager spacecraft, even if Bush wants NASA to spend more money on heading to Mars.
94.840_au + 17.159_km/s * t = 299792458_m/s * t
t = 13.147 hours
The major expense is paying for time on the Deep Space Network.
Really? Wow, I’d’ve thought monitoring V1 and V2 was a lot cheaper than that, considering the now-obsolete technology involved.
The only obsolete technology is that on board the spacecraft. The ground systems have been upgraded many times over the years since the spacecraft was launched. The signal that reaches Earth is steadily getting weaker as the spacecraft flies off into the galaxy.