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The Voyager Mission & Spacecraft

EnolaGaia said:
but only one that can target the probe.
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I'm geometrically-challenged by this stated limitation.

Looking at the global location diagrams for DSN sites, two from three are much-closer to being at equal latitudes.

Whereas the Australian one is decidedly-southern....a blank spheriod-shaped canvas would've put that third longitudinally-required dish array in Hokkaido at 43degN, just 8deg above Goldstone at 35degN and only 3degN above Madrid at 40degN......yes, the Canberra one is at 35degS.

So: surely the logical place to put all these would've been at the equator? I always understood the longitudinal locationing logic, but the north/south displacements (practicalities aside) are curious?

Wait....is it to do with speed of rotation? As it'll be slower at 30-40degN/S, rather than 1000mph at the equator?
 
Ermintruder said:
I'm geometrically-challenged by this stated limitation. ...
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Voyager 1 is flying off "above" the earth's / solar system's orbital plane, whereas Voyager 2 is headed away "below" this plane.

Here's a modified image illustrating the sight lines for the two probes relative to the orbital plane.

V1vsV2-OrbPlane.jpg

SOURCE: Somone's modified version of the NASA image at:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/newinterstellarmedium_art.jpg​

Long story short ... Downlink (receiver) capabilities are feasible at all 3 deep space antenna locations. In contrast, uplink (transmitter) capabilities are more directionally-constrained (i.e., you gotta aim your transmissions), and the Australian location is the only one that can "paint" Voyager 2.
 
EnolaGaia said:
In contrast, uplink (transmitter) capabilities are more directionally-constrained (i.e., you gotta aim your transmissions),
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I appreciate that this simplification is for conceptual conveyance purposes (and I thank you for your welcome clarifications on this) but: I remain utterly-dumbfounded by the revelation that the DSN uplink path to Voyager can only ever envoke a <33% duty-cycle on uplink (and that with a rotational sweep-rate of perhaps 1000mph).

Plus, the beam-width from either a single 70m dish (or indeed, that of the successor 34m multi-dish arrays) will be (by design and intent) only a tiny fraction of the 120deg of azimuth that the Canberra site is 'looking' at....AND the elevational/latitudinal beam-aim.....not to mention the incredibly-slow data-rates actually being transmitted.

Naughty_Felid said:
The Voyager missions just blow my mind
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I'll say the same, but on both the levels of general appreciation, and the specifics of the science & technology associated with that most specific essential aspect: how we're actually managing to still communicate with it. I should be able to understand this more- and I can't. That really hurts....
 
Meet the Man Who Used Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, and Other Fascinating Music to Try to Lure Aliens to Earth
When NASA launched the Voyager spacecrafts to explore the cosmos in 1977, they sent along the Golden Record—and with it, music from around the world—as a snapshot of humanity, should intelligent lifeforms ever find it. But what if the aliens tuned in to the radio instead?

From 1971 to 1998, a man named John Shepherd probed that hypothetical question with astonishing dedication. Aiming for interstellar contact, he beamed everything from reggae to Steve Reich straight from his grandparents’ living room in rural Michigan, broadcasting between six to eight hours every day. He then expanded his operation—called Project STRAT—into a separate building on his grandparents’ property, complete with scientific equipment of his own design. Though Shepherd eventually ended the radio arm of Project STRAT due to the high cost of maintenance, he is now the subject of a touching new short film, John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, which recently arrived on Netflix.
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The two Voyager probes continue to send data back to earth. Newly analyzed data from Voyager 2 has confirmed a surprising result suggested by Voyager 1 data - an unexpected increase in interstellar space particle density encountered after exiting the region of our sun's influence (the heliosphere).
Voyager Spacecraft Detect an Increase in The Density of Space Outside The Solar System

In November 2018, after an epic, 41-year voyage, Voyager 2 finally crossed the boundary that marked the limit of the Sun's influence and entered interstellar space. But the little probe's mission isn't done yet - it's now sending home information about the space beyond the Solar System.

And it's revealing something surprising. As Voyager 2 moves farther and farther from the Sun, the density of space is increasing.

It's not the first time this density increase has been detected. Voyager 1, which entered interstellar space in 2012, detected a similar density gradient at a separate location.

Voyager 2's new data show that not only was Voyager 1's detection legit, but that the increase in density may be a large-scale feature of the very local interstellar medium (VLIM). ...
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FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/for-so...space-is-higher-just-outside-the-solar-system
 
EnolaGaia said:
... And now we will be losing the ability to communicate with Voyager 2 owing to limitations / obsolescence here on earth. Voyager will be left to survive automatically for almost a year while our sole uplink ground station is undergoing long-overdue maintenance. We'll be able to hear Voyager, but Voyager will get nothing but silence in return until early 2021. ...
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Update ...

The Deep Space Station 43 in Australia completed enough of its upgrade / maintenance agenda to permit a tentative test of the uplink to Voyager 2. Voyager responded that it had received and processed the test message.
NASA Finally Makes Contact With Voyager 2 After Longest Radio Silence in 30 Years

... In March, NASA announced that Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43) in Australia, the only antenna on Earth that can send commands to Voyager 2, required critical upgrades and would need to shut down for approximately 11 months for the work to be completed.

During this window, Voyager 2, which is currently over 18.7 billion kilometres (11.6 billion miles) away from Earth and getting farther all the time, wouldn't be able to receive any communications from Earth, although its own broadcasts back to us would still be received by scientists.

As it stands, DSS-43's renovation is still underway and on track to be finalised in February 2021, but enough of the upgrades have been installed for preliminary testing to start.

Last week, mission operators sent their first communications to Voyager 2 since March, issuing a series of commands, and NASA reports that Voyager 2 returned a signal confirming it had received the instructions, and executed the commands without issue. ...
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FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-f...h-voyager-2-after-long-spell-of-radio-silence
 
Voyager is sending ‘impossible data’ back to Nasa from the edge of the Solar System

Nasa’s engineering team is investigating a mystery taking place on the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in existence, having launched 44 years ago. It is currently operating at the edge of the solar system, flying through the “interstellar medium” beyond the Sun’s influence.

However, scientists found that the craft is receiving and executing commands from Earth successfully – but the readouts from the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) do not reflect what is actually happening on board Voyager 1.

The system maintains the craft’s orientation, keeping its antenna pointed precisely to the Earth so that data can be sent from it to Nasa. While all indications suggest that the AACS is working as normal, the telemetry data it is returning appears to be randomly generated – failing to reflect any possible state that the system could be in.

Further, the issue has not triggered any fault protection system that could put Voyager into safe mode, and the signal has not weakened – suggesting that the antenna is still in its normal position, pointing towards Earth.

Nasa says that it will continue to monitor the situation, as it is possible that the invalid data could be being produced by another system, but says that it does not understand why it is happening or how long this issue could continue.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/voyager-1-nasa-solar-system-milky-way-b2083384.html

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Voyager is sending ‘impossible data’ back to Nasa from the edge of the Solar System

Nasa’s engineering team is investigating a mystery taking place on the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in existence, having launched 44 years ago. It is currently operating at the edge of the solar system, flying through the “interstellar medium” beyond the Sun’s influence.

However, scientists found that the craft is receiving and executing commands from Earth successfully – but the readouts from the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) do not reflect what is actually happening on board Voyager 1.

The system maintains the craft’s orientation, keeping its antenna pointed precisely to the Earth so that data can be sent from it to Nasa. While all indications suggest that the AACS is working as normal, the telemetry data it is returning appears to be randomly generated – failing to reflect any possible state that the system could be in.

Further, the issue has not triggered any fault protection system that could put Voyager into safe mode, and the signal has not weakened – suggesting that the antenna is still in its normal position, pointing towards Earth.

Nasa says that it will continue to monitor the situation, as it is possible that the invalid data could be being produced by another system, but says that it does not understand why it is happening or how long this issue could continue.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/voyager-1-nasa-solar-system-milky-way-b2083384.html

maximus otter
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Informative, if slightly excitable, 12 minute video here summarising Voyager's mission to date, with a mention of the "weird data" being sent back to Earth starting at 7 minutes.
In 45 years of space travel, Voyager has now almost reached one light-day from Earth and, as mentioned near the end of the video, it is expected to pass close to another star system in around 40,000 years time. That kind of puts everything into perspective; in terms of astronomical distance, Voyager has barely left the launch pad.

 
Voyager Project Scientist retires after being in the job for 50 years.

Edward Stone Retires After 50 Years as NASA Voyager’s Project Scientist​

Oct. 25, 2022






Stone’s remarkable tenure on NASA’s longest-operating mission spans decades of historic discoveries and firsts.
Edward Stone has retired as the project scientist for NASA’s Voyager mission a half-century after taking on the role. Stone accepted scientific leadership of the historic mission in 1972, five years before the launch of its two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Under his guidance, the Voyagers explored the four giant planets and became the first human-made objects to reach interstellar space, the region between the stars containing material generated by the death of nearby stars.
Until now, Stone was the only person to have served as project scientist for Voyager, maintaining his position even while serving as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California from 1991 to 2001. JPL manages the Voyager mission for NASA. Stone retired from JPL in 2001 but continued to serve as the mission’s project scientist.
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/edwar...gApnBHvFjL5M_5HKXkCSbvbgR73XTRIy88Kk6bgYj4gBQ
 
On today's Quora I read quite a thought-provoking analogy to the provision of the golden data disk on Voyager in the hope that an alien species may one day discover and play it.

"This is the story of some ants, who put pheromones on a twig, and then left it in the garden.
The pheromones contained a detailed description of how to get to the anthill, based on the location of the nearest tree (trees last a long time for ants).
The ants assumed that if there was any intelligent life in the garden, the twig would not only be found (the pheromones on it make it obvious that it’s not just a random twig, after all), but also deciphered (pheromones are a totally obvious means of communication, that any advanced species should easily understand).
Trees are basically eternal, compared to anthills, so it was also assumed that whenever the twig was found, the tree would still be there, visible to all. (it’s a big tree!)
Somehow though…
Nobody found the twig, for a looong time.
And when a human did find it, they tossed it to their dog.
Since the ants never got a response, they concluded that no intelligent life exists in the garden.
(These ants also happened to live in France, and so they called this the “fourmi paradox)”
 
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NASA loses contact with Voyager 2
Voyager 2: Nasa loses contact with record-breaking probe after sending wrong command
Published
38 minutes ago


By Andre Rhoden-Paul
BBC News
Nasa has lost contact with its Voyager 2 probe billions of miles away from Earth after mistakenly severing contact with it, the space agency has revealed.

Last month, the spacecraft - exploring space since 1977 - was sent the wrong command, tilting its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth.

As a result, the probe has stopped receiving commands or sending data.

Nasa said it hopes communication will resume when the probe is due to reset in October.

Voyager 2 is more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion km) from Earth, where it is hurtling at an estimated 34,390mph (55,346km/h) through interstellar space - the space between the stars.

Since 21 July, the pioneering probe has been unable to receive commands or send back data to Nasa's Deep Space Network - an array of giant radio antennae across the world - and the spacecraft is not receiving commands from ground controllers.

However, there is hope for the probe, nearly 46 years into its mission.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-66371569
 
Heeeerrrreeeee's Voyager!
Voyager 2: Nasa fully back in contact with lost space probe
Published
8 hours ago

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The space agency had expected a regular reset of the probe in October to fix the error
By Megan Fisher
BBC News
Nasa is back in full contact with its lost Voyager 2 probe months earlier than expected, the space agency said.

In July a wrong command was made to the spacecraft, sent to explore space in 1977, changing its position and severing contact.

A signal was picked up on Tuesday but thanks to an "interstellar shout" - a powerful instruction - its antenna is now back facing Earth.

Nasa had originally pinned hopes on the spacecraft resetting itself in October.

It took 37 hours for mission controllers to figure out if the interstellar command had worked as Voyager 2 is billions of miles away from Earth.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66408851
 
What should we put on the next message in a bottle (MIAB) we send out into the vast Universe?

Now that several decades have passed since the launch of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977, we look back on that time with a hazy sense of history and what the event meant for humanity's ongoing odyssey.

While the Voyager spacecraft were sober scientific missions, they also carried with them a hint of the deeper yearnings that lie inside humanity's heart: the Golden Records. The Voyager Golden Records were a message in a bottle to any other intelligent species out there that may stumble on them. While the odds are strongly stacked against that ever happening, the Records still served a purpose.

They showed that we're driven not only to understand the Universe but that we're open to understanding other intelligences and that we desperately want to be understood ourselves. They also showed that we want to be unified with one another. The Golden Records are a verse of poetry among all the science.

Carl Sagan was instrumental in selecting material for the Golden Records, and he probably said it best: "The spacecraft will be encountered, and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space, but the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

The Golden Records contain both sounds and images that encapsulate aspects of life on Earth. It's a time capsule containing natural sounds of Earth's weather and wildlife, humans speaking in 55 different languages, and printed messages from political leaders of the time. It also contains a large assortment of images, from a magnified look at the structure of DNA to an Ansel Adams photograph of the Snake River and the Grand Tetons.

Both Voyager spacecraft have left the Solar System behind now and are in interstellar space. The records are with them, and it's almost certain we'll never know what happens to the spacecraft or the records. But that doesn't mean the effort was wasted. In fact, some people are already thinking of what we can put on the next message in a bottle (MIAB) we send out into the vast Universe.

In a research article published in AGU Earth and Space Science, a team of researchers investigated what our next MIAB should look like. The article is titled "Message in a Bottle—An Update to the Golden Record: 1. Objectives and Key Content of the Message." The lead author is Jonathan Jiang, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ...

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-ed...en-records-could-reveal-humanitys-darker-side
 
I guess the chances of it being found all depend on if it makes it's self findable otherwise it's just a very tiny object floating around in infinite space, we can but try I guess
 
New hope for Voyager:


Voyager starts making sense again after months of babble

Veteran spacecraft shows signs of sanity with poke from engineers​

Richard Speed
Thu 14 Mar 2024 // 13:15 UTC

Engineers are hopeful that the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 might have turned a corner after spending the last three months spouting gibberish at controllers.
On March 1, the Voyager team sent a command, dubbed a "poke," to get the probe's Flight Data System (FDS) to try some other sequences in its software in the hope of circumventing whatever had become corrupted.
Readers of a certain vintage will doubtless have memories of poke sheets for various 1980s games. Not that this hack ever used a poke to get infinite lives in Jet Set Willy, of course.

While Voyager 1's lifespan is not infinite, it has endured far longer than anticipated and might be about to dodge yet another bullet. On March 3, the mission team saw something different in the stream of data returned from the spacecraft, which had been unreadable since December.
An engineer with the Deep Space Network (DSN) was able to decode it, and by March 10, the team determined that it contained a complete memory dump from the FDS.
The FDS memory read-out contains its code, variables, and science and engineering data for downlink.
Prior to NASA's announcement, Dr Suzanne Dodd, project manager for the Voyager Interstellar Mission, said in a Pasadena Star-News report that the data being transmitted from the probe was "not exactly what we would expect, but they do look like something that can show us that the FDS is at least partially working.

Dodd was referring to the ones and zeroes streaming from the spacecraft. Previously, the probe's telemetry modulation unit (TMU) had begun in mid-December transmitting a repeating binary pattern as though it was somehow stuck. Engineers reckoned the issue was somewhere within the FDS.
The next step is to study the memory read-out and compare it to one transmitted before the problem arose. A solution to the issue could then be devised.
One of the original Voyager scientists, Garry Hunt, told The Register that engineers at JPL were determined to get communications with the stricken probe working again: "This requires both skills and patience with the long time between communication instructions and response."
The time lag is a problem. A command from Earth takes 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and the same period is needed again for a response. This means a 45-hour wait to see what a given command might have done.
The availability of skills is also an issue. Many of the engineers who worked on the project - Voyager 1 launched in 1977 - are no longer around, and the team that remains is faced with trawling through reams of decades-old documents to deal with unanticipated issues arising today.


https://go.reg.cx/tdml/3d194/661c6d...medium=newsletter&amp;utm_content=top-article
 
The picture can be Googled, but in 1990 at the 3.7 billion mile mark Voyager took a picture of the earth which looks like a blue speck.

There is basically nothing in those 3.7 billion miles.

This blue speck picture made me realize the tremendous distances in space and makes one realize the overwhelming size of the universe.

For some reason the word “ eternity “ comes to mind.
 
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