
Voyager 2’s Discoveries from Interstellar Space - mgaffney
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/science/voyager-2-interstellar-solar-wind.html
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ChuckNorris89
I'm amazed and still can't get my head around how today we can receive images
and valuable data from a device which is currently lightdays away from us and
was built with 60's technology & know-how and is operating well beyond it's
expected lifetime.

I raise my glass to the engineers who worked on this. Makes my daily
programming tasks feel stupid in comparison.

Edit: corrected, thanks for the numbers

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Ancalagon
Just FYI nothing man made is even close to light years away from the Earth.

EDIT: I don't understand the downvotes. Isn't this just fact?

EDIT 2: I see the OP changed his original comment, so I can understand the
confusion. Thanks all :)

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klyrs
> EDIT: I don't understand the downvotes. Isn't this just fact?

Nobody's questioning that fact (barring well-deserved pedantry about radio
signals), but GP's claim was light days so the downvotes are probably about
the nonsequitur.

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aaroninsf
OP edited after the fact (says as much)

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klyrs
lol timehackers. It made sense when I wrote it \o/

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flurdy
I am always baffled by the conundrum of the futility of launching a spacecraft
to go far away by our own ability to invent faster engines.

Say it takes 300 years to get to Alpha Centauri. If you launch it you have 150
years to invent a spacecraft that goes twice the speed of the first one. Very
likely. If you launch that one it will overtake the other one. Now you have 75
years to find an even faster engine. Launch it and you got 37 years. etc.

Quite likely you can keep doing this until you can reach it in e.g. a year. So
why not hold all launches until then....

Does this have a name? Or original source? Did I get this from Futurama?

~~~
pm90
"Why should I buy a computer today, when a computer in 10 years can do a ton
more for less money?"

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vardump
Say you built a computer in late 2009 with AMD Radeon HD 5870, Intel Core i7
975, Intel's X25-M SSD and 16 GB RAM.

That computer would still feel pretty snappy today for desktop tasks, running
dual 2560x1440 screens. Although new AAA games would probably have issues,
either low frame rates or not running at all. Most indie games would work just
fine.

I think the change will be even less in next 10 years. 2019 hardware will
perform just fine in 2029.

Unless something dramatically different pops up, we're in the era of
diminishing returns.

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stan_rogers
That's more or less the result of having already waited. There was a time, not
very long ago in the grand scheme of things, when the computer you wanted
would cost $5000 and be essentially obsoleted by the $5000 computer coming in
60-90 days. (Perspective: PC review magazines of the day would usually include
the time for a Gaussian blur on a 1MP image as a meaningful test.) When you
were talking about cutting minutes off of a large spreadsheet recalc, the
immediate gain from upgrading today had to be measured carefully against the
even greater gains possible next quarter.

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daveslash
Not a comment of the article itself, but for anyone interested in both
Voyagers, PBS recently did a great documentary called _" The Farthest"_. I
highly recommend it.

[http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/home/](http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/home/)

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ngcc_hk
Thanks but only for American

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stevenwoo
BBC made a series called The Planets (2019) that talks about almost all space
probes from the last 30 years and the data retrieved so far, you might have
access to that but not sure of your country.

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AcerbicZero
I'm disappointed that it even as it become very obvious we were going to
continue gathering useful information from Voyager 1/2 and yet no follow on
missions have been launched.

I suppose the idea is that there is more to be gained via specialized missions
inside the solar system, compared with new long running extreme range probes,
but you would think there might be some value in starting to send a chain of
probes out, so that communication can be maintained even further.

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adventured
New Horizons can and may do exactly that.

[http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/2019-Onward.php](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/2019-Onward.php)

"Future New Horizons extended missions, if funded by NASA, could explore even
farther out. The spacecraft is on an escape trajectory from the Sun, traveling
about three astronomical units per year. Moreover, New Horizons and its
payload sensors are healthy and operating perfectly. The spacecraft has enough
power and fuel to operate into the mid-2030s or longer, perhaps enough to
reach the boundary of interstellar space."

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RosanaAnaDana
Yeah but what do you even do out there with the sensor payload it has? Its
imaging devices really aren't structured for deep space remote sensing. They
were built to image planet and planet sized objects.

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Razengan
I've always fantasized about drifting out there in person.

Wouldn't a human operator in such spacecraft gather more data by being able to
reorient instruments in realtime etc. and spotting minute phenomena that would
otherwise be missed?

If NASA or Elon Musk or anyone has considered such a mission but can't imagine
asking for volunteers for it, let me know. I don't need a ride back.

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Santosh83
Keeping you alive for the kinds of durations that matter (that is decades)
won't be technologically or economically possible for the present.

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Razengan
Even better.

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skvj
Here's a great illustration of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 outside of the
heliosphere: [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-voyager-2-probe-
en...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-voyager-2-probe-enters-
interstellar-space)

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SenHeng
Is there a reason why the left side of the heliosphere is so elongated?

Is it simply because we haven't sent any probes there and so don't really know
where it ends or is it really this oblong shaped?

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petschge
Because the solar system is moving relative to the local interstellar medium.
So effectively you get a "headwind".

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neonate
[http://archive.is/eOtiZ](http://archive.is/eOtiZ)

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ngcc_hk
[https://www.space.com/22787-voyager-1-signal-interstellar-
sp...](https://www.space.com/22787-voyager-1-signal-interstellar-space-
photo.html)

From her elder sister. Or “of”. It is just awesome.

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cryptozeus
Its just simple is awe-inspiring

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2ion
From where no man will go.

