What's Next For Voyager One?

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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Thu Dec 20, 2018 11:16 pm

What about the discs?

Voyager 1 is going at 38,600 MPH relative to us. It isn’t meant to be retrieved
by us. If anybody reads it at all, it will be tens of thousands of years from now,
by some other species on some other planet. I have no idea how fast it will be
moving relative to that planet, but if they notice it and decide to reach it,
it won’t be any harder than it is for us to reach Mars, which is orbiting at
50,000 miles per hour: you plot an orbit designed to reach the same location
at the same speed, which means that its relative velocity is zero. For all I
know, they may find it easier: if they’ve got better technology than we do,
they may be able to pack more energy into a ship and thus change speeds to
match course. As for reading the discs… well, we provided instructions,
though they’re coded in a way I doubt I’d be able to figure out. Assume
that if they’re smart enough to detect and reach the ship, they’ll be able
to puzzle out what this means...
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Good Classical Music Out There
Good Classical Music Out There
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Wade says...
Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra,
Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35

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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Tue Dec 25, 2018 4:58 am

What are present conditions aboard Voyager II?

Bitter, numbing, crushing, cold. So cold air turns to liquid, then
solid. The only warmth is coming from the few watts of heat radiating
from the plutonium of the radioisotope thermoelectric generator. The
forces of physics suck the heat from your very soul. The Universe
desires to spread all heat evenly throughout the universe - so it
rips yours away.

Many of the instruments are switched off, dark, and frozen. The few
still functioning are used in rotation.
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Interstellar
Interstellar
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It’s dark. It’s darker than the darkest night on earth. The stars shine
without the warm and friendly twinkle of atmosphere. The brightest one
in the sky, hardly distinguishable from other stars in the sky is our
Sun, Sol. Invisible around it are the planets. There is no sound. There
is no air. There is almost no light. There is no heat but the meager and
diminishing waste heat of the plutonium decay.

Voyager feels like it’s standing still in an endless cold, dark, airless
void - no matter how fast it’s going, there is nothing to see around you
to get a sense of speed. Your lifetime is too short to see the stars change
perceptible to your brain.

Voyager 2 speeds off into the dark. It may well be the last vestige of
humanity, a billion years from now, still not having exited our galaxy
- utterly alone in the void.

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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Thu Dec 27, 2018 3:00 am

Voyager 1 after 40 years of travel, has reached the light distance of only 20 hours.
In evaluating this result, it tends to place a large damper on the ultimate ability to
reach anywhere that is significantly outside the solar system.
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Alone In The Void
Alone In The Void
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This graphic (which represents a logarithmic scale, based on AU) was created in 2013,
and so Voyager is ever so slightly more to the right. Voyager is estimated to reach the
Oort cloud in about 300 more years. It will be many generations of Caucasians to come
and go, before Voyager, then dark and cold, reaches the Proxima Centauri or Alpha
Centauri neighborhood.

Wade says, "And perhaps after eons have come and gone, Donya of Hervar will look up
at the night sky just aft of Vega the Pole Star...and wonder..."

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=431&p=684&hilit=do ... ervar#p684

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2194&p=6713&hilit=Donya#p6713

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1945&p=5520&hilit=Donya#p9552

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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:13 pm

Why is Voyager 1 travelling at 17 kms?

In movies and on TV, science fiction spacecraft are often shown
firing their engines all of the time and travelling in whatever
direction they please. They can do this because science fiction
spacecraft get to ignore things like fuel mass. In real life, a
spacecraft sent out of Earth’s orbit has very little capability
and capacity to create thrust. The spacecraft is too small to
carry large propellant tanks. So, in order to ensure the spacecraft
can reach its destination, we have to have the upper stage of the
rocket that launched the spacecraft propel the spacecraft to such
a velocity that even with the constant depleting force of gravity,
the spacecraft will still keep moving outwards until it reaches
its target.

When Voyager left Earth’s orbit, it entered solar orbit with a
total heliocentric velocity (sun centered speed) of the orbital
velocity of Earth (about 30 km/s) plus an additional velocity
(about 6 km/s) provided by the Centaur upper stage of the launch
vehicle. So, Voyager began its journey, traveling in a curved path
about the Sun, constantly moving outwards, climbing out of the
Sun’s gravity well. That gravitational acceleration from the Sun
constantly decelerated Voyager by a small amount every second.
By the time its path intersected the orbit of Jupiter, Voyager
had lost about 26 km/s of that speed, and was traveling at
around 10 km/s.

The smart guys at NASA designed the trajectory such that as they
passed Jupiter, they gained some speed by being dragged along
by Jupiter. This is called a gravity assist. Voyager 2 picked
up about 18 km/s of velocity from that Jupiter gravity assist.
By the time it reached Saturn, Voyager 2 has dropped back down
to a little over 16 km/s. It received another gravity assist
from Saturn, climbing back up to around 34 km/s. It did this
again at Uranus and at Neptune. When it left Neptune, it was
traveling at just shy of 29 km/s. Voyager 1 had a different
trajectory and did not rendezvous with Uranus or Neptune, it
moved outwards at a faster pace.
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59160.JPG
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That was 29 years ago. Every day, since then, the Voyagers have
continued traveling in curved paths that takes them ever farther
from the Sun and every day, since then, they have lost a little
energy and slowed, as the Sun continues to pull on them. But, as
they get farther away, that pull from the Sun gets a little weaker
and weaker, reducing the deceleration experienced by the Voyagers.
Today, Voyager 2 is traveling at about 15.4 km/s and Voyager 1 is
traveling at about 17 km/s. Here’s a diagram showing the velocity
change of Voyager 2, since launch. Imagine the Voyager one as
similar, but without the Uranus and Neptune diversions.
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59162.JPG
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The yellow line shows the velocity of Voyager. The green line
shows the solar system escape velocity at that distance. Since
Voyager is traveling faster than escape velocity, the Sun will
never cause Voyager to drop to zero and fall back into the
solar system.

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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Fri Mar 08, 2019 3:15 am

Voyagers to orbit the Galaxy once every 225 million years:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZIB8vauWSI&t=120s
Attachments
60252.JPG
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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Sun Mar 31, 2019 10:49 pm

Thoughts on Voyagers...

Imagine Solar System so shrunk that the distance between Sun and Earth,
aka Astronomical Unit, is an inch. At that scale Sun is a barely visible
spark of light and Earth is microscopic, as are all planets. Jupiter is
five inches away, and almost every object ever sent into space by human
beings had spent its entire existence inside that 10-inch diameter circle,
taking months or years getting to its destination. Neptune and Pluto
are 2.5 feet away, and Pioneer and Voyager probes, the farthest
ambassadors of Caucasians as of now, are 10–11 feet away — and
took them 40 years to get there.
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Getting There?
Getting There?
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On that scale, a light-year is a MILE.
Nearest star is 4.3 light-years away. Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000
light-years across. Curiously, the number of inches in a mile is
almost exactly the number of Astronomical Units in a light-year
(within 1/500).

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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Mon May 27, 2019 1:07 am

Scientists have shown which stars these craft will pass by millions of years after
the vehicles stop working...

Spacecraft that launched from Earth in the 1970s are still traveling on trajectories
that led them out of our solar system and beyond. In a new study, scientists have
predicted the future of these spacecraft, determining which stars the vehicles will
pass, and how close they will get to these stars, within the next few million years.
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Artist's Visualization
Artist's Visualization
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On March 2, 1972, NASA launched its Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which would become the
first craft to travel through the asteroid belt. About a year later, Pioneer 11 took
flight. And in 1977, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft launched, with Voyager 1 following
behind a few weeks later. These spacecraft, in addition to NASA's New Horizons probe,
are the only spacecraft ever launched that are capable of reaching interstellar space.
So far, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have broken through that barrier. However, if they
continue on, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and NASA's New Horizons craft are all expected
to leave the sun's sphere of influence, called the heliosphere, and continue
exploring through the interstellar medium. Eventually, these spacecraft will run
out of power and "die"; their science equipment will stop working, and they will
stop communicating. In fact, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 sent their last transmissions
in 2003 and 1995, respectively. Though these craft can no longer transmit signals
to Earth, researchers have figured out which stars the vehicles will pass long
after they cease to be operational.
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Future Voyages
Future Voyages
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These calculations are tricky, because as these spacecraft travel away from Earth,
the cosmos around them move, too. Coryn A. L. Bailer-Jones, of the Max Planck
Institute for Astronomy in Germany, and Davide Farnocchia, of the Center for Near
Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, have found
the spacecraft's destinations by using the 3D positions and 3D velocities of 7.2
million stars that were included in the second data release from the Gaia space
observatory's survey of over 1 billion stars.

In the new study, Bailer-Jones and Farnocchia calculated that the next star that
Voyager 1 will pass will be Earth's nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri,
in 16,700 years. However, this encounter will be unremarkable, as the craft's
closest approach will be 1.1 parsecs (pc) from the star, which equates to 3.59
light-years — very, very far away. In fact, Voyager 1 is currently 1.3 pc (4.24
light-years) from the star, so this encounter won't be much closer than the craft's
current location is. (Earth's sun is 1.29 pc, or 4.24 light-years, away from
Proxima Centauri.)
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Details
Details
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Voyager 2 and Pioneer 11's next close encounters will also be with Proxima Centauri,
while Pioneer 10's next flyby will be with the star Ross 248, a small star 10.3
light-years from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. These distant encounters
might not generate excitement. But Bailer-Jones and Farnocchia predicted other
future flybys in which the spacecraft will get remarkably close to stars outside
our solar system. For example, Voyager 1 will get very close to the star TYC
3135-52-1, a star located about 46.9 light-years from our sun, in 302,700 years.
The craft will pass within 0.30 pc, just under a light-year — so close that the
spacecraft might penetrate the star's Oort cloud, which is a shell of cosmic
objects that surround a star past its planets, if it has one, Bailer-Jones told
Space.com in an email.

Additionally, the researchers found that Voyager 1 will swing close, within 0.39
pc (1.27 light-years), of Gaia DR2 2091429484365218432, a star that lies a whopping
159.5 pc (520.22 light-years) from the sun. To give you an idea of how close the
approach is, we are 1.29 pc (4.24 light-years) away from Proxima Centauri. They
predicted that the craft will pass close to this faraway star in 3.4 million years.

Bailer-Jones told Space.com that this research was inspired by the team's previous
work to trace the possible origins and future destinations of the mysterious
interstellar object dubbed 'Oumuamua. "It was mostly a bit of fun," Bailer-Jones
told Space.com. "But it also reminds us how long it takes to get to nearby stars
at the kind of speeds these spacecraft have achieved (around 15 km/s relative to
the sun). "It also highlights that the closest encounters, because they can be
tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the future, can be with stars which
are not among the nearest stars to the sun right now," Bailer-Jones continued.
"Also, if we want to explore the nearest stars within a human lifetime, we need
to accelerate our spacecraft to much higher velocities."

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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Thu Aug 15, 2019 6:07 pm

It has been estimated that in perhaps a few tens of millions of years, assuming they don’t hit anything bigger, they will be worn down to dust by impacts with interstellar dust and other particles. Long before then, cosmic ray bombardment will have played havoc with the organic molecules making up the processor, sensors, and wiring insulation. The golden record, being protected behind a shield and containing mechanically encoded information in an extremely low data density, might be one of the last recognizable parts remaining.
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Where No Man Has Gone Before!
Where No Man Has Gone Before!
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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:20 am

Is it possible that our 2 Voyager spacecraft will drift
endlessly throughout the galaxy and possibly still be
intact when our Sun becomes a red giant?

Indeed, not only is it possible but it is the most likely
fate of the two spacecraft. As their radioisotope power
supplies are getting depleted, they will both go silent
in a few years. Their galactocentric trajectories will
eventually take them a long way away from the solar
system. However, in all likelihood they will remain
in the Milky Way; it would take multiple close encounters
with other stars for them to be ejected from our galaxy at
a large enough velocity to escape.

They will be subject to some erosion, mostly due to cosmic
radiation that is present in interstellar space. But this
is a very slow process and the expectation is that the
“golden record” on board would remain intact and still
playable about a billion years from now. After several
billion years, when the Sun comes to an end of its
lifecycle, the record may no longer be playable but
the overall structure of the spacecraft would still
likely be intact and recognizable as an artificial object.
Of course it is possible that they get destroyed by a
collision, or simply by flying too close to a star.
But space is vast and empty, and the probability of
such an encounter, even over the course of billions
of years, remains small.
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Voyager's World
Voyager's World
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Wade Hampton III
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Re: What's Next For Voyager One?

Post by Wade Hampton III » Fri Sep 06, 2019 12:08 am

The view from a perch on Voyager. In 2012 Voyager 1 departed our Solar System making it the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space. In 2018, NASA announced that Voyager 2 had also crossed the heliopause. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continue to monitor conditions in the expanses outside of what we define as the Solar System. If we could visit, we could look around in every directions and see stars, galaxies and the spiral arm of the Milky Way, which what our galaxy looks like from inside looking out. It would be similar to a moonless night, but with far more clarity and none of the stars would be twinkling. The most noticeable difference would be to see the Sun. It would look like the brightest star you could imagine, but not quite visible as a disc. The largest planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may be visible with with a simple telescope, all in a row near the Sun. You would not be able to see the Earth or Moon without a high-powered telescope. The Voyagers would need to travel thousands of years more before the Sun was not the brightest star surrounding them. This is roughly how the Sun would look from the distance of the Voyagers (rendered in Celestia 1.6.1):
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Out There
Out There
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At this distance, the sun has a magnitude of about magnitude -16,93, which makes it the brightest star in the sky, a bit brighter than the Moon from Earth.

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