News of the Voyager missions - in flight since 1977

[Rick]

'Tsunami Wave' Still Flies Through Interstellar Space

• The Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three shock waves

• The most recent shock wave, first observed in February 2014, still appears to be going on

• One wave, previously reported, helped researchers determine that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space

The "tsunami wave" that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft began experiencing earlier this year is still propagating outward, according to new results. It is the longest-lasting shock wave that researchers have seen in interstellar space.

"Most people would have thought the interstellar medium would have been smooth and quiet. But these shock waves seem to be more common than we thought," said Don Gurnett, professor of physics at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Gurnett presented the new data Monday, Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4411

[Rick]

'Pale Blue Dot' Images Turn 25

Valentine's Day is special for NASA's Voyager mission. It was on Feb. 14, 1990, that the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back at our solar system and snapped the first-ever pictures of the planets from its perch at that time beyond Neptune.

This "family portrait" captures Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Earth and Venus from Voyager 1's unique vantage point. A few key members did not make it in: Mars had little sunlight, Mercury was too close to the sun, and dwarf planet Pluto turned out too dim.

Taking these images was not part of the original plan, but the late Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team at the time, had the idea of pointing the spacecraft back toward its home for a last look. The title of his 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot," refers to the image of Earth in this series.

"Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward Earth and saw a 'pale blue dot,' " an image that continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home," said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission, based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4484

[Rick]

NASA's last original Voyager engineer is retiring

Imagine if you were working on a 40-year-old computer at your office. Your IT department wouldn't even know what to do with it.

That's the problem NASA's Voyager mission faces. The spacecraft was built in 1975 and has a computer from the Atari age. The last guy who truly understands how to program it is 80-year-old NASA engineer Larry Zottarelli.

And he's retiring.

More: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/technology/voyager-nasa/

[Rick]

Voyager 1 Helps Solve Interstellar Medium Mystery

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft made history in 2012 by entering interstellar space, leaving the planets and the solar wind behind. But observations from the pioneering probe were puzzling with regard to the magnetic field around it, as they differed from what scientists derived from observations by other spacecraft.

A new study offers fresh insights into this mystery. Writing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Nathan Schwadron of the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and colleagues reanalyzed magnetic field data from Voyager 1 and found that the direction of the magnetic field has been slowly turning ever since the spacecraft crossed into interstellar space. They believe this is an effect of the nearby boundary of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that comes from the sun.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4756

[Rick]

Boffins hand in their homework on Voyager 2's first readings from beyond Solar System

NASA's Voyager 2, launched to study the Solar System's outer planets, has had its first readings from interstellar space, collected after travelling more than 11 billion miles over forty years, analyzed by scientists.

It is only the second probe to have sailed beyond the heliosphere – the expansive region made of plasma and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. It finally broke free from the Solar System to enter interstellar space last year, joining its twin companion Voyager 1, which exited in 2012.

More: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/05/voyager_2_phone_home/

[Hugh]

Thanks Rick for keeping us updated.  Was reading something on digital media yesterday about the voyager(s). 

Such interesting cosmology!

Best

Hugh

[Rick]

Voyager mission's project scientist retires after 50 years of service

The Voyager mission's project scientist has retired after 50 years in the job.

Ed Stone signed on for the gig when the two Voyager spacecraft were still on the drawing board in 1972.

He's had the job ever since. As NASA explained, Stone rose to become director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and, as that facility manages the Voyagers, he kept the gig managing the twin probes. He later retired from JPL in 2001 but continued to serve as the Voyager mission's project scientist.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/26/ed_stone_voyager_boss_retires/

[Rick]

Search for Voyager 2 after Nasa accidentally sends wrong command

Nasa is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after it lost contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away.

Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar space, Voyager 2 has been out of touch ever since flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command more than a week ago that tilted its antenna away from Earth. The spacecraft's antenna shifted a mere 2%, but it was enough to cut communications.

Although it's considered a long shot, Nasa said on Monday that its huge dish antenna in Canberra was on the lookout for any stray signals from Voyager 2, which is more than 12bn miles (19bn km) away. It takes more than 18 hours for a signal to reach Earth from so far away.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/01/search-for-voyager-2-after-nasa-accidentally-sends-wrong-command

[Hugh]

Oh No!

Let's hope the October reset gets it back in touch ~ fingers crossed.

~ Hugh

[Rick]

Story updated:

Nasa detects signal from Voyager 2 after losing contact due to wrong command

Efforts to re-establish contact with Nasa's Voyager 2 probe have received a boost after the space agency detected a "heartbeat" signal from the far-flung probe.

Mission controllers stopped hearing from Voyager 2 more than a week ago after sending a faulty command that tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth. The small change in orientation was enough to cut all contact with the probe.

The signal from Voyager 2, which is now more than 12bn miles from Earth, was detected during a routine scan of the sky, Nasa said, and confirms that the spacecraft is still broadcasting and in "good health".

More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/01/search-for-voyager-2-after-nasa-accidentally-sends-wrong-command

[Dave A]

Rick

It's incredible that we are still getting a signal from Voyager 2 after 47 years, its obviously now in interstellar space still travelling very fast

[Rick]

Hide and seek in outer space highlights a battle here on Earth

The true measure of technology is not how well it matches human intelligence, but how well it survives human stupidity. Humanity's most iconic robots, the Voyager space probes, seem to be up to that job. Nearly 20 billion kilometers from home and nearly 50 years in deep space, Voyager 2 has just been told to point its antenna away from Earth and await further orders.

You may think you've tasted the profound bitterness of disabling the network on a remote machine. Not like this, you haven't. It's like dropping your phone down the Kola Superdeep Borehole and wondering why Find My Device won't work.

But wait – it's not game over. The Deep Space Network (DSN) that communicates with our mechanical explorers already picked up the Not Dead Yet signal, and then got full service back in short order. Even without that, confidence was high that the antique astro automaton would fix the problem by itself in time.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/07/opinion_column_voyager/

[Dave A]

Rick,

This is a very interesting article, really highlights how technology for communication still works well on Voyager 2
Amazing that even 50 years ago they planned for software updates to a primitive computer system in comparison with todays computer processing power.
Are we still receiving communications from Voyager 1 and how far has it travelled

[Rick]

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

Engineers are hopeful the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 has turned a corner after spending the past 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.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/voyager_1_not_dead/

[Carole]

Good news - glad they never gave up.