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Comment by gabereiser | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t V1 past our solar system? Do I remember that right? This is the only craft that we have at those distances. Super curious to see the outcome of this. We know a bit about outside our solar system but have we ruled out the possibility that our understanding is flawed? Not the sensors? Interesting indeed, considering the signal is still strong, it’s still pointing towards earth, everything else seems nominal.

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Both are in interstellar space: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

Voyager 1 flew beyond the heliopause in 2012; Voyager 2 in 2018: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar-mission/

Was disappointed to see so many of their systems offline, thinking they broke, but clicking on their status reveals that most of the systems are actually turned off to save power, including;

> "Wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras off to save power (Feb. 14, 1990)"

One of the last photos Voyager 1 took back then was looking back at Earth as a Pale Blue Dot [0]

Makes me wonder if those cameras could be turned back on, in case one of the Voyagers comes across something interesting?

[0] https://www.space.com/pale-blue-dot-voyager-1-photo-30th-ann...

It's a power problem. The radiothermal generator's power output decays exponentially. The PBD photo was taken at approximately the last time that the cameras could be used.

Thank you for sharing the upper link. It is serially inspiring.

Watching the distances crawl up by many miles/second is kinda bonkers, and the 3D view allows the mind's eye to imagine a new pale-blue dot photo that encompasses every planet we've ever known.

dang I didn’t know they are so fast…38,210 mph! this is crazy, i could not imagine seeing it pass thru…

I honestly don’t even know what that number means in interstellar space.

> The Oort Cloud is the most distant region of our solar system [1]

> the spacecraft [Voyager 1] will take about 300 years to reach the inner boundary of the Oort Cloud and probably another 30,000 years to exit the far side [1]

> The inner edge of the Oort Cloud (...) is thought to be between 2,000 and 5,000 AU [astronomical units] from the Sun. The outer edge might be 10,000 or even 100,000 AU from the Sun [1]

> Voyager 1 (...) Distance from Sun: 156.42163354 AU [2]

[1] https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/oort-cloud/overvie...

[2] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

"The Oort Cloud is so distant, however, that the power sources for all five spacecraft will be dead centuries before they reach its inner edge."

The scale is incredible.

https://xkcd.com/1189/ So far Voyager 1 has "left the Solar System" by passing through the termination shock three times, the heliopause twice, and once each through the heliosheath, heliosphere, heliodrome, auroral discontinuity, Heaviside layer, trans-Neptunian panic zone, magnetogap, US Census Bureau Solar System statistical boundary, Kuiper gauntlet, Oort void, and crystal sphere holding the fixed stars."

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