NASA's Voyager 1 Conserves Power, Resolves Brief Communications Pause

jpl.nasa.gov

17 points·Stratoscope··7 comments

This is an essentially follow-up to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50315409 “NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth” (mashable.com)

Are there any projects/plans to send more probes to interstellar space? I mean Voyager is great and all, but it’s old and it seems it’s days are counted. More contemporary technology could bring us farer and more data on the long run.

There's nothing out there to see. We only keep Voyager alive to be able to say that we did.

This is so ignorant. Voyagers are still producing good science even today, and the latest major discovery was as recent as 2020.

List of artificial objects leaving the Solar System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_lea...

New Horizons 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons_2 :

> ~Thruster fuel cost

With commercial uplink as a service these days, what is a realistic multi-decade program cost for a deep space probe with DSN Deep Space Network or better for communications?

Could a solar sail like IKAROS or LightSail2 do Pluto or interstellar? Made of UV-resistant Lignin-Vitrimer with Lignin-derived Carbon Fiber?

Timeline of Solar System exploration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Solar_System_explo...

"Electronics in Space Travel" (a 1960s space age video) https://youtube.com/watch?v=GbYNshL9EUU

Here’s a concept out of APL, but as far as I know it is not getting much traction yet.

https://interstellarprobe.jhuapl.edu

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