As I write, Voyager 1 is almost 166 AU from the Sun, moving at 17 kilometers per second. With its Voyager 2 counterpart, the mission represents the first spacecraft to operate in interstellar space, continuing to send data with the help of skilled juggling of onboard systems not deemed essential. Despite communications glitches, the mission continues, and it seems a good time to reprise a piece I wrote on the future of these doughty explorers back in 2015. Is there still time to do something new with the two probes once the demise of their plutonium power sources makes further communications impossible? The idea is hardly mine, and goes back to the Sagan era, as the article below explains. It’s also a notion that is purely symbolic, and for those immune to symbolism (the more practical-minded among us) it may seem trivial. But those with a poet’s eye may see the value of an act that can offer a futuristic finish to a mission that passed all expectations and will inspire generations yet unborn.
After Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989, much of the world assumed that the story was over, for there were no further planetary encounters possible. But science was not through with the Voyagers then, and it is not through with the Voyagers now. In one sense, they have become a testbed for showing us how long a spacecraft can continue to operate. In a richer sense, they illustrate how an adaptive and curious species can offer future generations the gift of ‘deep time,’ taking its instruments forward into multi-generational missions of interstellar scope.
Now approximately 24 billion kilometers from Earth, Voyager 1, which took a much different trajectory than its counterpart by leaving the ecliptic due to its encounter with Saturn’s moon Titan, is 166 times as far from the Sun as the Earth (166 AU). Round trip radio time is over 46 hours. The craft has left the heliosphere, a ‘bubble’ that is puffed up and shaped by the stream of particles from the Sun called the ‘solar wind.’ Voyager 1 has become our first interstellar spacecraft, and it will keep transmitting until about 2025, perhaps longer. Voyager 2, its twin, is currently 138 AU out — 20.7 billion kilometers from the Sun — with a round-trip radio time of 38 hours.
Throughout history we have filled in the dark places in our knowledge with the products of our imagination, gradually ceding these visions to reality as expeditions crossed oceans and new lands came into view. The Greek historian Plutarch comments that “geographers… crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea…” But deserts get crossed, first by individuals, then by caravans, and frozen seas yield to the explorer with dog-sled and ice-axe.
Voyager and the Long Result
Space is stuffed our imaginings, and despite our telescopes, what we find as we explore continues to surprise us. Voyager showed us unexpected live volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io and the billiard ball-smooth surface of Europa, one that seems to conceal an internal ocean. We saw an icy Enceladus, now known to spew geysers, and a smog-shrouded Titan. We found ice volcanoes on Neptune’s moon Triton and a Uranian moon — Miranda — with a geologically tortured surface and a cliff that is the highest known in the Solar System.
But the Voyagers are likewise an encounter with time. The issue raises its head because we are still communicating with spacecraft launched almost forty years ago. I doubt many would have placed a wager on the survival of electronics and internal mechanisms to this point, but these are the very issues raised by our explorations, for we still have trouble pushing any payload up to speeds equalling Voyager 1’s 17.1 kilometers per second. To explore the outer Solar System, and indeed to travel beyond it, is to create journeys measured in decades. With the Voyagers as an example, we may one day learn to harden and upgrade our craft for millennial journeys.
New Horizons took nine years to reach Pluto and its large moon Charon. To reach another star? An unthinkable 70,000 years-plus at Voyager 1 speeds, which is why the propulsion problem looms large as we think about dedicated missions beyond the Solar System. If light itself takes over 23 hours to reach Voyager 1, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is a numbing 4.2 light years away. To travel at even a paltry one percent of lightspeed, far beyond our capabilities today, would mean a journey to Proxima Centauri lasting well over four centuries.
What is possible near-term? Ralph McNutt, a veteran aerospace designer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, has proposed systems that could take a probe to 1000 AU in less than fifty years, giving us the chance to study the Oort Cloud of comets at what may be its inner edge. Now imagine that system ramped up ten times faster, perhaps boosted by a close pass by the Sun and a coordinated shove from a next-generation engine. Now we can anticipate a probe that could reach the Alpha Centauri stars in about 1400 years. Time begins to curl back on itself — we are talking trip times as great as the distance between the fall of Rome and today.
The interesting star Epsilon Eridani, some 10.5 light years out, would be within our reach in something over three thousand years. Go back that far in human history and you would see Sumerian ziggurats whose star maps faced the sky, as our ancestors confronted the unknown with imagined constellations and traced their destinies through star-based prognostications. The human impulse to explain seems universal, as is the pushing back of frontiers. And if these travel times seem preposterous, they’re worth dwelling on, because they help us see where we are with space technology today, and where we’ll need to be to reach the stars.
A certain humility settles in. While we work to improve propulsion systems, ever mindful that breakthroughs can happen in ways that no one expects, we also have to look at the practicalities of long-haul spaceflight. Both Voyagers have become early test cases in how long a spacecraft can last. They also force us to consider how things last in our own civilization. We have buildings on Earth — the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the Pantheon in Rome — that have been maintained for longer than the above Alpha Centauri flight time. A so-called ‘generation ship,’ with crew living and dying aboard the craft, may one day make the journey.
Engagement with deep time is not solely a matter of technology. In the world of business and commerce, our planet boasts abundant examples of companies that have been handed down for centuries within the same family. Construction firm Kongo Gumi, for example, was founded in Osaka in 578, and ended business activity only in 2007, being operated at the end by the 40th generation of the family involved. The Buddhist Shitennoji Temple and many other well known buildings in Japanese history owe much to this ancient firm.
The Japanese experience is instructive. Hoshi Ryokan is an innkeeping company founded in Komatsu in 718 and now operated by the family’s 46th generation. If you’re ever in Komatsu, you can go to a hotel that has been doing business on the site ever since. Nor do we have to stay in Japan. Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli has been making bells in Agnore, Italy since the year 1000, while the firm of Richard de Bas, founded in 1326, continues to make paper in Amvert d’Auvergne, providing its products for the likes of Braque and Picasso.
Making Missions that Last
We have long-term thinking in our genes, as the planners of the Pyramids must have assumed. The Long Now Foundation, which studies issues relating to trans-generational thinking and the long-term survival of artifacts, has pointed out that computer code has its own kind of longevity. Enduring like the Sphinx, deeply planted software tools like the Unix kernel may well be operational a thousand years from now. Jon Lomberg and the team behind the One Earth Message — an attempt to transmit a kind of digital ‘Golden Record’ to the New Horizons spacecraft as a catalog of the human condition — estimate that the encoded data will survive at least one hundred thousand years, and perhaps up to a million if given sufficient redundancy.
‘Deep time’ takes us well beyond quarterly stock reports, and even beyond generational boundaries, an odd place to be for a culture that thrives on the slickly fashionable. It’s energizing to know that there is a superstructure that persists. The Voyagers are uniquely capable of keeping this fact in front of us because we see them defying the odds and surviving. Stamatios “Tom” Krimigis (JHU/APL) is on record as saying of the Voyager mission “I suspect it’s going to outlast me.”
Krimigis is one of the principal investigators on the Voyager mission and the only remaining original member of the instrument team. His work involves instruments that can measure the flow of charged particles. Such instruments — low-energy charged particle (LECP) detectors — report on the flow of ions, electrons and other charged particles from the solar wind, but because they demanded a 360-degree view, they posed a problem. Voyager had to keep its antenna pointed at the Earth at all times, so the spacecraft couldn’t turn. This meant that the tools needed included an electric motor and a swivel mechanism that could swing back and forth for decades without seizing up in the cold vacuum of space.
The solution was offered by a California company called Schaeffer Magnetics. Krimigis’ team tested the contractor’s four-pound motor, ball bearings and dry lubricant. The company ran the motorized system through half a million ‘steps’ without failure. The instruments are still working, still detecting a particle flow that is evidently a mix of solar and interstellar particles, one that is moving in a flow perpendicular to the spacecraft’s direction of travel, so that it appears we’re just over the edge into interstellar space, a place where the medium is roiled and frothy, like ocean currents meeting each other and rebounding.
One Last Burn
Although the spacecraft are expected to keep transmitting for several more years, we’ll continue to see both Voyagers suffering from power issues. But there is a way to keep them alive, if not in equipment then as a part of our lore and our philosophy. They will take about 30,000 years to reach the outer edge of the Oort Cloud (the inner edge, according to current estimates, is maybe 300 years away). Add another 10,000 years and Voyager 1 passes some 100,000 AU past the red dwarf Gliese 445, which happens to be moving toward the Sun and will, by this remote date, be one of the closest stars to the Solar System. As to Voyager 2, it will pass 111,000 AU from Ross 248 in roughly the same time-frame, at which point the red dwarf will actually be the closest star to the Sun.
Carl Sagan and the team working on the Voyager Golden Record wondered whether something could be done about the fact that neither Voyager was headed for another Solar System. Is it possible that toward the end of the Voyagers’ active lifetimes (somewhere in the 2020s), we could set up a trajectory change that would eventually lead Voyager as close as possible to one of these stars? Enough hydrazine is available on each craft that, just before we lose radio contact with them forever, we could give them a final, tank-emptying burn. Tens of thousands of years later, the ancient craft, blind, mute but still more or less intact, would drift in the general vicinity of a star whose inhabitants, if any, might find them and wonder.
A trajectory change would increase only infinitesimally the faint chance that one of these spacecraft would someday be intercepted by another civilization, and neither could return data. But there is something grand in symbolic gestures, magic in the idea that these venerable machines might one day be warmed, however faintly, by the light of another sun. Our spacecraft are our emissaries and the manifestations of our dreams. How we conceive of them through the information they carry helps us gain perspective on ourselves, and shapes the context of our future explorations. Giving the Voyagers one last, hard shove toward a star would speak volumes about our values as a questioning species determined to confront the unknown.
It’s funny that when I read the title I thought this would be an article about the Parker solar probe since. In a way it’s true: it is our first voyager to a star that will reach its destination. It is making history right now.
Confusion aside, Parker might very well help us to reach the stars (other stars). A solar slingshot will require even closer passes, so learning about and surviving the solar corona can be applied to future high velocity outbound spacecraft.
Completely agree about Parker, Ron. Learning about Sundiver conditions for fast sail missions is a major component of getting further out faster.
This article is a joy to read. It is infused with a vision of space exploration that is generous and courageous. You paint the Voyager journeys with some of the best qualities of humanity. Gratitude, resilience, beauty, wonder, hope. What a great reprise to post on December 24.
Thanks, Erik! Much appreciated. I hope some of the sense of beauty and wonder that space has always inspired in me does get through.
I wonder if this may be useful
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXh0FTAobAU
One last burn, love it! Has anyone calculated how close the approaches to those stars would be?
Yes, good question, Ivan. I addressed it in a follow-up to my original Voyager to a Star piece back in 2015:
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2015/05/06/thoughts-on-voyagers-closest-stars/
We can’t get nearly as close as we would like, but it’s the intention that’s valuable, as an act of human imagination and will. In other words, it’s really for us and our descendants as an assertion of continued exploration.
Hi Paul
A handy link is this one: Where Are They Now?
As you can see Voyager 1 is pulling away at 17 km/s, while Voyager 2 is doing about 15.4 km/s. As 1 AU/year is 4.74 km/s, the long term speeds are 3.5 AU/year and 3.15 AU/year, as they’re both still within the Sun’s grasp being decelerated slightly.
Proxima Centauri is currently 4.2465 light-years away and approaching at 22.2 km/s – or 268,553 AU and 4.68 AU/year. Its closest approach is ~193,900 AU in about 26,710 years or so. A minimum speed of 7.26 AU/year is therefore required to reach Proxima Centauri at its perihelion. A vehicle doing 5 AU/year could catch Proxima once it returns to its current distance in about 54,000 years. But any slower and a vehicle will never catch Proxima.
Doubtless there’s a star out there that each of the Voyagers might be nudged ever so closer to, so there’s some worth in pondering the possibilities.
Hi Paul
A great and interesting read these missions were launched before I was even born.
Have a great Christmas break too.
Cheers Edwin
And the same to you, Edwin. Lucky guy, with Alpha Centauri in your southern skies there in NZ!
Read this on Christmas Day. Inspired by the realisation that we are already an interstellar civilisation.
Season’s greetings to all.
Dear everyone of our human family on Earth, may our hearts and souls, minds and wishes, imagination and creativity be opened to the boundlessness and the foreverness of our universe or multiverse until the end of time. Best wishes to all mankind.
Thank you for this post!
2,000,000 to 110,000 years ago: Homo erectus
Lasting 400,000 years, going extinct 30,000 years ago: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Homo sapiens sapiens: we’ve been around for 300,000 years. And evolutionary change has accelerated in humans.
When considering such stretches of time, we might evolve into something different, perhaps more than one species.
And almost certainly so if humans start living permanently in various places off-planet.
H. G. Wells may have foreseen humanity’s evolutionary split in The Time Machine…
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35
There is also C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures…
https://youtu.be/BYEvSwViGRY?si=OqPWWh7YbSXWFHSQ
We will be able to design our descendants. I would be surprised if we did not have this capability in this century. There may be several human or post-human species well within a millennium, as well as our current species. Will we speciate in response to the diverse environments in space we populate, or will we speciate on Earth with one species trying to dominate?
I hope one day our message in a bottle is found.
There can – there has to be – more than one Golden Record.
Every deep space mission needs an information package explaining who we are and why we send vessels into the void, for both the finders and future generations from this planet…
https://edmidentity.com/2024/12/24/countdown-nye-artists-golden-record/
They both will be in Elons space museum…in the end.
Enough of the wishing for it to be so.
So who do we contact to make this happen? What branch of NASA?
Does anyone here know someone to connect with?
I am all for helping to turn this plan into concrete actions.
For those who need to know what is – and is not – on the Voyager Interstellar Record…
https://www.popsci.com/science/what-is-on-voyager-golden-record/
what I find very interesting with the gold disc is the fact that we have sent a message with our own human cultural references to possible forms of intelligences that will not have the same “culture” (unless they are much higher than us) while 90% of humans on earth are unable to decipher the drawings of the disc. (Personally, I remember the map of pulsars and some elements of chemistry ;)
Same : if we look at the photos sent, they immediately make sense to us : we see here an Asian teacher and his student…but what would an ETI see ? We must also consider that these pictures are already outdated indeed a computer or a US town from 1977 has nothing in common with our laptops and actual cities.
Which ultimately lay a problem for the very long durations of a spatial message: how to keep relevant and understandable information in time ? I only see the universal constants and chemistry…
This is not a criticism: Sagan and his team had the merit of launching this bootle in the sea ; I propose to think about the obsolescence of our technology and ask yourself what a message is… and if we reverse the proposition: what would be the form of a message from an ETI ?
Curious: How would you have designed an information package to an undetermined ETI? What would you have done to make them understand our culture? To say nothing of what sort of medium would you have used to both store the information upon and make it readable to these unknown recipients in an unknown future?
I remember hearing about the launch of Voyager 1 and 2 in the summer of 1977 while I was stationed at the 25th NORAD region’s SAGE building at McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington. The SAGE computer occupied the entire third floor, weighed 300 tons, and covered 20,000 square feet of the building. It was one of the first supercomputers, built in the late 1950s using vacuum tube logic circuits. At that time, I had just bought an LCD watch, and little did I know that 47 years later, I would have a 98-inch TV with AI circuits made in China. The Android phone I use now has more processing power than that entire SAGE computer!
A new article on the orbit of Planet X, published by the well-known Amir Siraj, suggests the existence of a planet with a mass of 4.4 times that of Earth and a semi-major axis of 290 AU. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, coming online soon, should be able to confirm or locate this planet within the next two years.
The presence of a super-Earth at such a distance could have significant implications and may even be habitable due to internal heat sources. With the SpaceX Starship becoming operational, there may be a unique opportunity for high-speed spacecraft to be launched to survey this planet in a reasonable timeframe.
The phrase “May you live in interesting times” is often referred to as a “Chinese curse,” as it is believed to wish someone a period of turmoil, upheaval, and uncertainty, we well may be getting there quicker then you think…
Evidence mounts for undiscovered planet in Solar System.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/planet-x-solar-system/
Planet X Orbit Discovered? With Amir Siraj.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjjX0ci1I_0
Hi Michael C Fidler
A Sub-Neptune or Super Earth with just 4.4 Earth masses will be an intriguing object. Whether it will have a condensed Ocean is difficult to model – a “thin” hydrogen atmosphere can keep it warm enough to be ‘open sky’, but we’re talking ~100 bars or so. Too much atmosphere and it’ll be hot water (>1000 K). Both Uranus and Neptune possibly have hot water layers beneath their H2/He rich atmospheres – new molecular dynamics computations show that water separates from the hydrogen and the other ices (methane/ammonia) inside the deep atmosphere. The methane/ammonia forms a weird polymer layer that wraps around the silicate core.
Whatever Planet Nine is like, it will be something new.
Could Planet X could be binary? Though the exoplanets whose transits can be observed are bachelors, we’ve been blindsided by the JuMBOs in deep space. Pluto-Charon might be called a double planet, if we could agree on the planet part. There is already an odd case of crystalline ice on Hi’iaka… but two large planets might create a substantial tidal energy source for an ecosystem on one of them.
A super-earth could perhaps have sufficient radioactive elements to provide a warm subsurface for life.
Interesting reading:
Radiogenic Heating in the Core Ignites Super-Earths.
https://geosciences.princeton.edu/news/radiogenic-heating-core-ignites-super-earths
Radiogenic heating of superEarths.
The cited article assumes a composition much like the inner rocky planets of our system. TNOs, e.g. Pluto, and moons like Triton, are believed to have silicate cores, not iron. To me this implies that the heavy radioactive isotopes will not have an iron core to attract the radioactive elements, leaving them in the mantle. If so, then the heating will be more gentle, and the planet will have the internal heat to offset what would be an extremely cold surface. Will this be enough to warm the surface and make it habitable, or will it be enough to maintain a liquid subsurface ocean that theoretically supports chemotrophic, unicellular organisms?
I have yet to read any, even theoretical, evidence that abiogenesis can happen under such conditions. [The Europa, Enceladus subsurface ocean life is predicated on the “deep hot vent” theory for abiogenesis that remains unproven.] However, life from elsewhere could survive in these conditions. An interesting problem would be determining the origin of any such life.
The main qualm I have about a warm super-Earth verging on a Neptune is that life is fundamentally a heat engine. It needs high and low temperature sinks. On Earth, photons arrive at around 6000 K, and can be emanated from the same atoms at under 300 K. But in the subsurface layer of a heavily insulated planet, everything is at almost exactly the same temperature and the free energy extractable is near nil. Also, we know a planet like Neptune is much too hot for Earth life: as I understand it, everything but hydrogen and helium will mostly sink to a level so low and hot that proteins wouldn’t be stable. On a super-Earth with a thinner atmosphere, at least volcanic energy can reach a surface or icy ocean.
I also considered discussing a binary system, but I found that binaries are quite rare among brown dwarfs. It seems that the ‘JuMBOs’ may be more common, which could explain why Planet X is so challenging to observe.
https://www.space.com/jumbos-rogue-orion-nebula-star-systems
They might also increase in distance from each other over time. Could we be looking for two objects in the same orbit that are widely separated and no longer gravitationally bound?
The concept of a “thin” hydrogen atmosphere may sound reasonable, but as we see on Earth, our atmosphere has evolved significantly over time. I support the ideas of large impacts proposed by Eugene Shoemaker and many other researchers. Planet X may not be as primordial as we think since its passage through the galaxy arms has shown evidence of large impactors on Earth. The passage of solar-sized stars could also disrupt the Oort cloud, resulting in significant impactors reaching our planet. The ratio of water in the interior of Planet X may not be contained in a thick ice subsurface layer but could be mixed with a completely different convective process than plate tectonics.
US President Jimmy Carter wrote a letter to any recipients of the Voyager Interstellar Record:
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-dies-at-100-but-his-voice-continues-into-the-cosmos
Here is that letter, which was made into an image rather than an audio recording:
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/voyager-spacecraft-statement-the-president
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/jimmy-carter-the-president-s-letter-on-the-voyager-probe.html
https://twistedsifter.com/2017/01/jimmy-carter-voyager-spacecraft-letter/
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-program/howdy-strangers/
Se as civilizações mais antigas da galáxia, caso existiram, lançaram suas próprias “voyagers”, a chance de um objeto desses ser capturado por outra civilização me parece bem remota. Teria que haver uma sincronia entre a passagem da sonda no sistema habitado e o estágio de desenvolvimento da civilização que efetuaria o resgate. Quando cometas nunca foram registrados nos catálogos da Astronomia? Ou porque não havia ninguém para fazer as anotações, ou porque não havia as ferramentas para anotar, fossem físicas ou abstratas. E no caso cometas, bastava olhar para o céu e rabiscar uma rocha relatando o encontro. No caso da passagem de uma sonda, uma rede muito maior de tecnologia precisa estar desenvolvida e talvez esse estágio tecnológico tarde a aparecer ou se aprece a sumir.
Saudações, acompanho o site desde 2009, na época do Yahoo Respostas.
In English via Google Translate:
If the oldest civilizations in the galaxy, if they existed, launched their own “voyagers”, the chance of such an object being captured by another civilization seems very remote to me. There would have to be synchrony between the probe’s passage through the inhabited system and the stage of development of the civilization that would carry out the rescue. When were comets never recorded in Astronomy catalogues? Either because there was no one to take the notes, or because there were no tools to take notes, whether physical or abstract. And in the case of comets, all you had to do was look at the sky and scribble a rock reporting the encounter. In the case of the passage of a probe, a much larger network of technology needs to be developed and perhaps this technological stage is late to appear or appears to disappear.
Greetings, I’ve been following the site since 2009, during the Yahoo Answers era.
PG: E muito obrigado por ser um leitor de longa data, Felipe! Aguardo com expectativa a sua presença contínua aqui.
I agree. We couldn’t even find a gravitational assist type of interplanetary ET probe at Voyager’s level of technological advancement orbiting in our solar system because it is so small. We don’t have even an interplanetary spacecraft built yet to retrieve it, but we have the capability. It also has the problem of being captured by the solar system. How would that be accomplished without any way to slow down.
If we found an interplanetary probe in our solar system and brought it to Earth and found out through radiometric dating that it was many millions of year old, the time it might have taken to make the interstellar journey, we would also know that the civilization it came from would be millions of years more advanced than us today which would explain the UFO’s.
A fascinating and uplifting article, showing what we already can achieve as humanity with the right spirit, as others pointed out we are already on the brink of being interstellar civilization.
Though I am sure that Voyagers are likely to be put in a museum or an archive(perhaps only one of the two, as compromise, I suspect there would be a debate if they should remain on course).
With that thought: best of wishes in the New Year and to new and exciting discoveries in space it might bring!
Happy new year!
Now that Voyager will not be able to get close to any nearby star, it might be a better idea to find a target star it can get into the vicinity of – even if it’s quite further out.
But since it will not need to call back, and we might not even be around when it happen anyway. We rather should focus of getting the message delivered – meaning showing a bit of excellent engineering. (Though the computer systems will prolly seem not only dated but almost out of place for such a craft.)
Anyway, and unrelated:
I have expressed hesitance on the idea of a cosmological constant, or under the buzzword ‘dark energy’. And the authors of the paper linked below state there’s a sigma larger than 5,1 that the distance and ‘dark energy acceleration’ interpretation is incorrect. So for Mr Gilster, feel free to bring this up as a subject if you’re so inclined.
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/536/2/1752/7890815?login=false
What a beautiful text filled with poetry ! These probes are the only man-made objects that have left our solar system it already makes dream. Travelling also brought us a more fascinating picture of ourselves: the blue pale dot : https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230101.html
What is surprising is that these probes are both a look into the future but also, already, into our past. They show us the infinitely far and yet so “close” on a universal scale. It is a technological feat but also a powerful element of philosophy.
Voyager 1 & 2 is this strange will of the human species to leave its mark in the universe ; it’s a bit like saying “we humans, we exist, please answer us “… strange creative species that seeks contact but is also capable of self-destruction. Voyager are a kind of message to ourselves:
http://www.bigear.org/CSMO/HTML/CS01/cs01p40.htm
I found a old paper about how was Voyager seen at the time of its conception. The author already asked an interesting question: will our descendants forget these probes in the future when we have lost contact with them ? It would be a shame if they were returned to us with a contact in a few millennia ;)
http://www.bigear.org/CSMO/HTML/CS13/cs13all.htm
On the Gold Disc and Letter from Jimmy Carter: http://www.bigear.org/CSMO/HTML/CS07/cs07p02.htm
…& for those who want to have fun, here are some great models – with Voyager – to build : http://jleslie48.com/gallery_models_real.html
Happy New Year to Paul and everyone, astronomy is the most beautiful of disciplines !
Fred from France
Voyager 1 will reach 1 light day distance in 2018. It’s a milestone I have been waiting for. I hope its communicators will still be alive by then, but I suspect they may not be.
It will have taken it 51 years to reach 1 light day.
I really hope Planet X exists and we discover it, because that would provide impetus for a mission out to 500 AU or so.
Voyager 1 will have reached 1 light day. We need the next generation to be an order of magnitude faster and reach 1 light day. The generation after that will reach 1 light month.
Parker probe would reach 1 LY in about 1500 years or 4 LY in 6000 years so we need something 100 times faster. It’s not impossible. We need to improve by 2 orders of magnitude: Daunting, but not impossible.
In my previous email , it should have read:
“Voyager 1 will have reached 1 light day. We need the next generation to be an order of magnitude faster and reach 1 light week. The generation after that will reach 1 light month.”
I love this piece. I remember reading it in 2015 when I was considering changing my career to the space business. It captured that pure exploratory intent in all its beauty, which then persuaded me to choose this job.
On a more technical note. It sounds like generally a very good idea to empty the tanks like we do when we “passivate” Earth-orbiting satellites to minimize the risk of explosions. If they can be emptied with symbolic significance, even better. I would like to do that in any case to preserve the craft: if a pipework joint fails 1000 years from now and blows up Voyager, then why did we bother making the Golden Record in the first place…
The US Government conducted a detailed study on how to explain to future human centuries in the future why a nuclear waste repository would be a very dangerous place if explored improperly. They wisely reached out to experts in multiple disciplines to figure out how to explain such concepts as nuclear radiation to peoples who may not know current science or understand English.
The details and many useful links here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
To quote:
To determine how to convey long-term nuclear warning messages, the Zeitschrift für Semiotik (Tübingen, Germany) issued a poll in 1982 and 1983 asking how a message might be communicated for a duration of 10,000 years. The poll asked the following question: “How would it be possible to inform our descendants for the next 10,000 years about the storage locations and dangers of radioactive waste?” leading to the following answers:[6]
Polish science-fiction author Stanisław Lem proposed the creation of artificial satellites that would transmit information from their orbit to Earth for millennia.[10] He also described a biological coding of DNA in a mathematical sense, which would reproduce itself automatically. Information Plants would only grow near a terminal storage site and would inform humans about the dangers. The DNA of the so-called atomic flowers would contain the necessary data about both the location and its contents.
Lem acknowledged the problem with his idea was that humans would be unlikely to know the meaning of atomic flowers 10,000 years later, and thus unlikely to decode their DNA in a search for information.
The idea of S. LEM is interesting but if we take the example of the Chernobyl area all flora has biologically mutated including radioactivity in 4 decades while developing perfectly healthy. It would be interesting to see if there are any current studies that prove that this specific flora has pollinated and therefore geographically spread. in other words, the precision of a zero location point would become more blurred over time (?)
“Scientists’ predictions for the long-term future of the Voyager Golden Records will blow your mind” :
https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-distant-future
so, the only trace of the human species that will remain while we have disappeared with our close universe for a long time…what will think “those” who find this bottle at sea? If we think about the butterfly effect, have we not already changed the future universe ?