I must add my "wow" to this chorus. And I hope I may be forgiven for
reiterating to this list how my book "Left Brains for the Right Stuff:
Computers, Space, and History" celebrates the 60s and 70s, a time when America
achieved greatness by working together despite some deep divisions. Somehow
that part seems ever more relevant. Amazon or SDPpublishing.com.
Hugh
-----Original Message-----
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Monroe L. King Jr.
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2017 4:55 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Re: It still works.
Yes yes when I said out of reach I meant for whatever reason.
60's and 70's where a great time. Makes me feel old and grumpy sometimes lol
Monroe
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [AR] Re: It still works.
From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, December 05, 2017 2:41 pm
To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Tue, 5 Dec 2017, Monroe L. King Jr. wrote:
Just WOW! Hard to believe they can still contact it. It will be sad
day when it's out of reach.
Despite the title of the piece, in fact the Voyagers are still in
active operation and their ops teams (small, but still in existence)
talk to them and collect data from them quite regularly. The notable
thing this time was not contact with the spacecraft, but the
successful test of the long-unused TCM thrusters.
There was originally some thought that the Voyagers' working lives
might be limited by communications range, but upgrades to DSN have
more than kept pace with the growing distances.
Barring late surprises, the real limit is the steady decline of their
RTGs' power output (mostly due to accumulating radiation damage in
their thermoelectric converters, not decay of the Pu-238 that heats
them). If I recall correctly, sometime around 2025 there will no
longer be enough power to run the spacecraft subsystems and the
handful of instruments that are still operating; another year or two
can be eked out by running only one instrument at a time. When
there's no longer enough power for the spacecraft subsystems, the
Voyagers will fall silent, as Pioneers 10 and
11 did around the turn of the century.
Henry
