Posted on 05/31/2024 2:51:47 PM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
Very proud, indeed. Thanks!
No. She is out of our solar system. She’s interstellar, baby!
I see estimates of anywhere from next year to 2036 before the batteries die. There is no fixing that.
astronautical engineer
Never heard that.
I’m a mechanical nginr.
It sure would be cool if NASA decided to design a space probe with the mission of specifically leaving the solar system that’s nuclear-powered and utilizes the most advanced Hall Effect thruster/ion engine possible to really move as fast as possible. Have it pass by as many planets and planetoids as possible for warm up observations on its way out to the Kuiper Belt to observe KBOs and then out to the Oort Cloud.
The other observation instruments would deal with measurements within the heliosphere, the termination shock boundary and heliosheath, and then interstellar medium.
Thanks!
Like Indy Car Racing,,,
Most Folks don’t have a Clue?
.
My Bad.
We can call ourselves anything we want, as long as we can spel it.
Circa 1967 I was using a slide rule in physics class for tests. Circa 1974 (I had dropped out for a few years) I was using a very expensive hand held calculator. Circa 1983 (I returned to school for a second degree) I had a hand held computer that was cheap and good. It had more computing power than our NASA Apollo computers for the launches to the moon in 1969 and cost less than 100 dollars.
Not dying, just transforming into isotopes of lighter elements like uranium, neptunium, americium, and eventually lead.
Plutonium 238 has a half-life of 87 years. The power output of the thermocouples has fallen over the years so V1 doesn’t generate enough wattage to operate all the instruments at once so they shut down all but a few. And you are correct, there will probably be a failure on a critical component before the power runs out.
Fascinating stuff. Thanks for posting
My error as I was looking at the wrong isotope. Much thanks for the correction. That is what I like about Free Republic. Our errors are immediately pointed out by other posters. This does not happen in the main stream media also known as propaganda central.
Will the 2 Voyagers’ miles from Earth numbers ever catch up to the US federal deficit numbers, or is the deficit increasing faster than the Voyager moving through Interstellar space at 30,000 mph?
The reboot works all the time.
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