This upbeat story is about human persistence and tenacity more than it is about technology — but the technology is pretty amazing too. And it's from 1977. That's more than 46 years ago.
Color processing in space imagery can be tricky. For example, the colours of Uranus and Neptune; You all know the famous Voyager 2 images of both and the stark contrast of shades of blue. Well, it turns out that they have the same shades of blue. As usual, it has sparked an amusing debate online.
I must admit, this news about #Uranus and #Neptune has me shook:
"A fresh analysis of Voyager 2's images show both ice giants are in fact a similar shade of greenish blue, which is the 'most accurate representation yet' of the planets' colors, the new study finds."
We are celebrating Christmas at partner's parents with the same raclette grill as 20 years ago - which is pretty impressive, but not quiet as much as the Voyager spacecrafts 😅 Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977 - still working, still teaching us new things about the most external parts of the solar system.
With many thanks to @schnedan for the idea to draw Voyager :)
Voyager-Sonden: Weniger präzise Ausrichtung auf Erde soll Lebenszeit verlängern
Voyager 1 und 2 haben ihre geplante Missionsdauer um das Zehnfache überschritten. Um das Ende weiter aufzuschieben, wurde eine weitere Änderung vorgenommen.
Die Kreativität der Verantwortlichen in der #Raumfahrt finde ich immer wieder beeindruckend. Was die aus den Geräten herausholen, an die sie nicht herankommen und die teilweise Jahrzehnte alt sind:
#Voyager-Sonden: Weniger präzise Ausrichtung auf Erde soll Lebenszeit verlängern
Voyager 1 und 2 haben ihre geplante Missionsdauer um das Zehnfache überschritten. Um das Ende weiter aufzuschieben, wurde eine weitere Änderung vorgenommen.
Cet été, j'ai eu la chance de visiter le JPL, ce centre de la NASA où sont conçues, assemblées et testées la plupart des sondes et rovers américains qui explorent le Système solaire. Un récit de ma visite pour vous emmener dans cet endroit mythique. 1/37 @nasajpl@NASA#NASA#JPL
La plus impressionnante des sondes est sans contexte Voyager, sans doute parce qu'elle est à l'échelle 1:1. L'antenne grand gain est énorme ! Génial de voir tous les instruments et les 3 RTG.
On retrouve une réplique du Golden Record et du disque The Sounds of Earth. 28/37 #NASA#JPL#Voyager1#Voyager2#GoldenRecord
Oh! What a discovery: “It’s Quieter in the Twilight” — a film about the people who keep Voyagers 1 and 2 going! I’m watching it on Tubi but it’s available via other sources.
“In an unremarkable office space, a select group of aging engineers find themselves at the leading edge of discovery. Fighting outdated technology and time, Voyager's flight-team pursues humankind’s greatest exploration.”
I have so many questions about what just happened with Voyager 2. But let's review:
On August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 was launched from Earth.
In December 1977, it entered the asteroid belt.
In June 1978, its main radio receiver failed. Since then it's been using the backup receiver!
On July 9, 1979, it flew past many of Jupiter's moons, made its closest approach to Jupiter, and took tons of beautiful pictures.
On August 26, 1981 it shot past Saturn and took tons of beautiful pictures.
On August 25, 1989 it shot past Neptune and took tons of beautiful pictures.
On November 5, 2018 it crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space, 120 times farther from the Sun than we are.
On July 18, 2023, it overtook Pioneer 10 and became the second farthest man-made object from the Sun.
3 days later, some idiot sent a command that pointed its high gain antenna 2 degrees away from Earth. HOW EXACTLY DID THIS HAPPEN?
On August 4, 2023, NASA used its most high-powered transmitter to successfully command Voyager 2 to reorient towards Earth, resuming communications. HOW WAS THAT POSSIBLE?
Voyager 2 is now 133 AU away. How can you "shout" across such a distance and attract the attention of someone who is not looking in your direction? That's very far. It takes light about 18 hours to travel that far.
@johncarlosbaez Amazingly, the radio power received on earth from the Voyager spacecraft transmitting in the GHz range at 20 W is about an attowatt (1e-18 W), since they are on the order of 20 billion kilometers from earth !
To celebrate the recovery of communications with #Voyager2, here is a bunch of classic Science Magazine, Nature, and Nature Astronomy covers featuring the adventures of the epic spacecraft, now located 19.9 billion kilometers away from Earth 🌍 📡 🚀
Update on Voyager 2, which lost contact with earth on July 21 due a mispointed antenna.
Voyager 2 is programmed to reset its orientation Oct 15; meanwhile, NASA is trying to make contact.
On Jul 31, the DSN station in Canberra picked up a faint signal, not strong enough to decode. It shows that V2 is healthy and calling home periodically as programmed.
On Aug 3, some commands were blasted out from Canberra (perhaps at higher power) in the hope that, V2 can decode it and repoint.
The engineers who designed the #Voyager probes half a century ago even thought of the possibility that a wrong sequence of commands may point the antenna dish away from earth (like someone did a couple of days ago).
And they implemented a self-adjusting mechanism that a few times a year scans the positions of a few known stars to infer the position of the earth, and point back the antenna in the right direction.
50 years later, these wonderful machines are still working, tens of billions of km away from earth, with only 69 KB of RAM, and even a wrong sequence of commands won't put them out of use, while nowadays 4 GB of RAM aren't even enough to start VsCode or IntelliJ.
The more I understand how they were designed, the more I feel like an early Medieval engineer looking at the Pantheon or other marvels or Roman architecture. Some amazing skills, knowledge and attention to details have been lost from that generation to ours.