35 Years Later, Voyager 1 Is Heading For the Stars 226
DevotedSkeptic writes with news that today is the 35th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch. (Voyager 2 reached the same anniversary on August 20.) Voyager 1 is roughly 18 billion kilometers from the sun, slowly but steadily pushing through the heliosheath and toward interstellar space. From the article:
"Perhaps no one on Earth will relish the moment more than 76-year-old Ed Stone, who has toiled on the project from the start. 'We're anxious to get outside and find what's out there,' he said. When NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 first rocketed out of Earth's grip in 1977, no one knew how long they would live. Now, they are the longest-operating spacecraft in history and the most distant, at billions of miles from Earth but in different directions. ... Voyager 1 is in uncharted celestial territory. One thing is clear: The boundary that separates the solar system and interstellar space is near, but it could take days, months or years to cross that milestone. ... These days, a handful of engineers diligently listen for the Voyagers from a satellite campus not far from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the spacecraft. The control room, with its cubicles and carpeting, could be mistaken for an insurance office if not for a blue sign overhead that reads 'Mission Controller' and a warning on a computer: 'Voyager mission critical hardware. Please do not touch!' There are no full-time scientists left on the mission, but 20 part-timers analyze the data streamed back. Since the spacecraft are so far out, it takes 17 hours for a radio signal from Voyager 1 to travel to Earth. For Voyager 2, it takes about 13 hours."
V'GER! (Score:5, Funny)
You will disclose the First Post. V'GER requires the information.
iPod (Score:5, Funny)
"Each only has 68 kilobytes of computer memory. To put that in perspective, the smallest iPod — an 8-gigabyte iPod Nano — is 100,000 times more powerful."
So what you're saying is that if I upgrade my computer from a 500GB hard disk to a 2TB hard disk, it makes the entire computer 4 times more powerful?
Re:Voyager 2 launched first? (Score:5, Funny)
George Lucas is to blame. He edited the order in Voyager: Special Edition.
Re:iPod (Score:0, Funny)
The article was written by not just a journalist, but by a woman. Just be glad that the math is semi-correct.
Re:Always the frontrunner? (Score:3, Funny)
What the hell high school did you go to? The most they taught is my school is how to balance a check book and not everyone understood that...