Voyager Telemetry Mystery

[GoneWestUtah]

The cameras have long since been turned off to save power, I think the only time they are used is to get navigational fixes, if they even still work.
The nuclear power plants on board were designed to last 50 years. They are very close to that lifespan, power output has been decreasing for years so instruments have been turned off over the years to save power. At some point there won't be enough for a minimal instrumentation suite to operate, and that's when they will be turned off forever, or at least until someone or something in the far future finds and tries to re-activate them. Not likely but who knows?
Right now the data being sent back makes no sense. I would suspect a hardware issue or software glitch long before I'd suspect intelligent interference.

Human hubris is amazing. Alien intervention in our lives is always suspected by the conspiracy people. Sometimes things just break down. The fact that the probes have lasted longer than our refrigerators is amazing. These probes should have died decades ago. If you want to go down the alien path, it's more likely that aliens have kept them going, than sabotaged them, lol.

 

[GoneWestUtah]

I remember when one of the Voyagers flew past Neptune in 1989. It was broadcast on TV and called "Neptune All Night". Might have been the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, time has dimmed my memory. But I do recall seeing the first images from Neptune and being amazed at the times I was living in.

 

[GoneWestUtah]

I remember when one of the Voyagers flew past Neptune in 1989. It was broadcast on TV and called "Neptune All Night".

Found it.

 

[JahaRa]

Maybe Elon can set a date for a manned ship to go out and fix it or at least find it and bring it back.

 

[GoneWestUtah]

Maybe Elon can set a date for a manned ship to go out and fix it or at least find it and bring it back.

Voyager has a half-century head-start. We still don't have anything that can catch up to it in a human lifetime. Not even Elon, lol.

 

[JahaRa]

Voyager has a half-century head-start. We still don't have anything that can catch up to it in a human lifetime. Not even Elon, lol.

Elon isn't planning to go to space himself, he wants humans to be able to colonize Mars because he thinks that's our next step. I bet he could design a ship that would get there in less than 50 years.

 

[GoneWestUtah]

Even Elon doesn't have that kind of money. I would take that bet.

Outside of a technology breakthrough, it can't happen. That is well beyond the range of chemical rockets, and gravity-assists (what the Voyagers used to get up to solar escape velocity) take a lot of time. Even Elon buys his rocket motors from another maker. He's not spending a ton of money on propulsion research.

Not going to happen for a long time.

I am reminded of an old sci-fi story. Earthly explorers set off for Alpha Centauri in suspended animation, due to the length of time needed to get there, several hundred years. But during that time, humanity made tech advances. When the explorers got there, they found humanity had beaten them to it, and it was already a fully human populated planetary system.

"Far Centaurus" by A. E. Van Vogt, if memory serves.

 

[Stevedog]

Someone needs to explain what the part that is not working is? are we still getting pictures ? information at all?

I was reading about this the other day. It's basically an issue with the telemetry data that controls which direction the probe is looking. For the probe to communicate with us it needs to adjust itself so that the antenna is pointed back at Earth. This means it needs to shift and rotate from time to time as both it and Earth are in constant motion. The issue is that according to the signals it's pointing at something else, not at Earth. However if that were the case then we wouldn't be able to receive a signal at all. The fact that the signal is coming through means that the probe isn't actually pointing in the direction it says that's it's pointing.