Timeline for If a Voyager crashes into something, would we know?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 18, 2018 at 5:37 | comment | added | Tom Spilker | @MagicOctopusUrn According to descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/series1/Descanso1_C03.pdf the X-band system the Voyagers use for routine tracking can measure to an accuracy of 30 microns per second, or 3 X 10^-5 m/s. Given Voyager 1's recession rate, that's a couple parts in a billion! | |
| Dec 12, 2018 at 14:24 | vote | accept | Kamil Drakari | ||
| Dec 12, 2018 at 4:22 | comment | added | corsiKa | So nice of NASA to have an Internet page for their mission considering these probes were launched over five years before the Internet existed. | |
| Dec 11, 2018 at 23:10 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Dec 12, 2018 at 0:18 | |||||
| Dec 11, 2018 at 23:02 | comment | added | Mark | @MagicOctopusUrn, if the Pioneer anomaly is any indication, we should be able to track a change measured in parts per million, or possibly parts per billion. | |
| Dec 11, 2018 at 19:20 | comment | added | Magic Octopus Urn | @KamilDrakari ahh... so it's more of the question of "what's the biggest perturbation we could recover from?" Otherwise a perturbation could be equivalent to a collision because it isn't able to point back towards Earth or steady itself. | |
| Dec 11, 2018 at 18:52 | comment | added | Kamil Drakari | @MagicOctopusUrn You may be interested in this question, though I don't know that it answers the minimum detectable change. | |
| Dec 11, 2018 at 18:14 | comment | added | Magic Octopus Urn | What's the smallest significant deviation in trajectory that can be detected? Are we talking in the ballpark of a change in velocity of around ~.00001m/s or something much larger? | |
| Dec 11, 2018 at 17:57 | comment | added | Tom Spilker | @MagicOctopusUrn You bet! Such an alteration would change the Doppler shift on the radio signal's carrier, and spacecraft Doppler tracking is exquisitely sensitive to that. We'd know in a heartbeat that something bent our trajectory! | |
| Dec 11, 2018 at 17:50 | comment | added | Magic Octopus Urn | Would we know if the trajectory of Voyager was altered by a significantly large comet? I believe another answer stated the largest theoretical comet size to be ~300km (or something along those lines) if this perturbed the path of voyager, but did not sever the connection via impact or anything else, would we be able to know? | |
| Dec 11, 2018 at 17:32 | history | answered | Tom Spilker | CC BY-SA 4.0 |