131
votes
Accepted
How is stacking oranges in 24 dimensions related to receiving and decoding signals from the Voyagers?
All the different data words a transmitter can send and a receiver can detect can be imagined as dots arranged in a large space.
Selecting a data encoding for error detection and correction is about ...
- 14.6k
93
votes
Accepted
Why do exploration spacecraft like Voyager 1 and 2 go through the asteroid belt, and not over or below it?
First, space is absolutely gigantic; the chance of either of the Voyagers, or ay other outer-planet mission, hitting an asteroid was infinitesimal.
Second, the asteroid belt itself isn't really ...
- 166k
75
votes
Accepted
Why were the Voyager spacecraft numbered "out-of-order"?
Voyager 1 was the first to reach Jupiter and the first to reach Saturn, as it was launched on a "shorter and faster trajectory" (Wikipedia, NASA). So the numbering was chosen to reflect the order of ...
- 9,819
64
votes
Accepted
Why did Voyager 1 lose speed after the sudden gain in speed from gravity assist?
It's the gravitational attraction of the Sun. Voyager was moving away from the Sun and was pulled back by its gravity. Since Voyager was not moving directly away from the Sun, it's trajectory also ...
- 19.3k
61
votes
Accepted
Can Voyager 1 or 2, theoretically, return to earth if given instructions before their electronic instruments shut down in 2025?
No, not even slightly. Neither Voyager has much fuel left; in fact, they don't have much fuel even for changing their attitude (the way they point), which is orders of magnitude less fuel than for ...
- 4,538
60
votes
Why do exploration spacecraft like Voyager 1 and 2 go through the asteroid belt, and not over or below it?
A Keplerian trajectory in the Solar system essentially needs to be in a plane defined by three points: the location of the Sun, the location you're starting from, and the point your target will be at ...
- 2,151
50
votes
Accepted
How does a space probe maintain its trajectory while passing through the extreme gravitational field of the gas giants of our solar system?
The trajectory was not only "unhindered" - it was enhanced!
Knowing mass of the planet you can calculate very precisely how the trajectory of a probe flying by will be affected. You modify the ...
- 54.4k
47
votes
Why didn't Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 crash on into Jupiter or Uranus when they approached near to these massive planets?
why weren't they completely attracted by their gravitational field?
How much a trajectory is changed, depends on 3 factors:
the mass of the planet,
the speed of the spacecraft,
the distance between ...
- 124k
44
votes
Accepted
Is there someone continually monitoring the Voyager spacecraft?
Continuously? No, for several reasons.
Most significantly, it just isn't possible. Both Voyagers are now so far away that only the 70-meter antennas of the Deep Space Network can communicate with ...
- 14.1k
43
votes
Why did Voyager 2 receive a gravitational slowdown (as opposed to a slingshot) at Neptune?
The mission was to fly by the outer planets. Once it got to Neptune that mission was complete. From Wikipedia:
Because this was the last planet of the Solar System that Voyager 2 could visit, the ...
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37
votes
Accepted
Why did Voyager 2 receive a gravitational slowdown (as opposed to a slingshot) at Neptune?
They wanted a close flyby of Triton. Triton's orbit is at a large angle to the ecliptic plane, and Triton was below Neptune at the time of Voyager's flyby, so they needed a course change that pointed &...
- 124k
37
votes
Why was radio contact with Pioneer lost earlier than with Voyager?
Interplanetary communication is mainly dependent on signal strength (for transmission) and antenna size (for reception).
The Pioneers use a 9-foot antenna and an 8-watt transmitter. The Voyagers use ...
- 166k
37
votes
Could one of the interstellar probes discover Planet IX by accident?
Any hypothetical planet (or other object) even further out would be very dark, so few photos are taken for any reason other than to look inward. (And in any case, the cameras on the Voyagers are shut ...
- 20.9k
35
votes
Accepted
Why did Voyager 2's velocity drop far below escape velocity before the first gravity assist?
You are correct that Voyager did not change from above escape velocity to below escape velocity shortly after launch. The plot is misleading in that it is just not very accurate right there at 1 AU. ...
- 58.4k
35
votes
Why did Voyager 1 lose speed after the sudden gain in speed from gravity assist?
Additionally, the probe has just passed a large planetary body with its own gravity well. The probe has to climb up out of that planet's gravity well which costs momentum.
There is a net gain in ...
- 681
33
votes
Does the Voyager team use a wrapper (Fortran(77?) to Python) to transmit current commands?
In 2015, the last original Voyager engineer still on the project, retired. NASA specified that his replacement would have to know FORTRAN.
The software was updated regularly after launch:
The ...
- 124k
33
votes
What changes to Voyager could have been made?
Knowing what we know now about Titan's thick and resistant-to-surface-photography atmosphere, choosing a Pluto flyby for Voyager 1 over a Titan flyby would perhaps have given more exciting results. ...
31
votes
Where will the Pioneer, Voyager and New Horizons spacecraft be after one galactic orbit?
Oversimplifying by taking the current velocity of each probe and multiplying it by 250 million years, I get:
Voyager 1 - 10,000 light years away
Voyager 2 - 9,600 light years away
New Horizons - 9,...
- 1,802
30
votes
Accepted
Does the tape recorder on Voyager-1 still work?
Edit: The Spacecraft operations schedule contains the answer. On December 18, 2021, we see an item 'PLAYBACK' show up in the schedule for Voyager 1.
S/C 31 is Voyager 1. The 'PLAYBACK' label is the ...
- 124k
29
votes
Accepted
Why was the imaging quality of the Voyager probes *much* better than the Pioneer probes despite being launched only 5 years later?
The 1960s and 1970s were a period of rapid technological development, so it's not actually surprising that the relatively new field of electronic imaging advanced so far in that five-year period. ...
- 166k
28
votes
Why was radio contact with Pioneer lost earlier than with Voyager?
In addition to a better transmitter, the Voyagers have better power reserves: their RTGs supplied 470 W at launch, while the Pioneer RTGs supplied 160 W at launch. So the Voyager RTGs will take much ...
- 124k
28
votes
Accepted
How is Voyager 1 still operating?
The Voyagers have been so reliable due to careful design, plus lots of redundancy.
Voyager employs three dual-redundant computer systems per spacecraft. The first, the CCS, is nearly identical to ...
- 124k
28
votes
Why was the imaging quality of the Voyager probes *much* better than the Pioneer probes despite being launched only 5 years later?
It is not only the progress in imaging over that period. Voyager was a more ambitious and expensive mission in general. The mass of Pioneer 11 was 259 kg, while that of Voyager was 825.5. That extra ...
- 9,819
27
votes
Accepted
If a Voyager crashes into something, would we know?
Most likely no.
Voyager downlink communication (via its radio link to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) is not continuous. You can check the contact schedule at this Voyager site. If everything looks ...
- 18.2k
26
votes
Accepted
Why didn't Pioneer 11 visit Uranus/Neptune, and why didn't Voyager 1 visit Pluto?
The initial plan was to visit all of the outer planets:
The Planetary Grand Tour was to send several pairs of probes to fly by all the outer planets (and Pluto) along various trajectories, including ...
- 124k
26
votes
Accepted
Can Voyager 1 receive signals from Earth?
Yes, the Earth can send Voyager 1 a message as easily as we can receive a message. There are a few differences between the uplink and the downlink paths.
We cannot upgrade the radio on Voyager 1 to ...
- 966
25
votes
Accepted
How do Voyager 1's Trajectory Control Thrusters differ from its Attitude Control Thrusters?
The attitude thrusters and TCMs are mechanically identical, all Aerojet MR-103s. From the Voyager Press Kit:
The 16 thrusters on the mission module each deliver 0.89 N (0.2-lb.) thrust. Four are used ...
- 166k
25
votes
How does a space probe maintain its trajectory while passing through the extreme gravitational field of the gas giants of our solar system?
They did not !
This is the trajectory of Voyager 1 at Jupiter.
credits wikipedia
- 12.6k
25
votes
Accepted
Why didn't the Pioneer probes maintain communications with Earth as long as the Voyagers have?
Why the Pioneers didn't last as long:
The Pioneers were a low-budget mission just to test if flying to the outer planets was feasible
They used a smaller radio transmitter (8 W vs. 23 W) and antenna ...
- 124k
25
votes
Accepted
Why is Voyager/Pioneer so slow compared to Parker Solar Probe?
Physical
First and foremost, the physical reason is that objects accelerate as they approach massive bodies and decelerate as they recede:
Parker Solar Probe achieves its peak orbital speed (almost ...
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