They're still there...

[crfriend]

... and are still talking to us. What's this, you ask? The Voyagers -- both 1 and 2 -- and they're getting very close to leaving the last vestiges of our little local neighbourhood after a trip of almost 34 years, which is longer than most of the people on the planet have been alive!

Their cameras were stilled many years ago -- something that brought me to tears given how much they'd seen and given to us -- but where they are now it doesn't matter much as it's unimaginably dark, at least in the wavelengths that we see in. So now they use other "eyes" to sense their environment, and it looks like once again -- of several times -- the little (if one can call something minivan-sized "little") craft are telling us things that force us to rewrite the way we think that things work.

This is an expedition unparallelled in human endeavour; some of the scientists have spent their entire adult lives looking after these craft and interpreting what they send home. Likely, most of the mission controllers are younger than the spacecraft they have in their charge. And the little machines continue to "phone home" with observations that are sometimes astounding and always interesting. The latest figures seem to hint that Voyager 1 will pass through the heliosheath in about 4 to 5 years followed in a few years by her companion ship Voyager 2; at that point they will not only be the farthest flung creations of Mankind, but outside the influence of our local star -- and they'll still be able to tell us about their experiences until the mid 2020s -- a human lifespan of not all that long ago.

I await the results, even knowing that I will be reduced to tears once again when they, inevitably, "die" when their power sources cannot sustain them any longer. Long live the Voyagers!

[Jack Williams]

One's out there right now, further than anything's ever been before and still sending back data.
That'll be the one you're talking about no less. Isn't it wonderful! And to think that even with the worldwide lack of money, there can still be found in the budget, however constained, funding for this bloody important, vital even, thrust by our mankind into the new fronteers.

[Milfmog]

I await the results, even knowing that I will be reduced to tears once again when they, inevitably, "die" when their power sources cannot sustain them any longer. Long live the Voyagers!

According to this website you have a few more years to enjoy these fabulous bits of kit sending "postcards" home. The power systems are expected to keep them active and controlled until around 2025. There's no guarantee that I'll still be moving around by that time.

This mission is a fabulous demonstration of how much more can be achieved with unmanned space exploration than we could ever dream of doing with those fragile organic critters going into space. Somehow unmanned exploration does not seem to capture the imagination of the public the same way, but the knowledge we gain from missions like this is astounding.

Have fun,


Ian.

[crfriend]

According to this website you have a few more years to enjoy these fabulous bits of kit sending "postcards" home. The power systems are expected to keep them active and controlled until around 2025. There's no guarantee that I'll still be moving around by that time.

There is no guarantee that any of us will be moving around under our own power at that date, but I'm going to give it my best shot. If I make it, I'll be about (cue the Beatles) sixty-four when 2025 arrives.

This mission is a fabulous demonstration of how much more can be achieved with unmanned space exploration than we could ever dream of doing with those fragile organic critters going into space. Somehow unmanned exploration does not seem to capture the imagination of the public the same way, but the knowledge we gain from missions like this is astounding.

Indeed, for the most part, unmanned space exploration doesn't seem to inspire people the way that manned spaceflight does, and in virtually all instances, it makes good sense -- both technically and financially -- to put robots on the job. After all, they do not require the special meat containers that we fragile lot do, and robots, importantly, don't get bored. However, to say that robotic exploration in general fails to inspire may be a bit off the mark; apparently there is still decent public interest in the Voyager programme and if that nudges a few gifted children into engineering and science then it will have been a win in addition to the simple expansion of human knowledge.

I moan and groan about manned spaceflight quite a bit, but that's because a good deal of my formative years were steeped in the Apollo Programme that put men -- humans -- meat -- on the moon and returned them safely to the Earth. Now that's inspiration -- and the inspiration comes from the technological fight -- fought tooth and nail -- to develop entirely new technologies to make the task even possible. The film footage still astounds, whether it's the gentle way that the Saturn V launch vehicle delicately stepped out from launch tower (with 7 1/2 million pounds of thrust pushing what amounted to a fragile pencil skyward), the intricate rendezvous manoeuvres between the spacecraft when in flight, and the footage shot on the moon itself. But, it also looks a little stale and "ho hum" today because "it's all been done before". And in another few short months my country will depart the ranks of nations who can fly men in space; at that point we will need to look to the little robots who are our ambassadors to the heavens and who faithfully report what they see, hear, and smell (and taste and feel for landers) in the vastness of space.

Have fun,

For as long as I can!