I'm amazed and still can't get my head around how today we can receive images and valuable data from a device which is currently lightdays away from us and was built with 60's technology & know-how and is operating well beyond it's expected lifetime.<p>I raise my glass to the engineers who worked on this. Makes my daily programming tasks feel stupid in comparison.<p>Edit: corrected, thanks for the numbers
I am always baffled by the conundrum of the futility of launching a spacecraft to go far away by our own ability to invent faster engines.<p>Say it takes 300 years to get to Alpha Centauri. If you launch it you have 150 years to invent a spacecraft that goes twice the speed of the first one. Very likely. If you launch that one it will overtake the other one. Now you have 75 years to find an even faster engine. Launch it and you got 37 years. etc.<p>Quite likely you can keep doing this until you can reach it in e.g. a year. So why not hold all launches until then....<p>Does this have a name? Or original source? Did I get this from Futurama?
Not a comment of the article itself, but for anyone interested in both Voyagers, PBS recently did a great documentary called <i>"The Farthest"</i>. I highly recommend it.<p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/home/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/home/</a>
I'm disappointed that it even as it become very obvious we were going to continue gathering useful information from Voyager 1/2 and yet no follow on missions have been launched.<p>I suppose the idea is that there is more to be gained via specialized missions inside the solar system, compared with new long running extreme range probes, but you would think there might be some value in starting to send a chain of probes out, so that communication can be maintained even further.
I've always fantasized about drifting out there in person.<p>Wouldn't a human operator in such spacecraft gather more data by being able to reorient instruments in realtime etc. and spotting minute phenomena that would otherwise be missed?<p>If NASA or Elon Musk or anyone has considered such a mission but can't imagine asking for volunteers for it, let me know. I don't need a ride back.
Here's a great illustration of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 outside of the heliosphere:
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-voyager-2-probe-enters-interstellar-space" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-voyager-2-probe-en...</a>
<a href="https://www.space.com/22787-voyager-1-signal-interstellar-space-photo.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.space.com/22787-voyager-1-signal-interstellar-sp...</a><p>From her elder sister. Or “of”. It is just awesome.