Voyager I was launched in 1977. It has finally let your solar system and entered interstellar space.
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since Sat., 25 Nov. 2006:
NASA’s been crunching the numbers and analyzing the data for awhile now, so Voyager’s been cruising along in interstellar space for awhile now going where no man(-made object) has gone before!
Robotic exploration coupled with serious Mars-to-Stay efforts are the wave of the future! No more of these Low Earth Orbit money wasters. :)
Thanks! That was a great post. I love anything about space.
Recently back from a visit to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. It was truly amazing!
Among other things, saw the largest moon rock I ever saw (have seen small pebbles before, but not a big rock). Also a real Apollo back from the moon (16 I think).
Thanks again for this great post!
Fascinating, indeed! Thank you for all the links! (Reading in one, “The Voyager team generally accepts this date [25 August 2012] as the date of interstellar arrival”, I went to saints.sqpn.com to see ‘whose Day it was’, and learned Peregrinus, for one.)
Where is the creator?
If I recall correct, you’ll need five more probes and a lucky black hole/wormhole, actually.
Personally, I kinda wonder about the definition of “interstellar space”. I mean I’m under the impression that there’s the Oort Cloud — the area of space where asteroids and other cosmic debris of various sizes stay within the orbit of our star rather than being pulled away by other passing stars — and anything beyond that is truly interstellar… but is that the precise definition? After all, that cloud’s size will change as different stars pass by our system at different lengths. If there’s a precise definition, who agrees upon it? I thought everyone knew what a planet was, too, and they decided to redefine that a couple years ago (and to be honest I don’t even remember who “they” are or why everyone accepts “their” judgement as official even if disliked).
It is cool that we’re still able to pick up the thing’s signal — I presume thanks to improvements in our receivers? Weren’t we supposed to have lost contact years (or was it decades?) ago, according to the technological limitations at the time of the “original mission”, so to speak, or was that a mistaken impression too?
(See, I used to read about this stuff… years and years ago when I was younger and didn’t know how to dig up more info. Nowadays I’m preoccupied…)
“If there’s a precise definition, who agrees upon it? ”
That would be the International Astronomical Union:
http://www.iau.org/
All scientific bodies have a general oversight group. Chemists have IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists); physicists have IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physicists); Engineers have ASME, IEEE, etc.
The Chicken
I am tempted to blow my nose in ‘their ‘general direction… In my ignorant, bourgeois way, I still consider Pluto a planet. (Whatever happened to sensible diversity? If the Earth, Mercury, and gas giants can all be planets, why not an outstanding icy-thingy, its many analogous little neighbors notwithstanding?)
@The Masked Chicken,
Thanks. I guess reading up on those will answer any questions I have as to who decides who the decision-makers are and what sort of processes and standards are involved in the decision-making (or, as I put it earlier, “why everyone accepts their judgement as official even if disliked”), eh?