By switching to the spacecraft's "trajectory correction maneuver" thrusters, last used during the spacecraft's encounter with Saturn in 1980, engineers say they will be able to extend the lifetime of Voyager by two or three more years before its waning power reserves expire.
Sad.
[–] eatmorealmonds 0 points 6 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago
Damn are you kidding me?!? In a proper world this would be all across the MSM, because you know, humans have actual interest in this stuff. If I remember correctly, Voyager 1 was sacrificed to allow Voyager 2 to shoot over to the outer planets.
Happy
[–] [deleted] 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
[–] [deleted] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
[–] Master_Foo 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
You aren't wrong. I'm not correcting you. I'll just add that conservation of momentum will consolidate anything that doesn't fall into the gravity well into rings, like Saturn, and to a lesser extent Jupiter. So, there is quite a lot of material floating around, but, it's been packed into a stable orbit in a single plane, which makes the area of danger quite small.
[–] Aged 3 points 1 point 4 points (+4|-3) ago (edited ago)
The chance of Voyager meeting any kind of debris near a planet randomly would be of one in thousands, and we can use telescopes to see these things from here and make it avoid it. Outside in the galaxy? Voyager has better chances at winning in at lottery. Hell, it has a better chance of intelligent life actually finding it, realize it isn't a natural object but made by someone, and try to retrieve it. Space is very big.
[–] theoldguy 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Something the size of a marble traveling at 100k mph would pretty much destroy Voyager and we wouldn't have any chance of seeing something so small and so far away.
[–] Master_Foo 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago (edited ago)
It's because of Jupiter's gravitational pull that makes it so safe to pass near it. The planet has essentially been vacuuming it's area for billions of years cleaning the debris. Anything that doesn't fall down the gravity well is tidied up by consolidating all particles into it's rings or it's Lagrange points.
So, yeah, you are correct in your assumption. There should be more debris around Jupiter. There IS more debris around Jupiter. But, Jupiter was nice enough to put everything away neatly in his closet.
[–] eatmorealmonds 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Nope, no science here other than a layperson. I wonder of these things also Wildebeest, yet it's pretty damn empty out there on the whole plus the universe seems to love our adventures, doesn't it (for the time being at least, until that Gamma ray makes its beeline for us)