This week we’re going to return to the general category of fantastic science, engineering, and technology feats that I first marveled at in the post from March 29, 2021 (Obliterate The Box: Three Spectacular Feats Of Rocket Science).
But this week, we’re going interstellar.
Interstellar? You might ask. Humans aren’t traveling in the vastness of interstellar space—or are we? OK, so maybe humans aren’t, but our machines are, and that’s where we can marvel at the spectacular feats of science, engineering, and technology.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are sailing the interstellar realm. I follow both on Twitter, and it occurred to me, beyond the novelty of space probes having Twitter accounts, that the reports give us their distances in light-seconds. For example, the Monday (10/4) tweet from @NSFVoyager2 [unofficial account] reported that Voyager 1 (@NASAVoyager [official NASA account]) is 21 hours, 24 minutes, and 49 seconds of light travel from Earth, and adding 11 miles to that—every second. Voyager 2 is a little closer at 17 hours, 45 minutes, and 33 seconds of light travel from Earth.
Think about that for a moment. We frequently measure things compared to the length of a football field, try to wrap our heads around the Moon being a quarter of a million miles away, or talk about Mars being at its closest to Earth at about 39 million miles. It’s hard to imagine something so far away that we need to measure that distance in how long it takes light to travel there. By comparison, light from the Sun takes about eight minutes to get to Earth. It takes that light five and a half hours to reach Pluto. That same light takes almost a whole day to get to Voyager 1.
Fantastic also that Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still doing science, sending scientists information on the interstellar plasma. The hope is that Voyager might still be doing it when it’s 50 years old in 2027. Voyager 2 may not be able to power a science instrument but may continue to transmit a weak radio signal through the middle of this decade.
One last note, the probes are expected to continue on their journeys for who knows how long, reaching the Oort Cloud in something over 300 years, close to another star in 40,000—unless one returns home before then. We know how this movie might end.
The danger was real, and it was only through Spock and Kirk’s quick thinking that Earth’s annihilation was avoided, and V GER met its creator. (OK. OK. It was a not-real Voyager 6, not one of these. But, who knows what’s out there.)
Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by.
[Disclaimer: Please accept my apologies for any ads that pop up before or after the linked videos. They do not reflect my position, nor do I endorse any of the products – it’s just a YouTube thing I can’t get around.]
Meanwhile I reckon I’ve traveled about 48 billion miles around the sun since I was born. Which is small beer compared to the Voyagers.
A tremendous accomplishment though. Nice. Keep it up. Just a few more to go to hit that magic number of 50 billion.
Thanks for stopping by.