Most likely by 2027 (50th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch). If I'm fortunate, by the time both Voyagers fly beyond the reach of the DSM, I will be 60 (I was born in November, 1976, which was only less than 3 months after Viking 1 landed on Mars; I was only 9 months old when both Voyagers were launched, and was 12 when Voyager 2 reached Neptune). Also the lag increases or decreases as Earth revolves around the Sun, so the 1 light day would have to occur when Earth is "closest" to Voyager 1 (what astronomers refer to as "opposition", a term mostly used for the "superior" planets and dwarf planets that are located beyond Earth's orbit, when the Earth is in the middle of a straight line between the Sun and the planet or dwarf planet).
@@SlowphotonNo, Caltech and JPL went woke a long time ago and they have fallen from the top university rankings accordingly. Plenty of dummies in both places now.
@@ohsweetmystery oh a “woke” boo from the anonymous crowd. Please tell that to the Nobel price recipient alumni. And remember that The Big Bang Theory is fictional.
Yeah these two spacecraft have been a shining star in the NASA program they have exceeded their original plan and are bright spot in the program. Simply marvelous , marvelous! I’m glad there are scientists like you interested in them .
I've been following the Voyager mission since I was 5 or 6, and I feel comfortable saying that it is the most successful unmanned spacecraft NASA has ever launched. As a little boy, I dreamed of flying alongside of the Voyagers and seeing the erupting volcanoes of Io, the rings of Saturn, and sing all the planets of our solar system as points of light distance. ❤
Yes, they built in backups for the backups to ensure it worked at Saturn. I remember some years ago one of my local PBS stations did "Neptune all night" on that flyby. They basically took their gear and some of their people to JPL and broadcast what was going on for the whole flyby. I remember I had to give up on it because I needed to go to sleep and not because it wasn't interesting. There was a fair amount of an astronomer saying "What the heck is that"
I'm 52 years old and I remember when they launched this probes. I also remember when the first Star Trek movie came out and I was amazed by the perspective of one of the Voyagers returned to Earth centuries after, refurbished as V- Ger. Subscribed ❤
I feel attached to it too, since I was around in 1977 and watched it get launched (via TV). I am amazed that it is still functioning at all, but so happy that it is.
Just have to marvel at the amazing work of the NASA engineers troubleshooting and providing fixes on a system so far away, with so much lag. And at the amazing work of the designers who designed systems that COULD be fixed this way.
Great report! Congratulations to the wonderful engineers and programmers keeping these remarkable craft alive! Sensing there’s a lot of love involved in this effort. I recall their launches and hope for their flybys…they’ve achieved so much more! Remarkable story!
Great video! I’m attached to the Voyager probes as well, and hope Voyager 1 can reach its 50th year of operations. 0:20 24 billion kilometers 7:08 19 billion kilometers
When I heard the five-year mission, "to boldly go where no man has gone before" was appended to it. Thanks for a great video; I really appreciate all that you put into it.
@@GatorBaitRAHHH the two Voyagers were built from the Mariner probes of the 1960s and 1970s, which in turn were based off of the Ranger Moon probes of the late 1950s/early 1960s. Originally known as "Mariner Jupiter-Saturn", with the two planets being their intended target, the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) intentionally designed MJS for an extended mission beyond Saturn, with the trajectory for Voyager 2 following that of the cancelled "Grand Tour" which would have seen two sets of two probes flying to Jupiter (after Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11), with one set continuing on to Saturn and Pluto (or one to Saturn's moon Titan - accomplished by Voyager 1 - and the other to Pluto), while the other two probes would continue onto Uranus and Neptune. Subsequent "Flagship" probes, Galileo (to Jupiter) and Cassini-Huygens (to Saturn and Titan) would be based upon the Voyager probes, while New Horizons, which allowed Pluto to be finally visited, while more along the lines of the simpler Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probes, incorporated the very technologies first flown on Voyager nearly 50 years ago.
I was only five years old when the Voyagers were launched. Now I'm fifty-two. The fact that they're still operational and sending back useful data is nothing short of astounding.
How long, well, let's see ... designed for a five year mission ... what similar thing do we know of? 🤔 ... okay ... Star Trek was designed for a five year mission and here it is some 58 years later, so, okay, give Voyager 1 about 58 years. 😉 _"It's a five year mission, Jim, but not as we know it"_
Thanks for the video. You did plenty of research, and made it factually interesting. 🙂👍 One tip which you might want to think about: The vocal fry (croaky voice, or frog voice), which you use extensively, is not good for your vocal cords. It is a bad habit to adopt, and will eventually ruin your voice completely. Unfortunately, many people, particularly females, are using it recently.
What data is it gathering? I understand just the curiosity and the engineering challenges. But, is it really producing any data of any use at this point?
Do you have any idea why Voyager 1 needs thrusters to keep itself pointed at at Earth? From Voyager 1's point of view, Earth only changes its position in the sky about about +- 1/3rd of a degree due to its orbit around the Sun. Is it just that Voyager 1 does not have the precision to completely cancel out its own rotation?
Haven’t seen a recent estimate of when Voyager1 will cease operations. Sounds like the last instrument will be switched off about 2030 with engineering stat until 2034
As one who personally witnessed both Pioneer and Voyager launches from the Cape as a teen, I am nearly dumbstruck how long they were and are able to operate.
Help me understand why the thrusters need to continually fire to keep pointed at Earth. Is it because of Earths orbit around the Sun which keeps moving Earth relative to Voyager or is it something else?
At first it would be like that probably but at this distance its just because tiny adjustments need to be made due to the fact that no adjustment will be able to keep it pointed correctly forever and the further away you get the bigger the change each adjustment makes Imagine sitting on a office chair and its rolling down hill moving away from a tiny blue balloon 🎈 you have to stay pointed at the balloon to see it but you can only control the spin of the chair so you kick yourself in the direction you need to be and after you go too far one way you have to kick yourself again the other way always trying to keep the balloon in sight
@@ariesmarsexpress it's really three antenna complexes spaced 120° apart from each other. NASA used them for every unmanned mission beyond Low Earth Orbit as well as for all of the manned Apollo missions to the Moon. In terms of upgrading, it would involve the decommissioning of the large 70-meter dishes and replacing them with smaller arrays that can be functionally "ganged" together to create "one" dish that can "function" as a "single" dish (with another dish - 25 meters across - being used for the Artemis missions to the Moon).
As much money as we spend on regular satellites, rovers to mars, moon, etc. ... would it be that awfully much to send another probe on it's way, only faster, that acts as a transceiver/signal booster so that every year it gets farther away from us, the communication should in theory get better and better with Voyager again. Even though it is screaming away at incredible speeds - just our current tech to get it started, a good slingshot around the moon, and so on - just having a booster out and away from the planet should be a HUGE difference in comms.
I don't think that would work. I believe the communination between the Earth and the satellites work because we have MASSIVE and high-power antennas on Earth. (Massive power output to transmit, massive dish+gain to receive). That makes up for the comparatively small dish and power of the spacecraft's antenna (e.g Voyager has some 23W 3.7m diameter antenna, while the the ground station has 20kW+ 70m diameter) Sat-sat communication at that distance would be very problematic ( you would need much more power for that relay station than the probe itself, if it was to boost the signal...)
@@panda4247 I've been in radio and satcom a long time. Our atmosphere - specifically the troposphere - and our magnetic field, makes an enormous difference. My whole point would be a major difference in the type of satellite for a booster satellite. Much higher power, a very large sail-type dish, married to an orbital satellite back here, etc. or it wouldn't be worth it, but it would be orders of magnitude better than anything we could accomplish inside the atmosphere and on the ground level, with probably half or less the power and surface area. Besides, the whole point is simply closing the distance as a relay to prolong communications.
@@MandrakeDCR "Much higher power, a very large sail-type dish" --> yes, if you decided to build a satellite specifically for this reason, it could be a different type of satellite with the specs to match this purpose. (also, you'd need 2 antennas, one pointed to the Earth and the other to the probe... but that's the least of my concerns). But how much power can we reasonably get on such satellite? (I have genuinely no idea, maybe a reasonably powerful radioisotope generator exists now... but unlike the ISS or other near-Earth satellites, it could not rely on the solar panels or anything like that)- Also, also, the other problem would be getting it closer to the Voyager, the configuration of planets to slingshot the Voyagers was pretty rare... Again, no idea how hard and rare would it be to be able to send something even 5% faster in the same direction. If you say the atmosphere + magnetosphere are the problem on Earth, maybe a simpler solution would be to put our station to the Moon (with all problems that arise from it)
To expand the answer: they're some 70m in diameter, with huge power output (some tens of kilowatts) to send the command which the comparatively small antenna on the spacecraft will be able to pick up... they are around the world so that at least one can be directed to communicate with the satellite at any time of the day
@@panda4247 - Thanks. The fact that they can even "hit" their target that far away amazes me. Then the fact that the signal is strong enough is another amazing thing altogether.
They should turn it around (while they still can) and bring it back home (or let it spend retirement around Pluto), it has done it's job. poor thing spending 76000 years at least on its own
LOL Voyager 1 is now over twice as far from Pluto than we are on Earth. The delta V required is currently beyond anything we can make, The voyager spacecraft used planetary slingshots to gain the high velocity moving away they now have.
@@favesongslist Can't they just swing it around so that it heads back into the direction of the solar system, it would obviously take years, but it would gain a bit of warmth , and there would be a chance of collecting or assigning it in the distant future.
Sure they can turn it around in the sense of rotating it, but that won't magically change its trajectory. Voyager 1 is speeding away from us at 17 kilometers (about 10.5 miles) *per second*, much much higher than the 3.3 km/s it needs (at its current location) to escape our solar system, and we have no way of slowing it down so that thing is just _gone_. The fate of both Voyagers is to stay true to their name and continue on an endless voyage through the Milky Way.
She sounds like someone who is used to giving talks to elementary school students. I actually didn't like being talked to that way even when I was a kid, though.
They need to use one Voyager as radio relay for the other.. if that’s even possible.. Im born when they launched 1977, so I think they a bit special. 😊
That would not work for so many reasons. (I'll number them for easier referencing in further discussion) 1) the one used as relay would have to turn its antenna to the other and to Earth. 1.1) that would require too much fuel to do constantly 1.2) it would miss some transmission from Earth when it would be turned to the other Voyager, or vice versa. 2) the communication with Earth is possible because we have high-power antennas (strong transmitter, high gain big dish receiver). The communication satellite-satellite at that distance with their antennas would probably not be possible, even if V2 was following V1 on the same path 3) biggest reason - they are not following each other.. they are going in opposite directions (one is going "up" fron the Earth's orbital plane, the other is going "down"). So in fact, they seem to be farther from each other than they are from Earth. (One is going some 35° north and the other some 48°south, so the angle between them is more than 60°, so the distance between them is the largest side of the triangle Earth-V1-V2
She did a video about three weeks ago and then a short announcing the mission's success. I find detailed analysis of problems, such as airplane crashes, more instructive and entertaining than accounts of missions that go nominally. Journalists and Hollywood, who live by views, tend to recognize this preference.
I take offence with the "fixing Voyager 1 'again'" as if it was designed to go this far. You need to step up your reporting and lay out that Voyager, built by Americans, was NOT designed to survive this long. Then go into the story of the engineers at JPL (who most were not even born when Voyager was launched) did their job. And hey, how about those engineers who actually built and.launched the spacecraft in the first place? A little love to them too? You seem to bring a doom and gloom reporting in your vids that is rather offensive.
