Problem with Voyager 2 Spacecraft at Edge of Solar System

[justdrew]

damn... Hope it can be fixed... We may not get credit for sending a craft outside the solar system if it can't talk to us correctly...

Problem Detected with Voyager 2 Spacecraft at Edge of Solar System
By Tariq Malik SPACE.com Managing Editor
posted: 06 May 2010 04:12 pm ET

NASA has commanded the famed Voyager 2 probe to send only information on its health and status after spotting a puzzling change in the spacecraft's pattern of communication from the edge of the solar system.

The 33-year-old Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. But Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that altered the pattern in which it sends updates home.

Because of that pattern change, mission managers can no longer decode the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system.

The first hint of a problem came on April 22, when engineers first spotted the data pattern change. Since then, they've been working to fix the glitch and began sending commands back to Voyager 2 on April 30.

Because Voyager 2 is so far from Earth, it takes 13 hours for a message to reach the spacecraft and another 13 hours for responses to come back to NASA's Deep Space Network of listening antennas around the world.

"Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later," said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery."

Voyager 2 took a so-called "grand tour" of the solar system when it visited the gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s by taking advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs once every 176 years.

The two space probes were built primarily to study Jupiter and Saturn, but Voyager 2 also swing by Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 during its extended mission.

NASA launched Voyager 2 on Aug. 20,1977, just two weeks before Voyager 1. Together, the two spacecraft are the most distant human-built objects in space. Voyager 1 is about 10.5 billion miles (16.9 billion km) away from Earth and in perfect health, mission managers said.


Artist's rendering depicts the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it studies the outer limits of the heliosphere - a magnetic 'bubble' around the Solar System that is created by the solar wind. Scientists observed the magnetic bubble is not spherical, but pressed inward in the southern hemisphere. Credit: NASA/JPL

[justdrew]

Voyager Makes an Interstellar Discovery
December 23, 2009: The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.

see caption"Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all."

The discovery has implications for the future when the solar system will eventually bump into other, similar clouds in our arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers call the cloud we're running into now the Local Interstellar Cloud or "Local Fluff" for short. It's about 30 light years wide and contains a wispy mixture of hydrogen and helium atoms at a temperature of 6000 C. The existential mystery of the Fluff has to do with its surroundings. About 10 million years ago, a cluster of supernovas exploded nearby, creating a giant bubble of million-degree gas. The Fluff is completely surrounded by this high-pressure supernova exhaust and should be crushed or dispersed by it.

"The observed temperature and density of the local cloud do not provide enough pressure to resist the 'crushing action' of the hot gas around it," says Opher.

So how does the Fluff survive? The Voyagers have found an answer.

"Voyager data show that the Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected—between 4 and 5 microgauss*," says Opher. "This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction."

NASA's two Voyager probes have been racing out of the solar system for more than 30 years. They are now beyond the orbit of Pluto and on the verge of entering interstellar space—but they are not there yet.

"The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff," says Opher. "But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it."

The Fluff is held at bay just beyond the edge of the solar system by the sun's magnetic field, which is inflated by solar wind into a magnetic bubble more than 10 billion km wide. Called the "heliosphere," this bubble acts as a shield that helps protect the inner solar system from galactic cosmic rays and interstellar clouds. The two Voyagers are located in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, or "heliosheath," where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas.

Voyager 1 entered the heliosheath in Dec. 2004; Voyager 2 followed almost 3 years later in Aug. 2007. These crossings were key to Opher et al's discovery.

The size of the heliosphere is determined by a balance of forces: Solar wind inflates the bubble from the inside while the Local Fluff compresses it from the outside. Voyager's crossings into the heliosheath revealed the approximate size of the heliosphere and, thus, how much pressure the Local Fluff exerts. A portion of that pressure is magnetic and corresponds to the ~5 microgauss Opher's team has reported in Nature.

The fact that the Fluff is strongly magnetized means that other clouds in the galactic neighborhood could be, too. Eventually, the solar system will run into some of them, and their strong magnetic fields could compress the heliosphere even more than it is compressed now. Additional compression could allow more cosmic rays to reach the inner solar system, possibly affecting terrestrial climate and the ability of astronauts to travel safely through space. On the other hand, astronauts wouldn't have to travel so far because interstellar space would be closer than ever. These events would play out on time scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, which is how long it takes for the solar system to move from one cloud to the next.

"There could be interesting times ahead!" says Opher.


Voyager flies through the outer bounds of the heliosphere en route to interstellar space. A strong magnetic field reported by Opher et al in the Dec. 24, 2009, issue of Nature is delineated in yellow. Image copyright 2009, The American Museum of Natural History.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020210.html

and a link to the actual nasa news release on the problem:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-151&rn=news.xml&rst=2583

[justdrew]

[Simulist]

This reminds me a little of a similar energy barrier featured in one of the early Star Trek episodes, entitled "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

In this case, the energy barrier surrounded the galaxy instead of the solar system.

EnergyBarrier.jpg

But it is still pretty amazing how prescient Star Trek often was.

[Jeff]

Fascinating.

[justdrew]

Explanation: The stars are not alone. In the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy about 10 percent of visible matter is in the form of gas, called the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is not uniform, and shows patchiness even near our Sun. It can be quite difficult to detect the local ISM because it is so tenuous and emits so little light. This mostly hydrogen gas, however, absorbs some very specific colors that can be detected in the light of the nearest stars. A working map of the local ISM within 10 light-years based on recent observations is shown above. These observations show that our Sun is moving through a Local Interstellar Cloud as this cloud flows outwards from the Scorpius-Centaurus Association star forming region. Our Sun may exit the Local Interstellar Cloud during the next 10,000 years. Much remains unknown about the local ISM, including details of its distribution, its origin, and how it affects the Sun and the Earth.

when they say, "10,000 years" there, that could mean tomorrow. you can also kinda see in that picture how close Sirius and Sol may have been at one time. Too bad it doesn't show Sirius's relative motion.

it's interesting to consider the archetypal roots for the original imagining of Trek's great barrier concept. for what it's worth current literary trek lore holds that the great barrier around the galaxy was put in place by the Q to keep 'some others' out. some 'others' even the Q were worried about. I'm not sure to what extent that has achieved "cannonicity"

[rothmans]

The speed of voyager is anomalous to the speed at which it should be traveling scientists have reported. The speed of light has been slowing down, it is now about 2000 miles per second slower than when it was first measured, scientist who use speed of light as a constant are significantly off the mark because it has now been proven the speed of light is NOT constant, thus their calculations are in error.

[Simulist]

Young-earth creationists are certainly one group of cranks who would love for the speed of light to be highly variable — that way they'd have a convenient explanation for the billions of years it's taken light to reach us from the farthest points in the universe. At present, they have no convincing explanation for this.

But these creationists seem to have confused the speed of light with how slowly the light bulb over their heads is turning on.

[Ben D]

The speed of voyager is anomalous to the speed at which it should be traveling scientists have reported. The speed of light has been slowing down, it is now about 2000 miles per second slower than when it was first measured, scientist who use speed of light as a constant are significantly off the mark because it has now been proven the speed of light is NOT constant, thus their calculations are in error.

Yes that's interesting, have read about the ZPE intensity altering the speed of light,..lots to understand yet. Barry Setterfield has done a lot of research in this area.
Also affects the Big Bang - Hubble Red Shift theory if I'm not mistaken.

[justdrew]

The speed of voyager is anomalous to the speed at which it should be traveling scientists have reported. The speed of light has been slowing down, it is now about 2000 miles per second slower than when it was first measured, scientist who use speed of light as a constant are significantly off the mark because it has now been proven the speed of light is NOT constant, thus their calculations are in error.

I think you're referring to the Pioneer Anomaly, none of the proposed explanations for include slowing the speed of light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly

nothing from voyager (or anything else) has proven the speed of light in a vacuum, c is slowing, it's not even considered likely, but there is some consideration of the possibility.

[rothmans]

Ok, maybe I got the name of the probe wrong, but from what I read the speed of light has slowed down significantly.

[psynapz]

NASA launched Voyager 2 on Aug. 20,1977, just two weeks before Voyager 1. Together, the two spacecraft are the most distant human-built objects in space.

There's that pesky 77 again, which doesn't mean anything by itself.

The 33-year-old Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. But Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that altered the pattern in which it sends updates home.

There's that super-pesky 33 again which doesn't mean much by itself, although more since this story is coming from NASA, and slightly more when appearing in conjunction with a 77.

The first hint of a problem came on April 22, when engineers first spotted the data pattern change. Since then, they've been working to fix the glitch and began sending commands back to Voyager 2 on April 30.

On April 22, Pravda began publication in Russia, chemical weapons were used in war for the first time in WWI Germany Hitler committed suicide in WWII Germany, fascism broke out in the United States as the McCarthy hearings began, the Earth was first circumnavigated by a lone individual and a year to the day later was first celebrated as Earth Day. Precisely 33 years later, as the first downloaders of the first Web browser began surfing the first Web sites, the Holocaust Museum was dedicated in D.C. Eventually, a terrorized Elian Gonzales was seized at gunpoint by federal agents.

Because Voyager 2 is so far from Earth, it takes 13 hours for a message to reach the spacecraft and another 13 hours for responses to come back to NASA's Deep Space Network of listening antennas around the world.

Statistically, 13 is gonna show up a lot. It's a low number...

Voyager 2 took a so-called "grand tour" of the solar system when it visited the gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s by taking advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs once every 176 years.

Reaching a little here, but 1+7+6 = 14 which is 7 + 7. Probably a coincidence, but this article is packed full of numbers of occult significance, and several of them are even divisible by one such number, 11.

It's hard to imagine this was an intentional encoding on the part of occultists working for NASA over the lifespan of this project. It's easier to imagine these as hyperdimensional vectors intersecting our perceivable 4-D existence, perhaps inherently blessing the advancement of consciousness anywhere it develops.

Or maybe it just is the occultists at NASA. Who knows.

[justdrew]

NASA Finds Cause of Voyager 2 Glitch

Earlier this month, engineers suspended Voyager 2’s science measurements because of an unexpected problem in its communications stream. A glitch in the flight data system, which formats information for radioing to Earth, was believed to be the problem. Engineers were able to replicate the glitch in a computer lab, showing that a single bit flip was responsible. NASA plans to reset Voyager’s memory tomorrow.

The spacecraft is so far away it takes nearly 13 hours for a radio signal from Earth, traveling at the speed of light, to reach it, and another 13 hours to receive a response.

[82_28]

NASA Finds Cause of Voyager 2 Glitch

Earlier this month, engineers suspended Voyager 2’s science measurements because of an unexpected problem in its communications stream. A glitch in the flight data system, which formats information for radioing to Earth, was believed to be the problem. Engineers were able to replicate the glitch in a computer lab, showing that a single bit flip was responsible. NASA plans to reset Voyager’s memory tomorrow.

The spacecraft is so far away it takes nearly 13 hours for a radio signal from Earth, traveling at the speed of light, to reach it, and another 13 hours to receive a response.

So now they're claiming it isn't aliens?

[justdrew]

NASA Finds Cause of Voyager 2 Glitch

Earlier this month, engineers suspended Voyager 2’s science measurements because of an unexpected problem in its communications stream. A glitch in the flight data system, which formats information for radioing to Earth, was believed to be the problem. Engineers were able to replicate the glitch in a computer lab, showing that a single bit flip was responsible. NASA plans to reset Voyager’s memory tomorrow.

The spacecraft is so far away it takes nearly 13 hours for a radio signal from Earth, traveling at the speed of light, to reach it, and another 13 hours to receive a response.

So now they're claiming it isn't aliens?

yeah, just a boring old bit-flip