As the Voyager mission is winding down, so, too, are the careers of the aging explorers who expanded our sense of home in the galaxy.
Tangled Bank Studios, the educational film arm of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has made "The Farthest—Voyager in Space", a video about Voyager for its 40th anniversary. It's mostly about the human element, and the thrill of discovery, with sessions with many of the principal designers and operators (those still alive, of course, plus some who are dead, such as Carl Sagan). It also has lots of old videos of building, launch, and operation. The main point, as I saw it, was how unexpected each of the planets, and particularly the many moons, turned out to be - most folks were expecting cold, dead worlds like the Earth's moon, but the discoveries could not have been more different. For those not old enough the remember, it was like New Horizons times 4, as they went past each planet in turn.
The Loyal Engineers Steering NASA’s Voyager Probes Across the UniverseQuoteAs the Voyager mission is winding down, so, too, are the careers of the aging explorers who expanded our sense of home in the galaxy.https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/magazine/the-loyal-engineers-steering-nasas-voyager-probes-across-the-universe.html
Quote from: Star One on 08/04/2017 07:59 pmThe Loyal Engineers Steering NASA’s Voyager Probes Across the UniverseQuoteAs the Voyager mission is winding down, so, too, are the careers of the aging explorers who expanded our sense of home in the galaxy.https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/magazine/the-loyal-engineers-steering-nasas-voyager-probes-across-the-universe.htmlI was interested in this tidbit: "The three antenna dishes big enough to register them are shared, so Voyager gets only four to six hours of reception time per spacecraft per day; outside these often odd windows, their data dissipate into the ether. "Does the DSN really give 8-12 hours of dish time a day to the Voyagers?
Quote from: david1971 on 08/05/2017 02:58 amI was interested in this tidbit: "The three antenna dishes big enough to register them are shared, so Voyager gets only four to six hours of reception time per spacecraft per day; outside these often odd windows, their data dissipate into the ether. "Does the DSN really give 8-12 hours of dish time a day to the Voyagers? What's great is this caused me to go to the DSN page to see the current activity, and three dishes at Goldstone are current receiving and transmitting to Voyager 1. In terms of 8-10 hours per day, I'd venture that on average that's right and varies by day and what other operation/communication is taking place that might take precedence.Good point here is that each of the three DSN locations have multiple dishes, so each location can multitask, as seen in the attachment.
I was interested in this tidbit: "The three antenna dishes big enough to register them are shared, so Voyager gets only four to six hours of reception time per spacecraft per day; outside these often odd windows, their data dissipate into the ether. "Does the DSN really give 8-12 hours of dish time a day to the Voyagers?
IIRC the time slots for Voyager are that long because the intruments are now transmitting live data. It's not possible any more to record data and play it back later, as the data rate needed for transmission has dropped below the lowest playback speed of the tape recorder.
Science Data Acquisition StrategyScience data are returned to earth in real time at 160 bps. Real time data capture uses 34 meter Deep Space Network (DSN) resources with the project goal to acquire at least 16 hours per day of real time data per spacecraft. This goal is not always achieved due to the competition for DSN resources with prime mission projects and other extended mission projects.Three times per week, Voyager 1 has 48 seconds of high rate (115.2 kbps) PWS data recorded onto the Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) for later playback. Voyager 1 has six playbacks per year. The playbacks require 70 meter and 34 meter DSN support for data capture. After transmission of the data (either real time or recorded) to JPL, it is processed and made available in electronic files to the science teams located around the country for their processing and analysis.
Quote from: ChrisGebhardt on 08/05/2017 03:12 amQuote from: david1971 on 08/05/2017 02:58 amI was interested in this tidbit: "The three antenna dishes big enough to register them are shared, so Voyager gets only four to six hours of reception time per spacecraft per day; outside these often odd windows, their data dissipate into the ether. "Does the DSN really give 8-12 hours of dish time a day to the Voyagers? What's great is this caused me to go to the DSN page to see the current activity, and three dishes at Goldstone are current receiving and transmitting to Voyager 1. In terms of 8-10 hours per day, I'd venture that on average that's right and varies by day and what other operation/communication is taking place that might take precedence.Good point here is that each of the three DSN locations have multiple dishes, so each location can multitask, as seen in the attachment.The daily DSN Space Flight Operations Schedules are posted at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/mission/status/The Voyagers need either a 70m dish or an array of two 34m dishes to receive telemetry. Each DSN site has one 70m and three 34m dishes, except Goldstone, which has an additional 34m dish. Voyager 2 is far enough south that it is only visible from Canberra, giving it fewer scheduling options.
Any chance we could get another big DSN dish built, perhaps in South Africa or Chile/ Argentina?
That still begs the question of whether NASA and the international community want to increase the southern polar DSN capacity.Semi OT but is there operational advantages to having large arrays of smaller dishes (the VLA strategy) compared to having one big dish (the Arieebo strategy)?