NASASpaceFlight.com Forum
Robotic Spacecraft (Astronomy, Planetary, Earth, Solar/Heliophysics) => Space Science Coverage => Topic started by: Hobbes-22 on 01/07/2022 07:05 pm
-
The Voyager Mission status page has a link (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#sfos) to the Spaceflight operations schedule for each month. I've attached the latest one.
This schedule has lots of acronyms, and only a partial explanation. Is there a document that explains these schedules?
Specifically, I'm trying to find out if the tape recorder on Voyager 1 is still working. If it is, there should be regular higher-speed downlink sessions to play back the tape. I suspect the TAPPOS en PWS abbreviations have to do with this (guessing Tape POSition and PWS playback), but that's guesswork on my part at the moment.
-
This helped me a bit:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/chapter2-3/ (https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/chapter2-3/)
And obviously you started here:
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/ (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/)
-
The Voyager Mission status page has a link (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#sfos) to the DSN Spaceflight operations schedule for each month. I've attached the latest one.
This schedule has lots of acronyms, and only a partial explanation. Is there a document that explains these schedules?
Specifically, I'm trying to find out if the tape recorder on Voyager 1 is still working. If it is, there should be regular higher-speed downlink sessions to play back the tape. I suspect the TAPPOS en PWS abbreviations have to do with this (guessing Tape POSition and PWS playback), but that's guesswork on my part at the moment.
This isn't a DSN schedule, it is the spacecraft schedule.
-
I did some more digging. In the schedule for Dec 18, 2021 I found the attached entry, showing playback for 6 hours at 1.4 kbit/s. They're using 4 antennas (at Madrid) in an array: 63 is the 70-m antenna, the others are 34 m diameter.
The TAPPOS/PWS entries elsewhere must be PWS data being recorded.
-
The TAPPOS/PWS entries elsewhere must be PWS data being recorded.
I think you're right. I count six of them in the eighteen-day log you linked to, which is roughly consistent with this description (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/science/):
"Three times per week, Voyager 1 has 48 seconds of high rate (2.8 kbps) PWS data recorded onto the Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) for later playback. Voyager 1 has six playbacks per year."
And they only appear in the Voyager 1 plan, which is consistent with Voyager 2 having stopped using its tape (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/science/thirty-year-plan/) in 2007. (At this point the tape seems to be used for PWS data only, and Voyager 2's PWS instrument degraded (https://space.physics.uiowa.edu/~wsk/vgr/recent.html) beginning in 2001.)
-
NASA prepares to power-down Voyager spacecraft after more than 44 years..
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1537754516367589376
-
NASA prepares to power-down Voyager spacecraft after more than 44 years..
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1537754516367589376
Just a clickbait headline that implies something that's not happening.
-
That's a misleading tweet, linking to a non-news article. Summary: the Voyager missions will end someday, but NASA doesn't know when. It depends on how the RTGs behave.
-
Ever sinds the 90's i was already trying to do the math how long it would take voyager 1 to reach 1 Light day distance , and if the power would last.
Not looked in to it for some time but i think it was somewhere in 2027 , i'm still keeping my fingers cross v1 can make it before going silent. Might sound stupid but to me it's like a mental barrier, if stars are light years away...then atleast the idea we got one light day out there suddenly getting to the stars seems a bit less impossible :) , one light week for a next mission?
-
NASA prepares to power-down Voyager spacecraft after more than 44 years..
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1537754516367589376
Just a clickbait headline that implies something that's not happening.
Years (now decades ago?), the projections for the Voyagers were that they would have enough power to continue scientific operations into the early and perhaps into the mid 2020s. We are here.
I clicked on what appears to be a press release through a different site. I didn't save the link or particularly even think that this is that newsworthy since it would confirm long held projections. I believe we should celebrate the incredible achievements of the spacecraft and people who made this exploration possible.
-
I recevied by X accounts @NSFVoyager2 and @Bernard1963 (many thanks Paul and Bernard!) the Voyager "SFOS Abbreviations and Acronyms" list attached.