5 NASA Spacecraft That Are Leaving Our Solar System for Good:
For millennia, humans have gazed up at the stars and wondered what it would be like to journey to them. And while sending astronauts beyond the solar system remains a distant dream, humanity has already launched five robotic probes that are on paths to interstellar space.
Each of these craft was primarily designed to explore worlds in the outer solar system. But when they finished their jobs, their momentum continued to carry them farther from the Sun. Astronomers knew their ultimate fate was to live among the distant stars. And that's why all but one of these spacecraft carries a message for any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find it along the way.
They are:
- Pioneer 10
- Pioneer 11
- Voyager 1
- Voyager 2
- New Horizons
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Five NASA Spacecraft That are Leaving Our Solar System for Good
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(Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 30 2020, @10:37AM (2 children)
we saw how this ends [fandom.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @03:07PM (1 child)
I should have checked your link before posting my comment about V'ger.
In William Shatner's non-canon novels [fandom.com], V'ger is also the origin of the Borg.
I'll pose this question. If the Borg encountered early 21st century humanity, would they deem us unworthy of assimilation [fandom.com] as they did with the Kazon?
Perhaps the clusterfuck that is 21st century human society may have ancillary benefits. Possible extraterrestrial invaders might deem that we are not worth the time or resources required to conquer us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @03:50PM
(Dalek voice) Exterminate!...Exterminate!...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @12:47PM
Assuming we have a civilisation then, let us also assume billybob is gonna sleep drive his sn of space x ute into one of the probes. Thus a mangled corpse is all will be found, probably by other earthlings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @02:16PM
Be careful what you wish for. This is how you get V'ger.
Let's just hope V'ger didn't watch last night's debate. That would surely be all the evidence it needs to start removing the carbon unit infestation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @05:52PM
Aw, come on. It would be rather disappointing if a large number of people couldn't name those five. Maybe not get the mission numbers correct, but at least the mission names.
Then again, I hate getting old and realizing that younger people don't care much for important things that happened during my lifetime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @07:02PM
There will be a debate on whether to leave them alone or retrieve them for a museum display
(Score: 3, Informative) by nishi.b on Wednesday September 30 2020, @09:41PM (1 child)
I was disappointed not to see in the article their speed and distance relative to the sun .
I found rough answers from wikipedia [wikipedia.org] for those interested:
- Pioneer 10: 122 AU, 12 km/s from this graph. [wikipedia.org]
- Pioneer 11: 104 U, 11.2 km/s
- Voyager 1: 150 AU, 17 km/s from this graph. [wikipedia.org]
- Voyager 2: 121 AU, 15.4 km/s
- New Horizon 49 AU, 14 km/s from this graph [wikipedia.org]
Finally a global trajectory of all those probes [wikimedia.org] (each dot on the line is the position at the start of each year, with the year written every 5 years).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2020, @02:59AM
Cool question/answer with plot here [stackexchange.com].