Voyager 1 is still transmitting from beyond the heliosphere on 22 watts — less power than the bulb in your hallway — and the engineers who built it in the 1970s never expected we'd still be listening

inari@piefed.zip · 2 months ago

Voyager 1 is still transmitting from beyond the heliosphere on 22 watts — less power than the bulb in your hallway — and the engineers who built it in the 1970s never expected we'd still be listening

Dave.@aussie.zone · 2 months ago

The beamwidth of Voyager 1’s antenna is about 0.5 degrees. In practical terms, that’s very narrow, about an 8 metre wide beam at a kilometre distance.

At its current distance, by the time the beam reaches Earth it is 224 million kilometres wide, 1.5x the distance from the Earth to the sun.

Korhaka@sopuli.xyz · 2 months ago

Kinda puts the huge distances into a bit of perspective. How difficult is it to pick up that kind of signal? I struggle to get WiFi in the garden.

LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz · 2 months ago

https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/

The Deep Space Network is very impressive.

Voyager 1 is still transmitting from beyond the heliosphere on 22 watts — less power than the bulb in your hallway — and the engineers who built it in the 1970s never expected we'd still be listening

Voyager 1 is still transmitting from beyond the heliosphere on 22 watts — less power than the bulb in your hallway — and the engineers who built it in the 1970s never expected we'd still be listening

Voyager 1 is still transmitting from beyond the heliosphere on 22 watts — less power than the bulb in your hallway — and the engineers who built it in the 1970s never expected we'd still be listening half a century later.