Presentation: January 2014

This month's AE presenter: Jeff
Date of presentation: 13-Jan-2014
Subject: Ten Billion Miles From Home: The Voyager Probes
Description: Jeff talked about the status of the Voyager missions 1 and 2, 35 years after their launch date.  He discussed a number of aspects to the missions, including: their location with respect to the solar system; where in the sky they could be found if one had a powerful enough telescope; Voyager 1's status as the most distant man-made object in existence; the 1970s technology used to build and monitor the probes; the trillions of bits of data they have sent back to Earth over their lifetimes; the faintness of their signals; their present condition; and finally, the imminent end to their transmissions (and therefore their missions) due to weakening of their nuclear power sources.

Download PDF (144kb)