NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Post

Voyager 1 has been exploring space longer than I’ve been alive. Remarkable. Just remarkable. But it’s another fact that really blows me away…. “Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and Voyager 2 is more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from the planet. The probes will mark 47 years of operations later this year”. To put this distance into perspective, it’s travelled—in 47 years— the distance light travels in less than a day. A DAY. The closest star to us with potentially habitable worlds is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4.22 LIGHT YEARS away. At the speed voyager is traveling it would take just shy of 80,000 YEARS to get to Proxima Centauri. 80,000 years ago on earth the middle Paleolithic timeline of human evolution was just ending— and the Toba volcano supereruption may have contributed to human populations being lowered to about 15,000 people. 15,000. Taking care of our planet is very, very important folks. Even if other habitable worlds are out there, they are at almost inconceivable distances away. We can do exploration and care for our home planet. It’s important to do both.

This is a truly impressive IT story. Imagine you have a really, really, really old Computer in this case dating back to 1979. you develop a massive hardware failure. the computer only provides gibberish output. You can’t replace it from a billion miles away. what do you do? Of course you reprogram it to avoid the damaged hardware and keep going as if nothing happened. Keep in mind that a modern IT grad wouldn’t even comprehend the old soft and hardware! The ultimate recycle approach.

Built to last. Quite an elegant design. Form and function like quality is made better by time.

For some perspective this has been running for over 4 decades on CPUs clocked at 250KHz and with around 68KB of memory. A testament to resilient and fault tolerant systems engineering!

The most distant humanmade object from Earth. Launched: 09.05.1977 Current Distance: 15,150,635,009 mi (162.98755854 AU) Estimated Velocity: 38,026.77 mph 🛰

Voyager 1: Waking Up After 3 Years and Sending Greetings From Interstellar Space! 🪐✨ Remember Voyager 1, the intrepid spacecraft that boldly ventured beyond our solar system? Well, it's back in the news, and this time, it's sending exciting data! After a three-year slumber due to a power issue, one of its science instruments has sprung back to life and is transmitting valuable data. This is a major development for the Voyager 1 mission, which launched in 1977. The recovered data is coming from the Plasma Science Experiment (PLS), a key instrument for studying the charged particles in space, especially in the interstellar medium. What does this mean? - New Insights into Interstellar Space: The recovered data from PLS will provide scientists with fresh information about the vast and mysterious region beyond our solar system. - Voyager 1's Resilience: Despite its age and distance (currently over 14 billion miles from Earth!), Voyager 1 demonstrates remarkable resilience, a testament to the ingenuity of its creators. #Voyager1 #InterstellarSpace #NASAScience #SpaceExploration This is a fantastic reminder of the incredible achievements of space exploration and the dedication of the scientists and engineers who make it possible. Let's celebrate Voyager 1's continued journey and the wealth of knowledge it continues to send back to Earth!

🚀#mdpisymmetry Excited to share an article with you. "Implementing a Relativistic Motor over Atomic Scales" 🔸https://lnkd.in/gj9KCJ3i 🔹Author: Asher Yahalom Ariel University 🔸Abstract: Current spacecraft mass is mostly fuel due the lack of fueling stations in space and the need to escape earth's gravity. A relativistic motor exchanging momentum with the electromagnetic field mitigates such considerations... #relativity #nanotechnology #relativistic #engine Physics and Symmetry Section

The first journal paper from the NSF-funded collaboration between the UB SSDC Lab and Souma Chowdhury's UB ADAMS Lab is out! It is titled "Concurrent Design Optimization of Tether-Net System and Actions for Reliable Space-Debris Capture", published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. We propose a reliability-based optimization framework to simultaneously optimize the net design and its launch and closing actions to minimize the system mass (case 1) or closing time (case 2) while preserving a specified probability of capture success in presence of uncertainties. Optimization results show that the mission success rate in the presence of uncertainties has increased from 75% to over 98%. The paper is at this link: https://lnkd.in/ecy45GRB