I just got an email from the planetary society stating that the US congress is considering terminating the Hubble and Voyager probes to save just a lil bit of money for next years budget. Sign the petition at http://www.planetary.org/voyager_hubble/ to help stop the destruction of these projects. "Consider the Voyager probes. After three long decades
of travel, passing Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, Voyager 1 has just now reached the heliosheath -- the very outer edge of our solar system -- with Voyager 2
close behind. Shutting the program down at this moment
is pure folly, the worst kind of false economy: it will save a pittance...but irretrievably lose us the
opportunity of a lifetime."

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What do you mean by "terminating" the Voyager probe? It's out there and pretty much beyond reach. Do you mean that NASA (or whomever) is going to stop listening for signals? Would the Planetary Society be able to just listen to the data coming back directly?

I just got an email from the planetary society stating that the US congress is considering terminating the Hubble and Voyager probes to save just a lil bit of money for next years budget. Sign the petition at http://www.planetary.org/voyager_hubble/ to help stop the destruction of these projects. "Consider the Voyager probes. After three long decades
of travel, passing Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, Voyager 1 has just now reached the heliosheath -- the very outer edge of our solar system -- with Voyager 2
close behind. Shutting the program down at this moment
is pure folly, the worst kind of false economy: it will save a pittance...but irretrievably lose us the
opportunity of a lifetime."

---

<a href="http://www.davidcthompson.com">David Thompson</a>, Intellectual Property Law

<a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/slaps/">Stanford Law and Policy Society</a>

Would the Planetary Society be able to just listen to the data coming back directly?

Unfortunately, no. For Voyager to function, it needs ground crew to tell it what to do. Just to communicate with Earth, it has to be told where to point its antenna! If its going to run any experiments, those commands have to be uploaded, and if it malfunctions it needs a team of troubleshooters to figure out what the heck went wrong, and what to do about it. Furthermore, since is so far out there, communicating requires some powerful equipment.

Voyager has greatly outlived its originally intended mission to explore the planets, but it is still functioning, and could still be used. Is it worth devoting the resources necessary to keep it running in order to study solar wind interacting with cosmic rays when those resources could go towards other NASA projects? I don't know enough about the science or the actual operating costs to answer that question.

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Thanks for the info, I didn't realize that Voyager couldn't even aim its own antenna without help.

This seems like an ideal time for NASA to re-evaluate its priorities in general, but that's a discussion for another thread.

Would the Planetary Society be able to just listen to the data coming back directly?

Unfortunately, no. For Voyager to function, it needs ground crew to tell it what to do. Just to communicate with Earth, it has to be told where to point its antenna! If its going to run any experiments, those commands have to be uploaded, and if it malfunctions it needs a team of troubleshooters to figure out what the heck went wrong, and what to do about it. Furthermore, since is so far out there, communicating requires some powerful equipment.

Voyager has greatly outlived its originally intended mission to explore the planets, but it is still functioning, and could still be used. Is it worth devoting the resources necessary to keep it running in order to study solar wind interacting with cosmic rays when those resources could go towards other NASA projects? I don't know enough about the science or the actual operating costs to answer that question.

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<a href="http://www.davidcthompson.com">David Thompson</a>, Intellectual Property Law

<a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/slaps/">Stanford Law and Policy Society</a>