Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data.
It is amazing they can detect and communicate to something with such a weak signal so far away.
So far away that it takes an entire day to get the signal to it. The earth to the sun is 8 minutes.
And somehow we can still talk to it. It’s amazing.
About 1/3 of a % of a lightyear that’s hardcore that we’ve gotten something out that far.
It also gives you an idea of how big space is. Lots and lots of nothing.
This, coupled with the improbable idea that it could be “found” someday, has got to be one of the most exciting and magical concepts in science ever
1-2 day ETA for an interstellar telegram lol
I was actually looking into this a little bit recently and it turns out the Voyager spacecraft launched with 23 watt radio transmitters but at the distance it takes a 72 meter dish to capture the signal and at its capture it is one attowatt. I don’t remember my system right offhand, but it’s something like a billionth of a billionth of a watt. It’s stupidly small.