[MEDIA=twitter]1058037869837717505[/MEDIA][ATTACH=full]205447[/ATTACH]
I smell a rat here. A big nasty rat. A lot is being hidden from us and they are withdrawing these probes one by one citing some sick reason.
End of an era. A good number of probes launched about a decade ago are retiring for good. They were launched when NASA had good funding from the federal government. Trump is cutting NASA’s budget and it may be a while till we see these many probes and telescopes in the sky.
There’s nothing fishy, it ran out of fuel. The on board instruments are still working but with no fuel for proper position, it’s useless.
Here’s some more fuel for your conspiracies:
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still active since their launch back in 1977
“41 years, 2 months and 12 days elapsed
Planetary mission: 12 years, 1 month, 12 days
Interstellar mission: 29 years and 30 days elapsed (continuing)”
Fuel concerns?
“Voyager 1 's extended mission is expected to continue until around 2025 when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough electric power to operate its scientific instruments.”
Over to you…
But the voyager probes are travelling in a linear fashion through space. I bet they cant fire their thrusters any more to position themselves.
An orbitting space craft on the other hand needs to continuosly position itself to look at different segments of the cosmos.
It’s all in jest man, but you’d think they would have figured it out already.
In no way am I belittling the 11 years that the mission has ran or even the overall progress they’ve made.
Ninja Edit: From a layman’s perspective the Kepler and Dawn missions have come to an end because of fuel issues. Irrespective of cost concerns why don’t they use a fuel system similar to the ones in Voyager. Feel free to point me to information on the same matter.
I think you’re confusing fuel for thrusters and power for on board instruments. The Voyager probes have two power sources. Fuel for firing the thrusters and an isotope generator for on board instruments. The Voyager probes still have fuel (for firing thrusters) but they’re useless now because they will never use them. The other power source for on board equipment is the one that will run out. This is the exact opposite with the Dawn and Kepler. Their power sources for on board equipment are still there and active but useless if the probes can’t reorient to send info back to earth after observing space. Fuel for thrusters runs out much faster if the probe is being reoriented all the time.
It’s possible I am confusing the two, it is “rocket science” after all.