Comment on The diagnosis is in—bad memory knocked NASA’s aging Voyager 1 offline

• chuckleslord@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s not in an orbit. Well, it technically is, but it moved far enough away that that orbit no longer intersects with the solar system’s SOI. That was the whole point of the voyager probes, to go out into deep space. That’s why we sent them out with our mix tapes

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  • frezik@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You’re saying the same thing by a different route. It’s orbit through the galaxy eventually comes back around to us.

    Incidently, this is also why we can’t just send nuclear waste on a solar escape trajectory. It eventually comes back.

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    • jmiller@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It won’t have started getting closer again before the Milky Way collides with the Adromeda galaxy in 5 Billion years, so it and anything we send on a similar path isn’t coming back.

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• Nighed@sffa.community ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  isn’t it on an escape trajectory?

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• EatATaco@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Is it in orbit? And more importantly, is it in orbit around us?

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  • frezik@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It is, but not around us. It doesn’t matter, because that orbit still comes back around.

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    • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It won’t necessarily come back. Till the orbits of Voyager and the Solar system intersect, we would’ve merged with Andromeda, which would completely change all orbits in unpredictable ways. So no, you cannot say with confidence that Voyager will return back to the Solar system before the Sun dies purely using orbital mechanics.

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    • EatATaco@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I would believe that if the universe was not constantly expanding, that would be mathematically true. I’m not mathematician, but I think with a constantly expanding universe, that’s not a mathematical certainty.

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      • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        As I understand it, expansion doesn’t really affect local systems like galaxies directly/significantly. It’s not really a factor for voyager returning or not.

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    • Zink@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Maybe in some perfect high school physics problem context. Ever heard of the three body problem? How about the million body problem zooming through the galaxy?

      Why would be expect a deep space probe to return to earth when it’s going to interact with many objects with millions of times the mass of the earth?

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