science

18285 readers

97 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

228

CNN: 47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft just fired up thrusters it hasn’t used in decades (www.cnn.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Billions.
Little to Nothing. Because they wouldn't make it as far as fast as the Voyager probes because they got a massive gravitational assist from a rare alignment that only happens every 176 years. All the other planets needed to be aligned appropriately for this journey at this speed. New horizons may leave the solar system in 43 if we don't lose contact. And they already want to shut the program down. NH is about 10000 km/h slower than Voyager 1.

Best to use targeted probes to explore things we haven't before. Ask different questions and if they leave the solar system, good on them. But I'd prefer orbital data satellites around all the ocean moons in the outer solar system.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

you answered both questions