Would Pioneer and Voyager probes encounter the Oort Cloud?
- Thread starter P Tom
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All four probes are well past the Kuiper Belt; that's at about 30-55 AU, and they're all around 75-80 AU or more.
The Oort Cloud is thousands to tens of thousands of AUs out and they're travelling at something like 2-3 AUs per year, so it would take centuries or millennia to get there. There's zero chance of observation, since neither Pioneer has been sending signals for years and the Voyagers will be lucky to last another decade or two. Also, the volume of space involved is so immense that the odds of randomly passing an Oort Cloud body are infinitesimal anyway.
We'd have more luck building a probe with modern or near-future technology, perhaps using a solar sail. Such a probe could get out there well before the defunct Pioneers and Voyagers could.
The Oort Cloud is thousands to tens of thousands of AUs out and they're travelling at something like 2-3 AUs per year, so it would take centuries or millennia to get there. There's zero chance of observation, since neither Pioneer has been sending signals for years and the Voyagers will be lucky to last another decade or two. Also, the volume of space involved is so immense that the odds of randomly passing an Oort Cloud body are infinitesimal anyway.
We'd have more luck building a probe with modern or near-future technology, perhaps using a solar sail. Such a probe could get out there well before the defunct Pioneers and Voyagers could.
Nope. Both Pioneer 10 and 11 have gone silent, their RTG power supplies depleted.
I think the Voyagers are still sending telemetery, but their RTGs will fail around 2020. Voyager 2 is at about 85 AU from the sun now, and travels a bit over 3 AU per year.
The Oort cloud is about 50,000 AU from the sun.
I think the Voyagers are still sending telemetery, but their RTGs will fail around 2020. Voyager 2 is at about 85 AU from the sun now, and travels a bit over 3 AU per year.
The Oort cloud is about 50,000 AU from the sun.
They may never make it there. Not necessarily due to power, but in the future, we might recover them.
Obligatory nerdy comment: unless the Klingons blow them to tiny bits before we can.
The fun part about this is that many people who are caretakers of the Voyager probes by that time haven't even been BORN yet... Think of the legacy that creates, and that they'd be responsible for.
Mark
The fun part about this is that many people who are caretakers of the Voyager probes by that time haven't even been BORN yet... Think of the legacy that creates, and that they'd be responsible for.
Mark
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Re: Would Pioneer and Voyager probes encounter the Oort Clou
I think we should build a probe, send it to Neptune using solar sail technology and then make a slingshot maneuver around Neptune and using rockets and a huge onboard fuel reserve blast the probe out to the Kupier belt to study some Kupier belt objects, it could be powered by solar power up till it cant generate enough power and then power up a small nuclear reactor to power it the rest of the way.
I think we should build a probe, send it to Neptune using solar sail technology and then make a slingshot maneuver around Neptune and using rockets and a huge onboard fuel reserve blast the probe out to the Kupier belt to study some Kupier belt objects, it could be powered by solar power up till it cant generate enough power and then power up a small nuclear reactor to power it the rest of the way.
Pictures of what? Space is huge and empty. It's not like the cartoons or bad movies where all the planets are conveniently in a straight line for a ship to go past. Once they passed the last planets they were targeted for, they never again got close enough to anything to resolve an image of it. At most, they could maybe have looked back at the Sun and taken a picture of it, but it would've just been a bright pinpoint.
There's also the question of how you define the edge of the Solar System. Beyond Neptune is the Kuiper Belt. Beyond that is the scattered disk, the Hills Cloud, and the Oort Cloud, all in orbit of the Sun and thus part of the Solar System, but stretching out to nearly a light year away in total.
One reasonable definition for the edge of the system is the heliopause, the region where the Sun's magnetic field and solar wind give way to the interstellar medium. Once the probes are in the ISM, they're technically in interstellar space, although they'd still have a long way to go before reaching the Oort Cloud. The Voyagers are currently in the transitional zone, the heliosheath, and are expected to reach the interstellar medium within a decade or two. The Pioneers haven't reached the heliosheath yet; in fact, P10 is heading down the "tail" of the Sun's magnetic field and thus won't be in the ISM for thousands of years.
Like I said, the Voyagers will run out of power in a decade or two and there will be nothing left to take care of. We'll be lucky if they even last long enough to send us any data on the ISM.
Fire said:
I think we should build a probe, send it to Neptune using solar sail technology and then make a slingshot maneuver around Neptune and using rockets and a huge onboard fuel reserve blast the probe out to the Kupier belt to study some Kupier belt objects, it could be powered by solar power up till it cant generate enough power and then power up a small nuclear reactor to power it the rest of the way.
We already have a probe en route to the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons was launched in January '06 on a course for Pluto. It passed Jupiter about a year later and sent back some valuable data about Jupiter and its environs. Astronomers are already searching for other Kuiper Belt Objects close enough to the probe's course that it could be assigned to do flybys of them as well.
Voyager 2 is about 75 AU away now. An AU is about 500 light-seconds, so it would take about 10.4 hours for a signal to reach us from there.
At this point, though, the probes are so low on power that most of their instruments have been shut down. There's no point in wasting energy on photos of nothing when there's more useful scientific data that can be gathered using other instruments.
V2 just gathered some useful data about the termination shock, which it crossed just over a week ago:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/voyager-1210.html
If the probes' power lasts another decade or two, then they should be able to send back some readings once they pass into the interstellar medium, letting us study it directly for the first time and learn about how it differs from the medium within the solar system. Not as sexy as pictures of planets and moons, but scientifically significant.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/voyager-1210.html
If the probes' power lasts another decade or two, then they should be able to send back some readings once they pass into the interstellar medium, letting us study it directly for the first time and learn about how it differs from the medium within the solar system. Not as sexy as pictures of planets and moons, but scientifically significant.
AFAIR, the cameras on both probes were long shut down.
Re: Would Pioneer and Voyager probes encounter the Oort Clou
What... you want pictures?
Fine, here's earth from 4 billion miles, courtesy of Voyager 1. No new ones, the imaging pulls too much power on the depleted RTGs to run any more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
This'll give you an idea about how empty spce really is.
AG
What... you want pictures?
Fine, here's earth from 4 billion miles, courtesy of Voyager 1. No new ones, the imaging pulls too much power on the depleted RTGs to run any more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
This'll give you an idea about how empty spce really is.
AG
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