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?
Lv 5

Is Voyager-I still responding to the commands sent from Earth?

Also I wanna know how photograph was taken of It's radio signals? What would be It's real future, it will take 30,000 years to pass through just Oort Cloud & will take another 40,000 years to get close to star Gleise 445?

3 Answers

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  • ?
    Lv 7
    7 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Yes, it is still being commanded from earth and returning data. As the available power from the RTGs has declined, unused instruments and heaters are turned off to conserve power. Sometime in the next twenty years or so the available power will be too low for continued operation and data return will cease. The "photograph" of the radio signal is just a graphical representation of the radio signal strength from a radio telescope system, the Very Large Array, and is kind of meaningless. Your numbers for passing the Oort cloud and reaching the distance of Gleise 445 appear correct, at least they agree with the numbers on Wikipedia. It does not get close to that star, it will still be 1.6 light year away. It will pretty much fly on forever unless it hits something.

    Sorry Acetek, no chance it could ever be returned to earth. How could this be done, given that interstellar flight is a fairy tale? Remember that travel at or above the speed of light is impossible, and the amount of energy it would take to accelerate a spacecraft to even an appreciable fraction of the speed of light is unimaginably and impossibly huge. No chance that will EVER happen.

  • AEA
    Lv 4
    7 years ago

    Please click http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2013/voyager/ and read all about it. Yes, they imaged the radio signal sent by Voyager-I. It is a 22 Watt radio - similar to what a police cruiser will have but far far away from earth. It needs a huge dish antenna and very advanced receivers to view the signals. It still has power generation capacity left in its nuclear power station and very limited instruments (only two are working).

  • Tom S
    Lv 7
    7 years ago

    Yes it is, although many of its sensors have been shut-down. Radio signals can not be photographed.

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