Quake3World

NASA today declared that the Voyager One probe, which lifted off from planet Earth in 1977, has officially become the first human-built object to leave the heliosphere and enter the cold and dark of interstellar space.

News article

I like the bit... NASA says it will have a "close approach" with a star called AC+79 3888 in 40,000 years' time.

another

And this from the CNN page.

The twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, 16 days apart. As of Thursday, according to NASA's real-time odometer, Voyager 1 is 18.8 billion kilometers (11.7 billion miles) from Earth. Its sibling, Voyager 2, is 15.3 billion (9.5 billion) kilometers from our planet.

So are you impressed it got this far? Thoughts?

It is impressive and I'm surprised its never been hit by anything....

Me too. It would appear pretty empty space

Whiskey 7 wrote:Me too. It would appear pretty empty space

Master of the fucking obvious...fuck u...

unlike your asshole, always filled

Memphis wrote:I'll laugh if it turns around and starts heading back.

But like PacMan coming across the other side of our solar system

Don Carlos wrote:It is impressive and I'm surprised its never been hit by anything....

there isn't a dorkface big enough for this so the default should have to suffice*



*(it doesnt)

There are loads of little rocks and stuff flying around in space...fuck, it made it through the asteroid belt safely which is impressive enough!

If SciFi has taught me anything, its that where there is an asteroid field, there is usually a crashed ship or two.

Don Carlos wrote:If SciFi has taught me anything

Don Carlos wrote:If SciFi has taught me anything, its that where there is an asteroid field, there is usually a crashed ship or two.

And a huge space worm hiding in an asteroid's crevasse.

Oh bugger, I forgot about that

MKJ wrote:

Don Carlos wrote:It is impressive and I'm surprised its never been hit by anything....

there isn't a dorkface big enough for this so the default should have to suffice*



*(it doesnt)

was thinking the same thing. a very very small thing whizzing through an unimaginably vast space. ffs Donald

GONNAFISTYA wrote:*vidya*

one of the linked videos at the end was this:

seremtan wrote:

MKJ wrote: there isn't a dorkface big enough for this so the default should have to suffice*



*(it doesnt)

was thinking the same thing. a very very small thing whizzing through an unimaginably vast space. ffs Donald

Knows the ISS and atleast 1 of the shuttles have been damaged by space rocks, few satellites too. The chance of it happening is pretty remote but it happens

Another thing I've heard about is bit flips, where radiation storms will cause memory to change values. It's not rare but doesn't usually cause damage, if it happens in a critical system it could prove devastating though. Heard about a Jap satellite that killed itself after firing a booster, another shut down its antenna so it had no way of communicating with Earth, Curiosity suffered one on the way to mars that resulted in it losing one of its memory banks and halving its data storage. The Curiosity one almost made the mission a failure by trying to shut itself down n all, it was in its 'to do' list but thankfully someone noticed before it had a chance.

I think It's pretty remarkable that it's made it this far

Looks like Voyager got a bloody nose from one -

Memory dumps are available in both engineering formats. These routine diagnostic procedures have detected and corrected intermittent memory bit flip problems, as well as detecting the permanent bit flip problem that caused a two-week data loss event mid-2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program

Just seen that Deep Impact has suffered a software glitch that's causing the puter to keep rebooting n all, no comms and spinning outta control

Carlos, if two galaxies were to collide , there is very little chance of anything actually "colliding", it would basically be a collision of gravitational fields between the two... now think about that type of real estate

[lvlshot]http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1308/arp271_gemini_2048.jpg[/lvlshot]

That's us in a few million / billion ? years btw

Tsakali wrote:Carlos, if two galaxies were to collide , there is very little chance of anything actually "colliding", it would basically be a collision of gravitational fields between the two... now think about that type of real estate

Dunno
Pretty intense trying to imagine galaxies colliding, but of the trillions of celestial bodies therein you'd think some would have to collide. Dunno.

the gaps are that big...galaxy images are misleading, cause of the perceived volume generated by star light that's bouncing off clouds of gas more or less.

Still.... Dunno

Appreciate lots of empty space...

then you must appreciate the inside of Geoff's head

U looking for a date fagot?...

losCHUNK wrote:That's us in a few million / billion ? years btw

I'm not worried. I plan on being dead by then.

uh, no. television and radio waves have been spreading out from earth for most of the 20th century and are now about 90 light years away, so could be detected as a non-natural pattern by the same tech we use for SETI

on the other hand, 90 LY is fuck all distance. the Milky Way alone is 120,000 LY across, and the nearest neighbouring galaxy Andromeda is 2.5 million LY away

this dog ain't out the garden. it ain't even off the kitchen step yet