7 points Stratoscope 1 hour ago 4 comments

WalterGR 42 minutes ago | parent

This is an essentially follow-up to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50315409 “NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth” (mashable.com)

waschl 34 minutes ago | parent

Are there any projects/plans to send more probes to interstellar space? I mean Voyager is great and all, but it’s old and it seems it’s days are counted. More contemporary technology could bring us farer and more data on the long run.

cowlevel 30 minutes ago | parent

There's nothing out there to see. We only keep Voyager alive to be able to say that we did.

westurner 7 minutes ago | parent

List of artificial objects leaving the Solar System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_lea...

New Horizons 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons_2 :

> ~Thruster fuel cost

With commercial uplink as a service these days, what is a realistic multi-decade program cost for a deep space probe with DSN Deep Space Network or better for communications?

Could a solar sail like IKAROS or LightSail2 do Pluto or interstellar? Made of UV-resistant Lignin-Vitrimer with Lignin-derived Carbon Fiber?

Timeline of Solar System exploration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Solar_System_explo...