Voyager funding Crisis

flynn · Mar 11, 2005

Voyager probes in funding crisis BBC NEWS Nasa's twin Voyager probes may have to close down in October to save money, the US space agency has said. Launched in 1977, Voyagers One and Two are now more than 14 billion and 11 billion km from Earth, respectively. They are on their final mission to locate the boundary between the Sun's domain and interstellar space. But the agency's Earth-Sun System division has had to cut its budget for next year from $74m to $53m, meaning that some projects will be abandoned. Although the Voyager probes are thought to have another 15 years of life left in them, they are very expensive to run, costing Nasa about $4.2m a year for operations and data analysis. Other missions like Ulysses, which was launched in 1990 to explore the Sun's polar regions, might also have to be abandoned after the end of the fiscal year in October. Although the decision is not yet final, some Nasa scientists are preparing themselves for the worst. Voyager project scientist Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology told Nature magazine: "We are currently developing a plan for shutdown." <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - Chuck Palahniuk. </div>

najab · Mar 11, 2005

See this thread.

flynn · Mar 11, 2005

Oops Sorry. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - Chuck Palahniuk. </div>

najab · Mar 11, 2005

Not a problem - I do it all the time! <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" />

maintdir · Apr 21, 2005

Executioner's Song: Deciding Which Space Missions Live or Die Article by Leonard David. Great article Leonard, but is there any reason that any of the current missions should die? If NASA wants to end any current mission it should first explore the idea of selling the mission to an educational or scientific institution. Or sell the mission to the lowest bidder. The missions could be considered government surplus and sold. The missions would continue to operate only under private control. The scientific data would still be collected and available to the scientific community (maybe for a nominal fee this is private enterprise). There should be no reason to end any mission unless there is a lack of interest or hardware failure.

georgeniebling · Apr 21, 2005

and as we all know .... if we aren't nice to Voyager, they'll come back as V'GER and reak havoc on Earth until the crew of the Enterprise arrives to save the day .... Trivia question: V'GER was, of course, Star Trek: The Motion Picture but wasn't there an episode of the original series that involved a NASA satellite that returned home to Kirk (who it thought was the same Kirk that had built it)? Man, I love Google .... it was the episode "The Changling" and the name of the probe was "Nomad".

SpaceKiwi · Apr 22, 2005

It would be extremely disappointing to lose the Voyagers for the sake of a few million a year, if only for the fact that it takes so darn long to get vehicles out that far. Now that they are there, we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to extract whatever additional science they can furnish us with. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Who is this superhero? Henry, the mild-mannered janitor ... could be!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bring Back The Black! </div>

teije · Apr 22, 2005

This has been asked before, but I don't remember seeing any real answer to it. So funding is out for the voyagers (and ulysses and some others too btw.) Very well, I don't like it, but I can understand that NASA has a limited budget and must prioritize. However, as stated above, they have approx. 15 years of life and quite a bit of science left in them. A big waste to just leave them! So, why can't NASA just sell them. E.g. On e-bay, to whoever wants it, to whoever NASA wants to have it, for a lot of money, or for a token fee of $1,-. Heck, give them away if there are legal reasons not to sell them! And I mean the works! Operations, maintenance (if there is any... not sure...,) data analysis, even ownership of the scientific results and know how. There are two reasons I can think of not to. I'm not sure if they hold. Anyone that can tell me? 1st reason: Legal. The Voyagers are owned by Nasa I think? Which is basically the American government, and for reasons unknown to me they can't sell the spacecraft. Is this correct? 2nd reason: Time on the DSN. It's the only thing in operations that I can't think of an immediate way to do by any 3rd party that would be responsible for the Voyagers. I have no clue if you can simply buy time on DSN? Is their manifest full? Or is there plenty of capacity. Are there any more DSN's then THE DSN? (I dunno how to express that sentence more clear. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> ) Are there other reasons that I have not mentioned or are there reasons why mine hold or don't hold? There's a lot of talk about commercialisation of space exploration lately. Fine, good thing! Then go ahead and do it! It is really common in almost any industry to just sell assets that you don't need anymore or that are no longer cost effective. I see a market here for quite a few 'second hand spacecraft.' <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> All you need is someone that will buy. I guess

redgryphon · Apr 22, 2005

The issue of funding for extended missions came up in congressional hearings this week. The NASA leaders at the hearings were forced to admit they were relying on a prioritized list of missions created years ago. Then they were forced to say that they would stop "listening" to the missions in order to save $4 million. After that there was a pregnant pause. There is no way Congress will allow a public relations fiasco like this just to save $4 million. The Congressman basically called it for what it is, a "rallying of the faithful" to prevent any cuts in NASAs budget. I am not worried about the Voyager missions being terminated.

yurkin · Apr 22, 2005

4 million in cash now or Voyager gets it, Nothing quite as effective as extortion to raise money.

summoner · Apr 22, 2005

Another question to ask, is how much science is really coming from these now? I honestly don't know, so I'm not trying to make a judgement, but if there isn't much data coming back that is valuable then at some point you would need to shut it down. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:271px;background-color:#FFF;border:1pxsolid#999"><tr><td colspan="2"><div style="height:35px"><img src="http://banners.wunderground.com/weathersticker/htmlSticker1/language/www/US/MT/Three_Forks.gif" alt="" height="35" width="271" style="border:0px" /></div>

grooble · Apr 22, 2005

The probe will still be there whether nasa funds the mission or not. They could always re-establish it when there is some money left over once the shuttle is scrapped.

CalliArcale · Apr 25, 2005

That's an interesting question. What would be the legal reaction if some knowledgeable person with lots of cash managed to work out how to control Voyager, built the neccesary equipment (or leased time on the DSN), and, after NASA terminates the mission, essentially hijacked it? Voyager would respond to the hijacker just as it would to NASA, as long as it's getting instructions it can understand. Would this be considered theft? Presently, governments (not just the US) retain ownership of all downed spacecraft components -- and more than one government has vigorously (and successfully) defended that ownership in court. Dead spacecraft are still the property of their original owner, and so normal salvage rules do not apply. What, then, would be the ramifications of an opportunistic third party taking control of the Voyagers after the mission is terminated? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

najab · Apr 25, 2005

Could they realistically expect to lease the DSN time though?

SpaceKiwi · Apr 25, 2005

To follow up on Calli's question, could a sufficiently wealthy person gain partial control of the Voyagers by building him/herself a single 70m dish? What kind of cost would we be talking here? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Who is this superhero? Henry, the mild-mannered janitor ... could be!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bring Back The Black! </div>

najab · Apr 25, 2005

I know of one enterprising amature radio-astronomer in the states who built his own 35m dish. I think it actually cost less than $100,000! But it's not the dish that'll cost ya, is the liquid helium cooled transceivers.

SpaceKiwi · Apr 25, 2005

I think it actually cost less than $100,000! <img src="/images/icons/shocked.gif" />!!! Now that's dedication to your hobby! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Who is this superhero? Henry, the mild-mannered janitor ... could be!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bring Back The Black! </div>

chew_on_this · Apr 25, 2005

...wonder if they'd take a check?

teije · Apr 26, 2005

How exact would tracking need to be (if you would use an 'amateur dsn') The voyagers are an awful long way out, so they don't move too much along the heavens. On the other hand, I have no idea how long it takes to upload a series of commands, or how precise your aiming must be. Anyone? Also, is it possible to (privately) lease time on the DSN? Calli? najaB? others? About the legal issue. So the government could probably succesfully in court stop anyone from starting to h(ij)ack voyager after they abandoned it. The question is: Would they? It would be very childish to do so, and I guess the general public would not accept that behaviour from their government. But.... you never know....

najab · Apr 26, 2005

The aiming would have to be pretty tight, but the tracking would be the same as for any deep space celestial object, they're far enough out that they appear to be as motionless as 'stars' - at least over the period of hours.As for leasing DSN time, I don't think that's going to happen. Not so much because of Government rules and regulations, but because the DSN is just so busy that they don't have the time to lease! They've added a lot of capacity over the last decade or so, but the mission requirements have been going up faster. I'll see if I can find the list of missions they are currently supporting, but it's just about all of them!

CalliArcale · Apr 26, 2005

Power is a big issue too. Voyager is really really really far away; you need a powerful transmitter with a big focusing dish to talk to it, and you need a big dish to collect enough of its signal to understand its reply. At the end, Pioneer 10 could only communicate via Areceibo -- that's how faint it had become. I don't think any amateur equipment could talk to Voyager 1 or 2. You'd need the money to build a really big dish. And, depending on timing concerns, you might need several scattered around the globe. As of February, the round-trip signal time for Voyager 1 was over 26 hours, and over 21 hours for Voyager 2. So if you want to do any two-way communications, you may need to time things very carefully unless you've got dishes scattered around the world, lest the Earth's rotation move the spacecraft out of the sky before its reply can reach you. I agree about leasing DSN time; they don't have enough time to lease! They might make the effort, though, for something as near and dear to so many hearts as Voyager. They do lease to foreign entities, such as ESA. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

ariadne_ac · May 17, 2005

does anyone have an update on this subject? I sent an email to NASA and it was suggested I contact Richard.R.Fisher@nasa.gov and Eric.R.Christian@nasa.gov with my concerns about cutting off the funding.

holmec · May 17, 2005

So its a communcations operations problem. Too bad it costs so much. If the communcations were all automated on a system that listened to other missions as well there would be much less cost. That way analysis could be done as funds were available. It would be a shame to loose the data that they are putting out. What if we made and launched a unmanned ship that would pick up the signal from Voyager and compile it and send it back to earth in a periodic format. Kinda of a relay station with a brain. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off </div>

mrmorris · May 17, 2005

"What if we made and launched a unmanned ship that would pick up the signal from Voyager..." The signal from Voyager is so faint that it requires a huge radiotelescope to receive enough to be decipherable. Essentially only the Deep Space Network has the capability to do this. A satellite would not be a viable replacement.

Voyager funding Crisis

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