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[return to "NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2"]
1. eimrin+m6[view] [source] 2023-07-31 11:18:28
>>belter+(OP)
> The probe is currently around 32 billion kilometers from Earth, and gets 15km further away every second.

I beg anybody to rephrase it understandingly with using some units similar to football fields. Is it possible to launch a little cheap rocket with a transmitter just to correct Voyager's position?

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2. gregsh+gI[view] [source] 2023-07-31 14:45:33
>>eimrin+m6
Here's a 'wrong' but possibly helpful comparison, in the spirit of football fields:

32 billion kilometers is about 100 times the distance a satellite travels from earth to Mars. [1]

That Earth-Mars trip is estimated in the same article to take 4 months, so figure 400 months or 30+ years to shoot another satellite out to reach Voyager 2.

This is ignoring planetary slingshot math, the extra speed to 'catch' voyager 2, and surely lots of other details. Personally I find years and "mars" to be more intuitive in this case than trillions of football fields.

[1]https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/cruise/#:~:text=The%....

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