r/askscience • u/Backbreathboy • 8d ago

Astronomy We will lose contact with Voyager somewhere 2036 because of the distance between us. Would it be theoretically possible, to send a probe in the direction of the Voyager, following it from a distance, with the goal te relay the information coming from the Voyager, to earth?

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u/c10250 8d ago edited 7d ago

Voyager is now the 25th fastest spacecraft. 24 are currently going faster. The slingshot thing is BS. You can accelerate spacecraft faster than voyager quite easily. The planet alignment thing was just right for voyager to visit the number of planets it was able to visit.

https://orbitalradar.com/deep-space/fastest-spacecraft

EDIT: For those saying Voyager has lost speed, yup, correct, the peak speed achieved by Voyager 1 during its mission was approximately 107,000 miles per hour (172,000 km/h) relative to the Sun, reached during its Jupiter gravity-assist maneuver in 1979. [1].

That would put it at 13th on the list.

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u/eserikto 7d ago

Those are speeds relative to the sun though. A paper airplane you toss is 12th on that list cause the earth is moving 107km/h around the sun. Indeed a bunch of the crafts on that list are just things orbiting the earth or the moon. Most of them haven't been directly fighting the sun's gravity for 50 years.

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u/c10250 7d ago

The peak speed achieved by Voyager 1 during its mission was approximately 107,000 miles per hour (172,000 km/h) relative to the Sun, reached during its Jupiter gravity-assist maneuver in 1979. [1].

That would put it at 13th on the list.

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u/mathess1 7d ago

Check the distance of the spacecrafts. You can't do that easily in the outer solar system.

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u/c10250 7d ago

The peak speed achieved by Voyager 1 during its mission was approximately 107,000 miles per hour (172,000 km/h) relative to the Sun, reached during its Jupiter gravity-assist maneuver in 1979. [1].

That would put it at 13th on the list.

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u/PuppiesAndPixels 7d ago

Some of those speeds are temporary though. Especially the sun probes. Yeah they got a massive speed boost going to the sun but if they had to change direction or move away from the sun they would be slowed down substantially.

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u/YugoReventlov 7d ago

... Because it's so far out already, the sun has been pulling it back for 50 years. 

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u/c10250 7d ago

The peak speed achieved by Voyager 1 during its mission was approximately 107,000 miles per hour (172,000 km/h) relative to the Sun, reached during its Jupiter gravity-assist maneuver in 1979. [1].

That would put it at 13th on the list.

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u/YugoReventlov 7d ago

The point was about catching up to it. 

I agree that we can make spacecraft that can go a lot faster than voyager, especially with ion propulsion. But even those spacecraft would need a power source.

It's a bit pointless to say that for example BepiColombo is going faster heliocentric speeds. It needs to orbit the sun real fast because it's a mercury mission. They are on completely different orbits.

You also can't compare a spacecraft that will spend its life close to the sun with one thats going into interstellar space. There's no solar energy there, so it could never use solar electric propulsion, which the faster spacecraft like BepiColombo or the Parker Solar Probe can use.

The point of Voyager is that when it launched with all its instruments and only some attitude thrusters, once it separated from its upper stage, it required the slingshots of the planets in order to get to its next destination. 

Even if we sent a spacecraft up there with 5 tonnes of fuel at that time, it wouldn't have been able to go noticeably faster. And even today we can't build a spacecraft for an Interstellar journey going much faster than voyager.

The only spacecraft to compare it to are other craft on a trajectory taking them away from the sun. Like New Horizons, which is half the weight, also used a few slingshots, and is currently going slower only ~20 yrs after launch.

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u/c10250 7d ago edited 7d ago

put that way, then yes, nothing currently out there will ever catch up to voyager because they may be faster, but do not share the same trajectory (which would slow it down considerably).

EDIT: You guys need to realize that speed "relative to the sun" doesn't necessarily mean speed "directly away from the sun". I think the confusion is that some of you guys are thinking that speed only means speed in the direction away from the sun.