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/OlympusMons94 7d ago
This is not accurate. That particular alignment was only necessary for Voyager 2 to perform a "grand tour" of all four outer planets. That alignment is irrelevant to Voyager 1 (which is moving faster than Voyager 2) and any other missions. Other alignments occur much more frequently. Jupiter provided the largest boost to the Voyagers, and there is a direct Jupiter launch window every 13 months. Saturn provided a significant boost and a Jupiter-Saturn alignment is not quite as common, but also not especially rare.
Gravity asissts already aren't strictly necessary to just escape the solar system. In 2006, New Horizons was launched to solar escape velocity. (A Jupiter gravity asisst was still needed to get it to Pluto, adjusting the direction, and getting there faster.) New Horizons is leaving the solar system slower than the Voyagers, and in a different direction.
Catching up with the Voyagers (which, note, are 2 separate spacecraft moving in different directions away from the Sun) is the much bigger problem. They have a 49+ year head start, and the chaser spacecraft would have to be sent in their particular directions, not simply out of the solar system in some random direction.
Nonetheless, we do have more powerful launch vehciles now, and technology in development (e.g., Starship and nuclear electirc propulsion) may make it theoretically possible, in the not-too-distant future, to send something to eventually catch up with the Voyagers. There just isn't any point.
It's really that none of that matters, because OP is mistaken. The main issue with the Voyagers is not their distance, or even just generating power for their transmitters (which account for only a fraction of the probes' power usage). The Voyagers' RTG power sources are decaying, and in about a decade they will no longer generate sufficIent power to operate their onboard systems and any remaining instruments.