A pretty amazing thing might happen tonight on Mars

Something a bunch of nearly hairless apes made is about to leave the sun's sphere of influence -- that is pretty damn cool. Plus, "heliosheath" does sound vaguely sexual.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/signs_changing_fast.html

I wonder if the whole debate over Pluto being a planet will kick up again when New Horizons reaches everyone's favorite dwarf planet in 2015. People do seem awfully attached to it.

 

Astronomers currently estimate there may hundreds of KBOs bigger than Pluto, so if Pluto is re-planetized, the list may get very long indeed.

The Voyagers never went near Pluto on the way out -- but they're now more than twice as far from the sun.

I read (or heard) recently that the nuclear generators on board the Voyagers are expected to continue functioning at least to some minimal extent for another 20-30 years.

 

The NASA link said at least 2020, but as we've seen with Spirit and Opportunity, these things sometimes greatly exceed their life expectancy.

 

The NASA link said at least 2020, but as we've seen with Spirit and Opportunity, these things sometimes greatly exceed their life expectancy.
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Yeah, I think the "official" estimate is they'll run for another decade, but they really don't have any moving parts, and the power generator is run off the decay of a radioisotope, which is also a pretty static process. And they aren't going to get any colder -- the exterior parts of the Voyagers have been effectively at absolute zero (about 5 Kelvin) for the last 25 years.

So really there isn't any reason they won't go on generating at least a glimmer of power, and broadcasting, even if only faintly, for a few more decades. Probably the hasta la vista moment will come when our Earthbound antennas can't detect the signal any more.

 

www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/science/space/going-going-still-going-voyager-1-at-solar-systems-edge.html

You know what's going to happen now that Voyager 1 is close to leaving the Solar System? The aliens are gonna send it right back, filled with nothing but duckface self-portraits. Fucking asshole aliens.

 

So the first Terran response to communication from an extraterrestrial civilization would be something like this:

 

Perhaps we should respond with a DVD of "Howard the Duck."