this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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CNN: 47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft just fired up thrusters it hasn’t used in decades (www.cnn.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)
  1. Billions.
  2. Little to Nothing. Because they wouldn't make it as far as fast as the Voyager probes because they got a massive gravitational assist from a rare alignment that only happens every 176 years. All the other planets needed to be aligned appropriately for this journey at this speed. New horizons may leave the solar system in 43 if we don't lose contact. And they already want to shut the program down. NH is about 10000 km/h slower than Voyager 1.

Best to use targeted probes to explore things we haven't before. Ask different questions and if they leave the solar system, good on them. But I'd prefer orbital data satellites around all the ocean moons in the outer solar system.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

you answered both questions