appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-05, 06:47:

brostenen wrote on 2020-02-01, 17:13:

jmarsh wrote on 2020-02-01, 13:51:

Probably bad caps.

More likely that the fuel is nearly depleted. That is why they shut down instruments, one by one through the years.

Isn't it solar powered? Electronics failing due to radioactivity is a more probable cause methinks..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHW-RTG

The Sun's a bit dim that far out.

Thanks for the replies, folks! 😀

February 3rd, 2020: According to some Austrian news page, Voyager 2 is operating normal again.
Englisch translation available here.

Tiny update. February 14th 2020 (news):
30 years ago, Voyager 1 took a picture of „Pale Blue Dot“, earth, in a distance of 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles).

Sources:
https://earthsky.org/space/february-14- ... e-voyager
https://www.space.com/pale-blue-dot-voyager-1 … nniversary.html

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIA23 … upd20200212.jpg
Picture by NASA/JPL, public domain

Tiny update. July 30th 2020 (news):
Actual distance between Voyager 1 and sol is now equal to 150 times the distance of sun and earth (or in short, 150 AU).
According to the source(s), that's another milestone for the Voyager sisters.

Source: https://www.heise.de/news/NASA-Sonde-Voyager- … de-4860407.html
English Translation

It's amazing how long-lived 70s era technology really is. We can only hope that its knowledge is preserved for future generations.
For comparison, the electronics of the ancient AO-07 amateur radio satellite from 1974 is still working, despite that hard radiation.
Main reason why the sateliite failed at one point in its life was that its main power source was failing:
The AO-07 had NiCD batteries had caused a short, so the whole system was inoperable.
Once the batteries became an open-circuit, the solar panels were able to bring the venerable satellite back to life.
Unfortunately, the Voyager twins rely on RTGs with Plut.-238 (PuO2), which has a lifetime of 87,7 years,
but the efficiency of 6.5% of the old RTGs and the high power consumption of the sondes both lead to a much shorter lifetime in reality.

Source:
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecra … nstruments/rtg/
https://ukamsat.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/o … -7-in-space.jpg
https://www.amsat.org/two-way-satellites/ao-7/

Jo22 wrote on 2020-02-01, 11:53:

Klingons ?
A worm hole ?

Aczathoth?
Nyarlathotep?

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Cthulhu 2020! Why vote for the lesser evil?