Letting go is hard, especially when it concerns an irreplaceable space probe like the two Voyagers. Fortunately JPL engineers have managed to pull off a ‘big bang’ switch on Voyager 2, involving two heaters and another device that was kept on to keep providing sufficient heat to the spacecraft to allow it to keep functioning. After all, while the vacuum of space isn’t cold, out in deep space you’re radiating away all your precious heat.
Unfortunately the official press release is exceedingly limited in details, but The Register was kind enough to nag a NASA spokesperson about it, and gave us some technical details. The short version is that these heaters don’t just keep the electronics within a happy operating range, they also keep the fuel lines warm and capable of providing fuel for attitude adjustments.
With this switch, apparently enough of the rapidly diminishing power from the RTG has been freed up that the Voyager 2 has just gained a whole extra year on its extended mission. The JPL team hopes to perform the same switch on the Voyager 1 spacecraft soon, giving it a similar boost to its expected lifespan, before both of them go quiet in the depths of space.
Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip.
I wonder what would happen if Voyager 2 was fitted with a bog standard 300 kt nuke. Once it’s out of power we could detonate it and listen for RF emissions, maybe even observe it with telescope. Could be fun to reflect electrons off Solar System bow shock.
Remember, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
We generally avoid launching nuclear bombs into orbit, and have globally made it illegal to do so, for a few fairly convincing reasons.
Those treaties seem to be rapidly deteriorating, and people are playing around with the idea of using nuclear propulsion again. This is fine with me, but blowing up probes that far out in space is very short sighted. If that were the original goal, ok, but we have golden records on those probes that someone will enjoy finding some day.
A nuke in LEO could be used to destroy ISS so I get that US or Japan might not be happy about it. But even if you made something like a Tsar Bombard and detonated it on the Moon, or even on Pluto it’s going to be like throwing a bag of urine at dead buffalo. No one is going to care.
The danger has nothing to do with military intent, it’s the launch itself. Even with modern rockets you’re looking at a 1 to 5 percent chance of a catastrophic failure, turning a nuke strapped to it into a worldwide dirty bomb.
fortunately nukes do not go boom because they rocket they are on blew up. There have been many accidents with bombs and not one has not gone nuclear. There are many safety mecinisis in then to stop this. Not to methion that material in them is not that dangerous. Pre boom they are only slightly radioactive and odds are a chemical explosion would not even penetrate the bomb casing it self.
They don’t have to. The rocket itself is enough boom to make it into a shotgun blast of hot plutonium that lands somewhere along the trajectory of the rocket.
The materials are not only dangerous, but lethal if inhaled. You absolutely cannot risk a launch failure aerosolizing the payload into the atmosphere.
If 1 in 5 (non-test) launches was a catastrophic failure, we’d see many more cool explosions.
A quick search gives:
That’s probably a better success rate than many cars…
Are you under the impression that “1 to 5 percent” is “1 in 5”?
I have a ms in aerospace eng a phd in physics and 21 years as a US Marine. Of all the nukes that have been lost in fires, dropped unarmed or destroyed when the plane crashed not one as ever leaked the fizzle material. They are designed to survive just such worst case failures. While the fizzle material is indeed vary toxic there is just not that much of it. Also the bomb casings are really are designed to sit in a burring pudle of jet fuel that just got slammed in to the runway at extreme g forces for hours. The oh the rocket blew up and spred radioactive meterial every were is bullshit. If you are talking a two stage device there is about a golf ball size lump of meterial in them. If you are talking 3 stage there is an outer u235 jacket but even in the actual nuke detonation only about 20% of it actauly fissioned. U235 is very refractory and it take a shit ton of energy to get to vaporize or really even to melt.
A “phd in physics” calls it “fizzle material”?
That does raise the question of where this “phd” came from.
If grammar is the only thing you’re able to complain about, then I’m not talking to you (: HAND but please FOAD
Please, Mr. Aerospace Eng, look up what a “broken arrow” event is, and why to this day still noone can enter certain areas of Palomares. You still overlook aerosolization, and the threat it poses when the conventional explosive goes off and scatters 4 to 5 kg of finely-misted Fizzle Plutonium Meterial 239.
Fissile material is the correct term. The material in side a modern nuke is about the size of golf ball and it gets turned into something the size of peanut. They just do not have that much in it. pu 239 boiling point is 5842 °F you have to get it that hot to aerosize it. Polemro was a b28fi and something like 100kg plus of fissile material in then, they are not intrinsically safe like modern warheads. The explosive in one did detonate and spread contamination but it was fragments not aerolized. And it only cotanmiated about 1500 tons of soil not really enough to fill a back yard swimming pool.
Amazing. The “facts” in your comment range from misleading, to grossly exaggerated, to absurdly wrong. I think I’ll stop answering you now, this leads to nothing.
The danger is the radioactive material leaking. The explosion of a nuclear device is so specific that its delivery vehicle crashing could not possibly set it off. Previous nuclear weapon accidents prove this.
You seem to think that the primary physics package of a modern nuke ie w87 w88 b61 is the same size as the demon core that every on has seen. They are not. The entire primary with explosives, tampers and casing is actually smaller that the demon core. The primary in those 3 weapons is only about 10kt.
I wrote my master thesis on Xray propagation in energetic materials. That material is aerogel The primary’s sole job is to turn that aerogel to plasma. The plasma hits 10mill deg and 10mil psi in 20 or so nano scondeds the primary does not cause very much fusion at all. There is actauly a tugnston tamper between it and the secondary. That is what causes the fusion burn in the scondary. In the early designs the LiD6 and trituim was the fuel in the scondary. to those who saw castle bravo almost kill the us nuke scientist at the time quickly realized that what they was inert Li was inded very much not inert.
Once they figured all that they realized that they could make them verry verry small.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-61_bomb_(DOE).jpg
the metalic cylender on the left side with a rounded end and a blunt end is the physicis package. ie that is the actaull entire bomb. inside that is a priamry that is obly about 8 or so inches in dia, that the explosive lens, the tamper for the core and the pit inside the core. That make 10-15kt depending on the mod. the rest that is u235 jacket and the secondary.
When the primary goes off the aerogel inside that turns to the plasma i described above. It alone is enough to blow the thing apart. But meterial u235 jacket has mass thereroe it has intnertia. But since it take microsonds for that to happen since it take time to transfer the endgery to the bomb casing it absolult crush the secondary since it much less masive and the it moves first. It takes about 30 nano sconeds to burn the secondary. Now at about this time the xrays have also started pentrating the bomb casing and are now heating up the air right around. The bomb its self is still full intact as nothing has had time to even start moving.
this is the first flash and it also puts pressure on the out side of the bomb casing.
what happens next is the slower nutrons now have had time to get from crushed secondary which is done and make it to the u235 jacket and that starts a fission burn of it. so 140nano seconds from the time the explosive fire to its all over. at this point the xrays and head up the are to make it opaque and ti goes dark. The bomb itself is start to come apart and the thermal pulse now catches up to the opaque plasma ball started by the secondary and it cool enogh that light can once again escape and its all done.
Now U235 even 95+ enriched is only a weak alpah emiter it you can hold it in the plam of your hand and as long as you dont ingest it or lick nothing will happen to you. Pu239 depending on its mass may or may not be warm to the touch but even it is still an aphala emiter. The fallout from a nuke is caused from the decay products of the fishinable meerial of the nuke. Not the fuel. There is also a lot more caused by nutron absoripton of the meterial surounding it. These give off a lot of beta radiation and gama as the decay thru beta decay.
Congrats, by the name of science, I think that’s one of the most perverted ideas I ever heard.
Besides using pigeons in to navigate air missiles in the world wars etc.
“I think that’s one of the most perverted ideas I ever heard”
I suggest going to a doctor to check your hearing, last time I turned on the TV (sometimes the daily news is just enough) there were plenty of horrific things on show that (if you heard it) would have made think twice before writing that comment.
Thanks, and I don’t live in the US btw. Our TV programme is not like that.
And if I suggest going to a doctor to check my hearing,
then I’d like return the favor and do politely suggest that you
and the other commenter might consider to see psychiatrist or neurologist.
Because, the Voyager probes are symbols of peace and do literally carry the hopes and dreams of humanity (golden record).
They were one of the pinacles in human history, the one thing we humans will leave behind.
The idea alone about blasting them into pieces for a spectacular “boom” is sick, just sick.
It’s as ‘funny’ and pointless as cutting off your little sister’s doll’s head with a pair of scissors.
Seriously, I pitty you guys. I feel deeply sorry for your limited horizon and your meaningless life you seem to live.
There are so many wonders in life you must miss out on with such a sad existance.
IMHO. From a scientific point of view, disabling all the instruments and turning the Voyagers into simple radio beacons would be much more meaningful than just fireworks.
This would still allow measuring the doppler effect and radio propagation.
Their echos would keep wandering through time and space, as a memento of humanity.
I never suggested you live in the US and to be honest I do not care where you live, that’s not the point. Because no matter where you live, the news is bad in general.
While voyager maybe a symbol of peace, if it’s blown to pieces of not isn’t really relevant as long as back on earth people are killing each other for a barrel of oil and/or the claim that their god is the true one and only master of the universe.
That my friend worries me more than a comment of somebody suggesting to blow up a spaceprobe. And oh, regarding those pigeons, yeah that’s sad. Though not nearly as sad ans those bomb carrying dolphins, bats, dogs. Not to mention all the horses, mules, camels, elephants, pigs and last but not least foxes (just google where the name firefox originates from).
If it doesn’t go off, Imagine receiving a nuclear weapon from a few million years ago, a perfectly balanced sphere with a ball of Lead in the middle. hmm. I’m not sure which would be worse, an alien civilization not knowing what it was and discovering the technology perhaps destroying themselves in the process, or the civilization understanding what it was and interpreting it as a hostile act.
Seven hour war anyone?
Extending Voyager 2’s mission? I’m not crying, it’s probably just dust in here, or all of the onions…
HaD comments make for the BEST entertainment! Drama! Intrigue! And now with added Fizzle material!
NASA has refused to send used up Uranium fuel to the Sun for this very reason, an accident could send bits everywhere!!
Even without hostile intent, launching nuclear materials can be problematic. For reference:
“1964 accident where a SNAP-9A aboard the Transit 5BN-3 satellite failed to achieve orbit and disintegrated during re-entry, dispersing approximately 1 kilogram of plutonium-238 globally, with about 80% of the plutonium detected in Madagascar attributed to this fallout.”
It wasn’t a good accident, but consider how irrelevant it is compared to defeat of Germany in WWI. If Wilhelm II wasn’t forced out as emperor of Germany, the WW2 with 6 million people dead would not happen. The world would be a much safer and peaceful way, without extreme ideologies festering by failed painters.
The people commenting that a nuke that goes un-detonated would be no problem, look at the issues and (late) cleanup that the DoE did at the Nevada test Site (later part of Area 51) testing what happened if a plutonium powered weapon didn’t go off, but was blown up.
That test unknowingly, and impressively, scattered radiation over several states via birds and earthworms.
Were there lizards too? Radioactive lizards! Snakes yikes!
Recommended documentary:
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/934298-it-s-quieter-in-the-twilight
At some point, nukes will likely have to be used
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-04/features/planetary-defense-nuclear-option-against-asteroids
I seem to remember A.C. Clarke talking about nuclear explosions used to detect (not just deflect) asteroids:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/isaacarthur/posts/2006234573013075/
Voyager was tough due to its simplicity, and future systems need to be rad hardened anyway
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-75735-9
Voyager is tough due to its redundancy, as well as the fact that the extended mission requires way fewer instruments. There are a lot of failed components on both Voyagers at the moment.
check out my V1 tracker with very accurate calc for arrival at 1 light day…and other telemetry data.
https://whereisvoyager1.com/
The Register has an update: https://www.theregister.com/science/2026/08/12/how-voyager-engineers-found-two-more-years-in-a-50-year-old-power-budget/5284906