NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2

Re:NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2 by whartung on Monday July 31, 2023 @12:43PM (#36945291)

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit Goldstone, up in the California desert on Fort Irwin. It's not open to the public very often.

I got to visit most everything there, including the 70m telescope. It was just a cool space tech nerd day of tours, presentations, and sunshine.

The dichotomy of the 70m antenna is interesting is that it broadcasts 450 kilowatts of power out into space, but has to receive and decode, "as small as 1 billionth of 1 billionth of 1 watt" signals from the space craft.

One of the reasons its on a military base is to restrict the airspace above it so that they don't accidentally cook some aircraft that happens to overfly the antenna when it's transmitting.

It's truly astonishing they're able to pull that off, frankly.

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Re:NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2 by kylehotchkiss on Monday July 31, 2023 @06:07PM (#36949541)

450 kilowatts? Is this the most powerful transmitter on earth? Where does it source the electricity for this?

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Re:NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2 by bob778 on Monday July 31, 2023 @09:28PM (#36951206)

In the general category of “most powerful radio transmitter”, it doesn’t even rank in the top 5. The biggest are 1MW+.

Many industrial sites use 450kW or more (see any bauxite processing plant) so are coupled with a power plant or have agreements for dedicated generation at nearby plants.

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