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Old 21-04-2024, 07:47 PM
tim.anderson (Tim Anderson)
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Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: Cowra
Posts: 294
This is a small story about the tracking of the Voyager spacecraft.

When Voyager was about to pass through the edge of the solar system, NASA had a problem - the spacecraft was so far south (using the Earth coordinates) that there were no radio telescope observatories in the northern hemisphere that could see the signals from the spacecraft. So NASA rang up CSIRO and asked 'Can we rent the Dish at Parkes to observe the transition?"

CSIRO said "Of course you can, at a reasonable price". I have no idea what NASA paid to CSIRO for renting the Dish for two months, but I suspect it had a lot of zeroes at the end of the number.

I do remember that John Sarkissian, who managed the data collection for the engagement, said that the strength of the Voyager signal was one billlionth of one billionth of a single Watt. But the Parkes observatory was sufficiently sensitive to do the job, and collected the telemetry as the spacecraft surfed through the edge of our solar system.

Parkes is still an amazing radio telescope.
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