Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Communicating with the  Voyager Spacecraft

Professor Emeritus Andy Marvin, University of York

The two Voyager spacecraft were designed and launched back in the seventies when I was an engineering student. They use the hardware technology that I was taught about at the time. That they are still operational nearly fifty years later is nothing short of amazing. In the early days we saw spectacular colour images of the outer planets. More recently the cameras have been turned off partly to conserve power and partly because even the outer planets are now so far away from the spacecraft that they just show up as dots. Each of the spacecraft is a vast distance from earth, yet we can still communicate with them, receiving data about the local space environment at the edge of the solar system.

How on earth is this possible?

In this lecture I will show how it is possible. There will be some very very big numbers and there will be some very very small numbers as I explain how it is done and run through the calculations to show how it all works.

I’ll do the sums, all you have to do is wonder!

Lecture to be held in the Tempest Anderson Lecture Theatre, Yorkshire Museum,
YO1 7DR at 7pm

ALL WELCOME.