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Originally Posted by little man
a couple of questions for you.
1) do we have contact with voyager 1? i.e. receive transmitted data
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Yep, both Voyager 1 and 2 are still transmitting and will continue to do so for ~10 years or so. The signal is so faint, at this point, that it is less powerful than a digital watch battery.
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2) once it moves beyond the heliopause, will we be able to maintain contact? (assuming we have it now)
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Yes. It is *amazing* what you can do with a 20 watt transmitter!
We should continue to get signals back until its power fails around 2020 or so. At this point it is so far away that it takes hours for a transmission from Voyager to reach Earth. For purposes of comparison--light moves at ~182,282 miles per second in vacuum. At that speed it takes a signal to the Moon about 1.5 seconds to go one way. It takes light from the Sun 8 minutes to reach us. You get an idea how far away that is. It also gives you an idea of how huge our solar system is--when Voyager was passing Jupiter in 1998, it took nine *hours* for a signal to get to the Earth.
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3) how freakin' cool is this?
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So cool that it is beyond words how groovy it is! This is pretty impressive stuff for a bunch of glorified chimpanzees to pull off.
cheers
Aj