Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2015 11:43:38 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] 40 years and counting: the team behind =?UTF-8?B?Vm95YWdlcuKAmXMg? =?UTF-8?B?c3BhY2Ugb2R5c3NleQ==?=
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
If the few people walking by on West Woodbury Road, Altadena, or popping into
the landscaping place for some patio paving slabs were to peer into Howard\342\200\231s
office, they might guess, seeing the graph-covered twin screens and a third PC
at the other end of the desk, that he was, perhaps, a financial adviser or a
day trader. But what Steve Howard is actually doing makes this very ordinary
all-American scene quite extraordinary.

Howard is a Nasa mission controller. He is sending instructions to a probe in
interstellar space, 12 billion miles from Earth, beyond Pluto and escaping our
Solar System at 1 million miles a day. The 815kg craft, Voyager 1, is one of
two identical machines that for many years now have been the furthest
human-made objects from Earth. Howard\342\200\231s computer code takes 17 hours at the
speed of light to reach Voyager 1, the furthest travelled. Voyager 2, which is
leaving the solar system in a different direction, is 3bn miles closer. The
responses, from transmitters on the twin probes running 23 watts of power \342\200\223
have the power of a billionth of a billionth of a watt by the time they reach
Earth.

\342\200\234So here, see, I have Voyager 1\342\200\231s status and information up, at least as it
was 17 hours ago,\342\200\235 Howard explains.
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/15/voyager-1-and-2-space-journey-nasa>

mark