Amateur Astronomers Detect Signal From Voyager 1 Spacecraft, 15 Billion Miles Away

 

Amateur astronomers using the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the northeastern Netherlands have picked up a signal from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, over 25 billion kilometers (15 billion miles) away.

The Voyager probes, launched in 1977, have performed spectacularly well over nearly half a century, flying past various planetary bodies and studying them before continuing to the outer reaches of the Solar System. Voyager 1, the first of the two probes to launch, is now 171 astronomical units (AU) from Earth, where 1 AU is the average distance from Earth to the Sun. 

On November 13 of this year, Voyager 1 is expected to hit a new landmark for humanity; the first time a human-made object has reached a full light day from Earth. When that happens, it will never be possible to communicate with the probe from Earth without factoring a full day's travel time for the signal.

While a resounding success, the probes are starting to show some signs of wear and tear. A diminishing fuel supply has taken its toll, forcing NASA to shut down scientific instruments to keep the rest of the craft running. There have also been several glitches, with Voyager 1 sending back a garbled pattern of zeros and ones for a time due to corrupted memory, then shutting down its main transmitter entirely. The latter problem was solved in October 2024 by switching temporarily to a transmitter not used since 1981. Since then, communication with the aging spacecraft has been steady, with NASA's Deep Space Network regularly receiving data from both probes. It's no easy feat, given the distances involved.

"When An App Outlives Its Creator"

The following edited article by Peter Vogel appeared in The B.C. Catholic, a publication of the Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada.  For me, this article was timely and poignant and exactly summed up my feelings.  

While I greatly appreciate the hard work now underway by several teams in creating a "competing" HamClock-like resources, I especially appreciate the efforts of the team working to keep the vision of HamClock alive as it was originally envisioned by Elwood Downey, WB0OEW (SK).

OpenClaw, Clawdbots, Moltbots, Moltbooks, Claude Code, GPT 5.3, Grok Imagine, Opus 4.6, agentic AI, AGI, ASI … so much for tech terms in the news as I write this column.

Do you ever get the feeling that you can’t keep up with the breakneck speed of technological evolution? “Evolution” doesn’t even seem an appropriate word for the circumstances.

In recent days, one of my niche areas of interest, amateur radio, lost an innovator, Elwood Downey, who created and operated a widely used application called HamClock. Although it had started life as just that, a clock display with various time formats radio people use, it had morphed over time into a very sophisticated interface giving tremendous detail about radio signal propagation and space weather metrics.

Those in the amateur radio field learned of his passing through a note he left on his website and through an auto-response email. Not only did it announce his passing, but it noted his HamClock service would cease to run in June of this year.

Now you might think programs don’t just cease to work spontaneously. Well, in this case, HamClock was heavily dependent on what we call a server backend, with associated internet domain names. It will indeed cease to function.

Scientists Detect a Magnetic Reversal Near Earth

Scientists have discovered an unexpected event happening in Earth’s magnetic field — a sudden flip in magnetic direction called a “switchback.” 

Until now, these strange magnetic twists were mainly seen far away in the flowing solar wind. This is the first time one has been detected so close, inside Earth’s own magnetic surroundings.

A magnetic switchback happens when magnetic field lines suddenly bend and briefly turn the opposite way, almost like a river that reverses its flow for a moment. This shows that Earth’s magnetic shield is not always calm and steady. Instead, it can act in a restless, turbulent way, changing in just a few seconds.

This discovery is important because it could help scientists better understand space weather and how it affects our technology. Learning more about these magnetic changes may improve forecasts that protect satellites, power systems on Earth, and astronauts in space. It also reveals that Earth’s magnetic field is more active and complex than previously thought.

"Aliens? Nope!"

On the heels of yesterday's post, "Aliens? Where?" comes the late Richard Feynman, explaining why aliens have not, cannot and will not reach earth. Whatever your position on the subject is, you have to admit that Dr. Feynman's comments on the nature and limitations of the universe would seem to put the matter to bed.

    

 Another Feynman video, "Aliens Will NEVER Arrive: The Feynman Reality Check" explains further:

"Aliens? Where?"

Here's an interesting discussion from Rick Donaldson, N0NJY (Ham Radio For Preppers) on the evidence - or lack thereof - of whether we are alone.  (For the record, during my flying days, I never spotted a UFO, but I have to admit, I've been one on occasion.  But I digress.)

Some decades ago when I was a young fella, I got involved in reading about UFOs in general, because I read a book called “The Interrupted Journey” by John Fuller. It was the story of Betty and Barney Hill of Portsmouth, NH, who were driving home from Canada on the night of 9/19/1961, when they sighted a “flying saucer”. The encounter left them shaken. The book left me curious. As a young lad I’d already begun the study of various sciences, including, but not limited to astronomy. The book made me question the idea we “are alone” out here in the Galaxy.

Hams To Mark 96th Anniversary of Pluto's Discovery

Do you want to come visit Pluto? It doesn't involve space travel - it just means you're committed to helping mark yet another anniversary of its discovery.

Just to be clear, we're talking about this guy...

...not this guy:

NASA selects 34 global volunteers to track the Orion spacecraft during the crewed Artemis II mission’s journey around the Moon

The Artemis II test flight will launch NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, carrying the Orion spacecraft and a crew of four astronauts, on a mission into deep space. The agency’s second mission in the Artemis campaign is a key step in NASA’s path toward establishing a long-term presence at the Moon and confirming the systems needed to support future lunar surface exploration and paving the way for the first crewed mission to Mars.

While NASA’s Near Space Network and Deep Space Network, coordinated by the agency’s SCaN (Space Communication and Navigation) program , will provide primary communications and tracking services to support Orion’s launch, journey around the Moon, and return to Earth, participants selected from a request for proposals published in August 2025, comprised of established commercial service providers, members of academia, and individual amateur radio enthusiasts will use their respective equipment to passively track radio waves transmitted by Orion during its approximately 10-day journey.