I'd assume its arm is also made in Canada.

-S

Actually, it looks like this one was made in the US:
http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=19653
http://www.asi-space.com/
I think Canada's Space Arm is used mainly on shuttles.


RDP

That makes it 10 times more amazing.

I jest read that the Voyager space probes are still functional and being used. Voyager 2 just mapped the shock region on our solar system (Where the solar wind from our sun impacts against the particles coming at it from other stars in our galaxy). They found the shock area moves back and forth and the probe has crossed it at least five times. It's also a lot cooler than they expected so that means that the particles in our solar wind turn into cosmic rays when they impact the other incomming particles. It amazes me that those things have been out there for 30+ years and they're still functional and being used to study stuff.

They should be functional still. They aren't powered by batteries. They have nukes on board. I'm sure they are getting near the end of life though.

-S

Just a clarification its not powered by a nuclear reactor but by the decay of nuclear material.

Yes that is true, but given the size, I'd assume people would know this. Its rate of decay is that it might last 50 years max, if you're lucky. I'm thinking that the signal may be so far away though that you lose its signal long before you lose power.

-S

IIRC Voyager 2 probe should transmit at least till 2025. Allso they dont have nukes on board, the Plutonium isotope which is used to power the Voyager crafts is not the same as used in nuclear weapons. Anyway power is generated by the head of radioactive decay which is converted into electricity via the ceebeck or seebeck (cant remember which it was) effect.

Edit: Aparently im a bit slow and TLAM beat me to it.

I like a quote from one of the project bosses in the first press conference after Phoenix landed - He'd been criticised by some people for taking a doom and gloom approach and talking about the things that could go wrong (His job by the way;) ) , he likened the whole 660million Km trip and hitting their 20km landing window the way Phoenix did, to a Golfer teeing off in Washington and getting a hole-in-one in Sydney , hitting a 4inch target from 12000miles away :o

Smile for the camera
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/

A photo of the prodigal from the high res camera on the Mars reconnaissance orbiter:up:

How is that not nukes exactly? Anything nuclear powered, nuclear reaction, fission, fusion in my mind is called 'nukes'. Figured I'd point that out.

-S

Nostalgia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzrKlEtxTx4

-S

It's the Seebeck effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple

In that case we use that term differently, I only use it to refer to nuclear weapons. Lets call it a mutual misunderstanding and leave it at that.

Thanks for clearing that up, i was remenicing about something we talked about in physics class about 5 or so years ago.

Oh quite a bit longer than 50 years. Plutonium-238 has a half life of 85 years so it loses 50% of its power in 85 years then in 170 years its drops to 25% of its origional power. Considering that space has very little which degrades radio signals (unlike Earth's atmosphere) I figure NASA should be able to track V'Ger err Voyager's signal for quite a while.

http://projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3e.html#power