this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
227 points (99.1% liked)

Space

1486 readers
197 users here now

A community to discuss space & astronomy through a STEM lens

Rules

  1. Be respectful and inclusive. This means no harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
  2. Engage in constructive discussions by discussing in good faith.
  3. Foster a continuous learning environment.

Also keep in mind, mander.xyz's rules on politics

Please keep politics to a minimum. When science is the focus, intersection with politics may be tolerated as long as the discussion is constructive and science remains the focus. As a general rule, political content posted directly to the instanceโ€™s local communities is discouraged and may be removed. You can of course engage in political discussions in non-local communities.


Related Communities

๐Ÿ”ญ Science

๐Ÿš€ Engineering

๐ŸŒŒ Art and Photography


Other Cool Links


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] bstix@feddit.dk 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Someone stated that the communication speed is currently about 160 bits per second, so 20 bytes per second.

Voyager is now 1 light day away, so the signal is 86400 seconds long, since radio waves travel at the speed of light. The signal can then fit a backup of 1.7 megabytes.

20 bytes x 86400 seconds = 1.7 Mb (SI units)

This is enough to fit the entire memory bank of 26 Commodore 64s in a one way trip from the Earth to Voyager. If Voyager then returns the signal, you can simply double this.

So about 2 floppy discs. ๐Ÿ’พ ๐Ÿ’พ

[โ€“] astrsk@fedia.io 1 points 4 days ago

That rocks! Thanks for doing that math.