Welcome to the Museum of Cosmic Curiosities, a growing collection of strange objects, forgotten artefacts and obscure relics from the history of astronomy and space exploration. Some are profound, some are absurd, but they all have a story to tell.
🏛️ Exhibit 040 - Voyager 1’s Data Tape Recorder
Later this year, the Voyager 1 space probe will realise a remarkable milestone. It will reach a distance of one light day from Earth.
Let that sink in for a moment. The spacecraft will have travelled so far from home that any signals it sends back will take a full day to reach us. That’s despite those signals travelling at 300,000 kilometres per second.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 - and its twin Voyager 2 - were dispatched to survey the outer solar system by taking advantage of a once in a generation alignment of the giant planets.
The other remarkable thing about the probes is that they are mostly still working.
Each probe carries a Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) equipped with a 328 metre continuous loop of magnetic tape. This system was designed to last until the tape had spooled through a total distance comparable to the width of the United States.
Imagine playing a two-hour video cassette on a home VCR once a day for many decades without a failure. Let alone doing the same thing in space.
Voyager 2’s tape held out until 2017, when mission controllers were forced to switch to sending data directly back to Earth rather than saving it to the tape.
In recent years mission scientists have been working to access data still stored on Voyager 1’s tape.
One final word on the Voyagers, to clear up a common misconception.
It is sometimes said they have left the solar system, but they haven’t. Instead they have left the heliosphere - the magnetic bubble the Sun carves out in space. The probes are still well within the orbits of some of the bodies that swirl around the Sun.
🏛️ Browse all exhibits in the Museum of Cosmic Curiosities here
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Gotta love analog!