Escape Trajectory Artifacts at WAC-7

Artist depiction of Pioneer 10. (Credit: Don Davis for NASA)

Just a quick update today on something I’ve been excited to talk about for some time:

I’ve been working during the past year with Dr. Colleen Beck of the Desert Research Institute on long-term planetary science/space archaeology crossover research, the first fruit of which has just hit the cyberverse.

In short, in an upcoming presentation at the Seventh World Archaeology Congress in Jordan on the 18th entitled, “The Bottle as the Message: Solar System Escape Trajectory Artifacts,” Dr. Beck and I are assessing what our escape trajectory spacecraft are really saying about us…  and how the famed Sagan/Drake engraved plaques and records intended as tools for extraterrestrial intelligence under a distant future recovery scenario may actually be serving as a scientific red herring in our own minds when compared to the extraordinary informational value of the spacecraft itself.

More to follow (and a slew of lingering posts on other topics)!

Give it a rest, people: Voyager 2 spacecraft not hijacked by aliens

NASA is having a hard time talking to the Voyager 2 probe.  It started in late April and has only gotten worse, with the latest transmission being quite garbled.  Now, I can understand a bit of fun, tounge-in-cheek speculation, but this “Aliens have hijacked Voyager 2!” thing has gotten way out of hand.  It’s as though someone has been subliminally beaming the plot of Star Trek: The Motion Picture into everyone’s minds…

Voyager 6 spacecraft after being hijacked by aliens as seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Credit: Paramount

…and for the unwashed, the movie centers around a mysterious cloud of energy headed for Earth destroying everything in its path.  It is revealed in the final act of the film that the cloud is actually the probe Voyager 6, which according to future history was lost, and Kirk and crew learn that it was hijacked, reprogrammed, and empowered by aliens before being sent back.  Sound familiar?

No one (or should I say, nothing?) has “done” anything to the blasted spacecraft, people.  It’s getting old.  How many other 30-year-old computers do you know of that are still running perfectly? 

Yes, Hartwig Hausdorf (who first made the alien hijacking crack) is allowed his opinion.  Is it realistic?  Nope.  Let’s just hope this probe can be recovered… It’d be a pity to lose one of only two “eyes” we have moving out of the solar system for the first time.

Sheesh, I just wish real science got this much press.