V'ger to be silenced on April 15

I've just seen on Universe Today that NASA is thinking about closing down it's Voyager programme. NASA plans to make a final decision on their continued support of the JPL mission by April 15.

Voyager 1 and 2 have been out there for 28 years, having been launched in 1977. In that time

"Unsurpassed image quality gave billion's of human eyes extraordinary views only vaguely hinted at using earth-bound telescopes. Jupiter was found to possess a faint ring, volcanoes were seen to erupt from Io - inmost of the four galiliean satellites. Data related to Jupiter's thermal characteristics and massive magnetic field was collected."

Spinning past Saturn, Uranus, and finally Neptune ...

"They resolved stunning details of Saturn's exquisite ring system, and helped understand the role of 'shepherd moons' in holding that ring together. They revealed unresolved features on the Ringed Wonder's globe, and found surprisingly active storm systems. A ring system was discovered on Uranus too, and a large, powerful storm on distant Neptune was complete surprise. They even turned up a total of 22 new satellites. All of this at a cost of $865 million to US taxpayers."

They are now on a new mission, to explore the Kuiper belt and beyond, the threshold of interstellar space. Already it has been useful. "Powerful solar storms caused a series of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) during October 2003. By mid-April 2004, Voyager 2 had detected the resulting shock waves as they slowed to combine with matter in the Merged Interaction Regions outside the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 2 measured shock speed, composition, temperature, and magnetic flux. When included with data from spacecraft located nearer to the Sun (SOHO, Mars Odyssey, Ulysses, Cassini etc.), Voyager helped show how CMEs move through the Solar System."

From NASA's own Voyager webpage:

"For the past two years or so, Voyager 1 has detected phenomena unlike any encountered before in all its years of exploration. These observations and what they may infer about the approach to the termination shock have been the subject of on-going scientific debates. While some of the scientist believed that the passage past the termination shock had already begun, some of the phenomena observed were not what would have been expected. So the debate continues while even more data are being returned and analyzed. However, it is certain that the spacecraft are in a new regime of space. The observed plasma wave oscillations and increased energetic particle activity may only be the long-awaited precursor to the termination shock. If we have indeed encountered the termination shock, Voyager 1 would be the first spacecraft to enter the solar system's final frontier, a vast expanse where wind from the Sun blows hot against thin gas between the stars: interstellar space." First Hubble, now Voyager, what's next? The Mars rovers? The ongoing cost involved is chicken-feed compared with the cost, in todays dollars, of trying to reproduce the mission! If NASA must shed old programs to concentrate it's funding on the new manned space race then they should at least hand the baton to someone else who might be prepared to run with it!

I wonder if this type of situation might be one where "minding the store" could be handed over to an amateur or educational organisation? What would be the hardware required? What is the current infrastructure of the "watching brief"? How many people, what qualifications, how would it be analysed, who would be interested in the output?

When you consider the popularity of amateur programs such as SETI at home and the search for comets and NEO's - could it be split up into a program that utilises many hands to make light work?

Or could some smaller university take this on as a graduate programme? Surely it would be an excellent candidate for private, state and federal grants? The article mentions "an annual cost of about $4 million a year" could this be cut back?

Perhaps it could be a combination of the amateur and professional? I'm guessing that the hardware to "hear" Voyager would be a large dish like The Parkes Observatory. Perhaps the data could then be handed on to an university or amateur organisation for analysis?

Friends, I'd love to see my tax dollars go towards that!

Climate change focuses downunda

Evidently the international debate on climate change - and what we should do about it - is going to be focussed on Australia for the next week or so (Ah! Fleeting glory!). According to Alan Oxley in the Australian there are to be three international conferences in Australia this week.

THIS week experts on climate change descend on Australia for three international conferences. The Kyoto Protocol is moribund. All focus on the one question: What climate change strategies should we adopt in the future?

Two options have emerged: replace the fractured Kyoto model with another model using regulations to reduce greenhouse gases; or change tack and foster technologies that reduce emissions.

The first is the Australian APEC Study Centre Conference, 'Managing Climate Change: Practicalities and Realities in a post-Kyoto future' Which according Mr Oxley is "a reality check. US and Chinese officials explained why Kyoto is moribund and why the low-emission technology route (rather than regulation) is the only practicable climate change policy.". Of course the fact that he is chairman of the APEC Study Centre at Monash University, which hosted the Canberra conference might have something to do with his attitude.

The second, The Climate Conference, is in Melbourne tomorrow, the 6th. According to Oxley it "is for the cataclysmists.

British government meteorologists will recycle claims that climate change is becoming dangerous ... It is being supported by the British Government and British companies that have become global-warming activists. The Blair Government has adopted expensive energy taxes to reduce emissions (and competitiveness) and is on a global mission to get others to do the same. It failed to shift George Bush and John Howard, but it has evidently persuaded Carr and John Thwaites, Victoria's Deputy Premier and Environment Minister.

The third, the Australia-New Zealand Climate Forum is to be here in Sydney on Thursday & Friday, convened by the Pew Centre, "a privately funded US green foundation that houses environmentalists from the Clinton-Gore administration (Oxley)"

It has been encouraging state governments in the US to set up their own system to control emissions. This conference is supported by national environmental departments in Australia and New Zealand.

... which seems to get right up Alan Oxley's nose.

Perhaps I'm being paranoid but this type of article in the Age just smacks of an establishment white-wash. Oxley's supercilious attitude towards what are obviously his opponents is blindingly obvious - He is so patently right and they are so childishly wrong ... or so he would have us believe.

We are talking about opinions here and politically motivated lobbyists. Where are the facts? Where are the options? Why not do both for example? Regulate the Greenhouse gas creators *and* encourage green technologies? I would have thought this would be a win-win situation.

For anyone who didn't have a vested interest, that is. And this is the impression that Mr Oxley is giving, I'm afraid.