this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Crazy that after all this time we can still communicate with Voyager 1. Even though it is babbling back now.
That's actually not all that hard. They just have to blast it with a radio signal strong enough from Earth for it to hear and they have to have really big dishes on earth in order to hear it.
As an electrical engineer who dabbled in RF in school, that sounds supremely difficult.
Yeah, it's most definitely not easy. Thankfully though, high frequency devices like that are very small wavelengths and therefore gain can be achieved with decently small antennas. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and the shorter the wavelength, the smaller the antenna needed to receive it. Or a big antenna can hear it from further away, since it has a big collection area.