Communicating with Space Probes

Talking to each other is something we take for granted because as soon as I ask you a question, you can answer it immediately. This same seamless communication is not possible in outer space. There is a time lag between when you send in a set of instructions to a space probe and it receives it.

Take for instance a rover on Mars like Curiosity. It would take 24 minutes for new instructions to reach from the surface of the earth to the rover. Yet another 24 minutes for the people in the control room to see that the rover had actually complied with the instructions.

With the Voyager 1, the same communication takes much longer given it’s distance from the planet. A signal reaches Voyager 1 in about 17 hours.  That means it takes nearly two days for reciprocation of whether the instructions passed have been understood.

Needless to say the science project which succeeds in creating a better communication system between space probes and their earth bound control rooms will be welcomed as a major step forward in space exploration. It will be the next best thing to actually putting a man in the space craft and letting him take immediate decisions based on current inputs.