Eli5: how does voyager send a message 15 billion miles with ~200watts of power and we struggle with cellphones and satellites signals right here on earth?

Question

Eli5: how does voyager send a message 15 billion miles with ~200watts of power and we struggle with cellphones and satellites signals right here on earth?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

A huge difference is the data rate between your cell phone and Voyager 1. Data is being transmitted from Voyager 1 at about 160 bits per second. By comparison, most cell phones transmit data anywhere between 40Mbps to 10Gbps. In other words, the data being sent to your cell phone is *literally* a million times faster than what’s being transmitted by voyager.