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
In addition to what others said there is the difference of speed. When we do make a connection with our cell phones the round trip is probably in the milliseconds range. Round trip to probes? Minutes. Think for acknowledgments from Mars rovers was like 12 minutes? Imagine calling or texting someone and you don’t receive any reply for 12+ minutes. Very difficult to hold a conversation.
Latest Answers