Not sure if I used the right tag but I saw something about a space probe from the 70s malfunctioning and spouting gibberish that nasa managed to repair, but how do probes that are so incredibly far away transmit data back to earth?
In: Planetary Science
There are some very large and powerful satellite dishes here on Earth that listen for data from the probes, as well as send them data.
One of the nice things about space in regards to sending signals is that space is pretty darn empty, so if you send radio waves out into space, there’s a good chance they’re going to travel very far before something blocks them. So we’ve got nice clear line of sight between those probes and the Earth.
The big problem is that radio waves spread out as they travel, so the amount of signal that gets to a probe that’s really far away (and the amount that gets from that probe back to Earth) is only a small fraction of the radio waves that have been sent. But that’s what the huge and powerful satellite dishes are for. We also know fairly precisely where the Earth is and where the probes are, so it’s possible to aim the dishes for maximum effectiveness.
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