"I can barely hear you, let alone see you..."

December 21, 2010 5:21 AM

"I can sense stars, and their whispers amid the roaring of our own Sun." So goes one poetic status of the Voyager 2 twitterfeed, which appeals to my sense of wonder like nothing else on the internet. Interstellar space probes and microblogging go hand in hand in the 21st Century.
posted by Kattullus (23 comments total)

uranus encounter: passing relatively unscathed.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:31 AM on December 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

The background image of that page should have been this.
posted by DU at 5:40 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

* NOTE: TWITTER FEED IS NOT ACTUALLY THE SPACE PROBE.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:42 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well yeah, in case anyone is confused, the Voyager 2 space probe itself isn't writing the statuses :)
posted by Kattullus at 5:46 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ah, pipped to the post on the V'Ger joke.

*yells angrily into comm channel* DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

(Yes, I know I'm crossing movie streams. Whatever.)
posted by kmz at 5:52 AM on December 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

It's like a not-cute, sterile, boring version of Sockington.
posted by bondcliff at 5:59 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Space tweets, previously - the former from actual astronauts who are actually in outer space, the latter from Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which seems to have gone silent after the moon ice observation mission was over.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:22 AM on December 21, 2010

What... does.. V'Ger... want with ... the Twitter?
posted by shiu mai baby at 6:41 AM on December 21, 2010

PLEASE RT: What do you think you are doing, Dave?
posted by quarsan at 6:42 AM on December 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

"Guys, I was launched in 1977. Is disco still a thing? Please advise."
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:44 AM on December 21, 2010 [7 favorites]

My God, it's full of stars!
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar at 6:51 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

How is Voyager not cute?! Tiny little space probe out there all alone in space, still sending messages back home to a world that mostly doesn't care.
posted by DU at 6:54 AM on December 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

How is Voyager not cute?! Tiny little space probe out there all alone in space, still sending messages back home to a world that mostly doesn't care.

Because he used to show us awesome pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and now all it does is go "Yep. Still nothing much out here. Boring. Maybe I'll tease those nerds back at JPL and pretend there's some sort of gravitational anomaly out here and perhaps they'll keep my funding going for a while."

Voyager used to be The Shit, man. Now it's just boring old crap. It's like the Robert Plant of space probes.
posted by bondcliff at 7:01 AM on December 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

* NOTE: TWITTER FEED IS NOT ACTUALLY THE SPACE PROBE.

Whew! I thought it had become self aware. Next thing you know Voyager is hurtling through a police station in SoCal looking for Sarah Conner.
posted by MikeMc at 7:24 AM on December 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

See also the Mars Rover. Like many other LiveJournallers, she has a pink colour scheme and spends a lot of time complaining about her sister.
posted by pw201 at 7:30 AM on December 21, 2010

Voyager used to be The Shit, man. Now it's just boring old crap. It's like the Robert Plant of space probes.

Next: the Voyager space probe covers Low.
posted by mykescipark at 7:37 AM on December 21, 2010

This is my new best friend.
posted by The Whelk at 7:37 AM on December 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

I can sense stars, and their whispers
Amid the roaring of our Sun
The bright burning day, the dark scary night
And I think to myself what a wonderful whorl.
posted by Babblesort at 7:46 AM on December 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

I'm guessing Voyager will eventually become sentient as it passes through the vast voids and to other worlds where it will crash on a planet and become a metal god to an indescribable alien race. ........And it shall be tweeted.
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:06 AM on December 21, 2010

I was five when Voyager 2's photos of Neptune were on the front page of the paper. My parents explained to me that they'd sent a space probe out to get information about the planets. "When is it coming back?" I asked.

"It's not," they said. "When it's done, it will fly out into space forever."

I burst into tears and cried so hard and for so long I had to be kept home from school that day. That lonely little ship out there in the cold and the dark... It still kind of gets to me.

(First person to link that xkcd comic about the Mars lander gets a poke in the eye.)
posted by Zozo at 8:23 AM on December 21, 2010 [12 favorites]

I want to meet the person at NASA who coordinates the Twitter feeds for the various probes and landers. On paper it sounds like the hokiest job in the world, and they have turned it into an incredible triumph.
posted by Hogshead at 9:44 AM on December 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

@Voyager2 is almost Christmas, how's your carols repertoire?

I have none...I carry no information about any religion

Voyager2 is a total yaytheist
posted by circular at 10:41 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is my dream job. Either to be a space probe or to get paid to write poetic snippets as if I were one.

"I can barely hear you, let alone see you..."
posted by Eideteker at 11:54 AM on December 21, 2010