Question
The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched on the 15th of September in 1977, is the farthest-traveling Earth-made object. On the 25th of August in 2012, it
The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched on the 15th of September in 1977, is the farthest-traveling Earth-made object. On the 25th of August in 2012, it crossed the heliopause, which can be considered the boundary of the solar system. According to the JPL voyager web site, Voyager 1 is currently (6th of August 2021) approximately 22,982,855,000 kilometers from the Sun, traveling away from the Sun at approximately 16.9995 km/second. JPL lists the current round-trip time for radio communication as 40 hours and 27 minutes (145620 seconds). Radio waves travel at the speed of light, which is approximately 299,792,458 meters/second. Write a function that calculates the round-trip communication time at a future date. Your function should take one argument, which is a number of days after today, and return the round-trip time in seconds. (You don't need to adjust for the additional distance travelled during time that the radio transmission is in flight.) For reference, the equations are: distance=distance at start+velocitytime since start roundtrip communication time=2distance/speed of light Use your function to estimate the round-trip communication time 1, 3, 10, 100 or 300 years from now. Your calculated time will probably differ from that given by JPL, because they are calculating the round-trip communication time between Voyager 1 and the Earth. The Earth's average distance from the Sun is 149.598 million km (which is also known as one Astronomical Unit, or AU), so the distance between Voyager 1 and the Earth may differ from that between Voyager 1 and the Sun by plus or minus 1 AU. To check that your answers are reasonable, work out how big a difference this can make to the round-trip radio communication time, and check if the difference you get is less. (Note: There is a similar exercise in Punch & Enbody's book, programming problem 1 on page 79; however, the values they give for Voyager 1's distance and speed do not agree with JPL's.)
The required output is: True True True
Start with
def communication_time(days):
And to get the True, True, True
the following print statements need to be included
print(abs(communication_time(0) - 153325.1) < 10)
print(abs(communication_time(55) - 153864.1) < 10)
print(abs(communication_time(365.25*6) - 174798.5) < 10)
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