The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched on the 5th 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 website, 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 traveled during the time that the radio transmission is in flight.)

For reference, the equations are:
\[ \text{distance} = \text{distance at start} + \text{velocity} \times \text{time since start} \]
\[ \text{round-trip communication time} = 2 \times \frac{\text{distance}}{\text{speed of light}} \]

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:
```python
def communication_time(days):
```

And to get the True, True, True, the following print statements need to be included:
```python
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)
```

Answer :

Final answer:

By utilizing the provided data and equations relating to Voyager 1's distance from the Sun, its velocity, and the speed of light, a Python function can be written to calculate the estimated round-trip communication time between Voyager 1 and the Earth at a future date.

Explanation:

The question at hand falls within the scope of physics, specifically addressing the topic of space exploration, radio communication, and mathematical calculations relating to speed, distance and time. In response to the question, we can indeed compose a function to estimate the round-trip communication time between the Voyager 1 spacecraft and the Earth at a future date. Considering the noted distance of Voyager 1 from the Earth, its indicated velocity, and the speed of light, we can employ the equations provided to calculate the time needed for radio communication to travel to and from the spacecraft.

The following sample function in Python can meet this objective:

def communication_time(days):
start_distance = 22982855000 # Voyager's current distance from the Sun in km
speed = 16.9995 # Voyager's speed in km/second
c = 299792.458 # Speed of light in km/second
elapsed_time = days * 24 * 60 * 60 # Time in seconds
distance = start_distance + speed * elapsed_time # Calculation of the new distance
round_trip_time = 2 * distance / c # Calculation of the round trip communication time
return round_trip_time

When using this function to estimate the round-trip communication time 1, 3, 10, 100 or 300 years from now, you just need to input the corresponding days within these years (1 year = 365.25 days to account for leap years) into the function, such as communication_time(365.25*3) for 3 years. You may need to adjust the figures as per the given constraints or variations.

Learn more about Space Exploration here:

https://brainly.com/question/32563653

#SPJ11