Wikipedia:Peer review/Voyager 1/archive2

Voyager 1


I've listed this article for peer review because it was peer reviewed about 10 years ago and reached GA. I am hoping for a FAC this time and did my best. Will try to improve it further and reach FA status.

Thanks, The Herald (Benison) (talk) 17:26, 3 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I made a minor edit to an image caption. Overall the article looks really good! (sdsds - talk) 23:00, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

STANDARD NOTE: I have added this PR to the Template:FAC peer review sidebar to get quicker and more responses. When this PR is closed, please remove it from the list. Also, consider adding the sidebar to your userpage to help others discover pre-FAC PRs, and please review other articles in that template. Thanks! Z1720 (talk) 15:08, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments by K. Peake

 * The velocity data part can be entered in the interstellar medium section so the ref is not being invoked in the lead
 * Can the distance from earth not be mentioned in the body too at the future of the probe section for no refs here?
 * The lead should definitely be four paras per WP:LEAD as stands out quickly to me; this can be done by making sure that each para is a sufficient length after the merge!
 * In the current third para, you do not need to use the name Voyagers 1 twice and also the usage of "to" before begin is redundant
 * The refs for heliopause sentence are not needed since this is fully sourced in the body
 * Can the December 15, 2014 info be wrote in the body too?
 * 2025 info can be written in full detail in the body moving the ref there, also the part earlier in the sentence does not need a ref here?
 * Anywhere the unable to continue part can go in the body to avoid ref here?
 * I think the communication system and power sub sections would work better merged
 * Computers sub-section would go smoother as one para
 * Is all of the travel timeline really sourced?
 * In the mission profile section, please merge the overly short paras with the ones above
 * Move the declination sentence to the para below
 * Regarding the first to cross the heliopause sentence, please move the refs around in the sentence to appropriate areas since they are way too many cluttered next to each other and place it in the above para
 * The second, third and fourth paras of interstellar medium would work better as one para to be honest
 * "Weaker sets of oscillations measured" should use something like had been measured to indicate it was these previous dates from the aforementioned for better flow
 * The detection para should be merged with the above one
 * Maybe add something like introducing planet earth as part of the caption for the audio sample?
 * All of the references need to cite their places of publication - I can already see refs 8 and 9 do not at a quick glance
 * Further to this, if citing the same publication on multiple refs it needs to be consistent, i.e website, publisher or other on each instance etc.
 * Fix MOS:CAPS issues where they should not be in refs please
 * Overall this looks really good, these tweaks should bring it closer to FA quality - not an expert in this subject, but still interesting to go over! --K. Peake 12:40, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * on a similar note, I have My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy at peer review pre-FAC if you would care to leave any comments? --K. Peake 07:48, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Hey, I'm not exactly an expert in the field or on such articles, but I'll give it a brief go later sometime this weekend. Thanks. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 09:14, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Lead

 * You should explain why the Voyager 1 & 2 launches were out of order. My recollection is they were numbered according to when they were going to arrive, but that needs to be explained somewhere.  In fact, it's such a glaring oddity, I would put it right in the first paragraph of the lead where it's first stated.
 * That it communicates via the DSN doesn't seem like such a vital piece of information that it needs to be in the first paragraph of the lead, nor does that fact that NASA and JPL provide real-time information.
 * "the spacecraft's extended mission is" Why "extended mission" Extended compared to what"  I'd just say "mission".  Actually, you could shorten all of this to "The mission of the Voyager program is (was?) to study the outer heliosphere and begin exploring  the interstellar medium".
 * "Voyager 1 began experiencing" -> "Voyager experienced"
 * "further confirming" you haven't previously said anything about "confirming", so I don't get how this is "further confirming"
 * "In a further testament to the robustness of Voyager 1", this sounds like a commercial.
 * "the Voyager team tested the spacecraft's trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) thrusters" Did they test them, or use them?  Sounds like the later.
 * "Voyager 1's extended mission" -> "Voyager 1's mission"
 * "On December 12, 2023, NASA announced that Voyager 1's flight data system is currently unable to use...", drop "currently".
 * "It is unknown whether the probe will be able to continue its mission." this contradicts the previous paragraph which said the mission will continue until 2025.

Mission background

 * "was proposed which prompted NASA to begin work". This sounds like you keep trying to start writing the sentence but can't figure out what to say.  Get rid of all the fluff and just say the important stuff.  For example, what' the difference between "to begin work" and "to work"?
 * "work on a mission during the early 1970s." It's not clear if the planning work is happening in the 1970 or the missing will happen in the 1970s.
 * "Information gathered by the Pioneer 10 spacecraft helped Voyager's engineers design Voyager to cope more effectively with the intense radiation environment around Jupiter." -> "Information from the Pioneer 10 mission helped Voyager's designers cope with the intense radiation around Jupiter".
 * "shortly before launch, strips of kitchen-grade aluminum foil" The timeline jumps all over the place.  Earlier in the paragraph, you're talking about the earliest planning for the mission, then you just to "just before launch", and in the next paragraph, you're back to "Initially, Voyager 1 was planned..."  I'd present all this in chronological order.
 * "It has 16 hydrazine thrusters, three-axis stabilization gyroscopes, and referencing instruments". How many gyroscopes does it have?  What are the "referencing instruments" and how many are there?  Also, see WP:SOB.
 * "designed to be used up to and beyond the limits of the Solar System". "up to any beyond" includes the entire universe, so it doesn't really say anything.
 * "The radio communication system ... The communication system" Rephrase to eliminate saying "communication system" twice.
 * "send and receive radio waves" I guess "waves" is technically correct, but it's an odd way of saying it. Radio signals?  Radio messages?
 * The first time you mention the Deep Space Network, you gave it's acroynm DSN, so you should just continue to refer to it as the DSN in the rest of the article.
 * " Channel 18, using a frequency of either 2.3 GHz or 8.4 GHz,", knowing a bit about radio, it seemed odd to me that one channel would have two different frequencies. Eventually I found this which indeed shows both frequencies for downlink.  It might be useful here to mention that one of those is S-band and the other X-band, and briefly explain why there are two.  Does some data go over one and some over the other?  Is one just a backup for the other based on which is getting the best signal at the moment?
 * "When Voyager 1 is unable to communicate directly with the Earth", I'd run this paragraph into the previous one.
 * "Voyager 1 has three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) mounted on a boom. Each MHW-RTG contains 2" Are RTG and MHW-RTG the same thing? If so, use the same name in both places.
 * "due to the 87.7-year half-life of the fuel and degradation of the thermocouples" Which of those is the bigger issue?
 * " Since the 1990s, most space probes have been equipped with completely autonomous cameras.[30]" that may be true, but it's not really relevant here. Voyager is, at this point, 50 year old technology, of course modern spacecraft will be doing stuff differently.
 * Scientific instruments: In general FA frowns on tabular presentations, preferring information to be presented in prose. Is there some reasonable way this big table could be turned into prose?

Mission profile

 * It seems weird to start this section with an image and a table. See my earlier comments about tabular material vs prose.
 * "The Voyager 1 probe" -> "Voyager 1"
 * Link "aphelion" the first time it's used.
 * "Its closest approach to Jupiter was on March 5," the cited source doesn't talk about this.
 * " from the planet's center" why give the distance to the center? From an orbital mechanics point of view, that's probably logical, but this is talking about photography, so distance from the surface seems more useful.
 * "The discovery of ongoing volcanic activity on the moon Io was probably the greatest surprise. ", the source doesn't say this.
 * "The wind blows mostly in an easterly direction", again, not supported by the source.

OK, I'm going to stop here. The last three citations I spot-checked all failed to verify the statements they were attached to. This is an absolute show-stopper. The sources will be examined in great detail at FAC; you need to go through them now to make sure every sentence is actually supported by the sources it's cited to. This will be a huge pain to do, but better to do it now on your own time than to have it done to you at FAC. Until you've got the sourcing 100% nailed down, nothing else really matters.