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Lately I saw this strange date format in a Voyager 2 tweet:

Sister ship @NASAVoyager is 21 hrs 19 mins 00 secs of light-travel time from Earth (2021:247:120000:1L)

Of course I understood that first two numbers is year and day of year but I don't understand what data is placed in last two fields. What does 2L means? Is there a standard for this time format?

Serghei Niculaev
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  • There are other codes in the tail of date: 1L, 2T, 2ECa –  Sep 04 '21 at 02:03
  • Some speculation on this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/5ecefl/voyager2_is_now_15hrs_42min_of_light_travel_time/dabjx04?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 – BowlOfRed Sep 04 '21 at 03:40
  • It looks like the 6digits are a time code 120000 = 12:00:00hours The digit is 1/2 for voyager 1 and voyager 2. The letter or letters seems to mean something like L=location?, T=test or calibration?, ECa (?Engineering Ca?) – James K Sep 04 '21 at 17:34
  • Sounds good, @JamesK, and I thought same too but time code 120000 was published at 03:01 PM so even if author using -3h timezone minutes are not used in this code. Also, there are another tweet with code 172142 posted at 8:20PM and between codes 180313 and 182148 there are only 15 minutes difference. I wouldn't ask if the answer was so simple :) – Serghei Niculaev Sep 04 '21 at 20:58
  • It's more likely the time that the location signal was sent from voyager. The publication time would be some time after it is received, a day later. – James K Sep 04 '21 at 21:05
  • @SergheiNiculaev No, the tweet was published at 12:01 PM UTC. The time code is probably correct and the minute had already rolled over by the time the tweet posted. – called2voyage Sep 07 '21 at 12:35
  • @SergheiNiculaev As far as the minutes difference discrepancy, 15 is pretty close to ~18, and I think the first tweet posting late and the second tweet posting roughly on time could easily explain it. – called2voyage Sep 07 '21 at 12:37

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