Harris wrote:
JJ wrote:

Arthur Harris wrote:


The signal will decrease by 6 dB every time you double the distance. MIR was
about 250 miles above Earth, and you could establish communicaion with
fairly low power when it was overhead. On the other hand, Mars is about 35
million miles away! You'd need a LOT more power and antenna gain to contact
Mars.



Voyager 1 is just over 90 Astronomical Units or 8.4 billion miles from
the sun, transmitting with approximately 2 watts and signals are still
being received here on earth. How do you account for that?


A steerable 12-foot dish on the spacecraft, and HUGE antenna arrays on
Earth.

So you don't need a LOT of power to contact Mars.