[HN Gopher] NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates...
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NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
Author : jonathankoren
Score : 268 points
Date : 2024-04-22 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.nasa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.nasa.gov)
| anotherhue wrote:
| Incredible to see the same faces in that photo as in the
| excellent documentary: https://www.itsquieterfilm.com/
|
| Voyager might make it to 2027.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The documentary only came out less than 2 years ago, one would
| imagine most of the same people would be there - though I don't
| see Jefferson Hall.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Voyager might make it to 2027._
|
| With some amount of luck, Voyager might last ten more years
| beyond that:
|
| _" Even if science data won't likely be collected after 2025,
| engineering data could continue to be returned for several more
| years. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of
| the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how
| much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back
| to Earth."_
|
| https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/
|
| (And then, 15,000 years later, maybe this happens:
| https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football )
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Can't possibly say enough good things about this Jon Bois
| fellow.
| temp0826 wrote:
| rip centennial bulb
|
| I hope the 3rd installment comes out someday. Seems to be
| on permanent hiatus.
| cancerboi wrote:
| What is this sbnation link? The text explodes and a calendar
| pops up.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| Keep reading. It's a story.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| That was remarkably good!
| Keyframe wrote:
| no way to purchase/watch this outside of certain regions (I
| presume US-only or similar). What a shame.
| drtgh wrote:
| How they manage to squeeze all the resources of the probe and
| keep it working year after year is an astounding achievement,
| pleasantly mind-blowing.
|
| It is important that all the know-how about this type of
| maintenance never disappear. I hope the designs in electronics
| that this team would have wanted to have available in the probe
| are implemented in the new designs.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I should see whether there's documentation of what they moved
| and what they replaced. I imagine there's "plenty" of room to
| do that (in the sense that there's probably some programs that
| are no longer mission-relevant because they controlled systems
| that have been shut down), but I'd love to know what got
| tossed.
|
| Heck of a job.
| JackFr wrote:
| I forget where I saw the headline, but it's still funny
| "Voyager: Please let me die. NASA: No."
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Yep, 45 years old hardware, still getting software updates. Hey
| Apple, JPL is close to you, can you get someone to bike over and
| see how they do it? Thanks!
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| Maybe some notes on how to handle degrading power supplies
| while they're at it.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| They turn stuff off. It's not a secret. The vast majority of
| the sensors are off. They're simply not needed in
| interstellar space.
| tnmom wrote:
| Good lord could you imagine the meltdown HN would have if
| Apple had taken this option to solve the old-batteries-
| support-lower-peak-current physics problem?
|
| "Your device battery no longer supports the camera. Or the
| backlight on the top third of the screen. But it runs at
| full speed otherwise!"
| cjk2 wrote:
| Meh just buy a new Voyager!
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| OMG the new one is black!!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| If this happened after 45 years, I don't think people
| would mind.
| Salgat wrote:
| I bet for a billion they could make a single device that lasts
| decades too.
| dylan604 wrote:
| and a nuclear battery to last decades. oh, and stagnant
| software that doesn't get updates meant to work for other
| hardware
| dx4100 wrote:
| The average vape has more processing power than Voyager,
| and the iPhone is orders of magnitude more complex. With
| that said, it takes skilled engineers to squeeze perfectly
| crafted code into such a tiny platform from the 70s.
| treesknees wrote:
| I understand what you're getting at, but the 'average'
| vape pen is essentially a disposable battery and
| temperature sensor with no additional inputs or features.
|
| After reading some details about the Voyager, I have my
| doubts that a disposable vape has more computation power
| [1]. Maybe the higher end devices with programable
| displays and temperature settings?
|
| [1]
| https://www.eejournal.com/article/voyagers-1-and-2-take-
| embe...
| nojvek wrote:
| New vapes have Bluetooth on a small chip that tracks # of
| puffs remaining. Being sold for $40 bucks a at store.
|
| Crazy that we have disposable one use electronics now.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wonder if some billionaire ordered one.
| its_ethan wrote:
| The current iOS 17 is compatible with the iPhone XS, which is
| from 2018. That's 6 years for a piece of tech that the majority
| of people replace after < 4 years...
|
| Also to nit pick, Apple is based in Cupertino (northern CA) and
| JPL is in Los Angeles - so it'd be quite a bike ride lol
| AstroJetson wrote:
| I have an iPad Air from 2014 that hasn't been able to get
| updates since iOS 12.5, so 2019. The electronics are fine, a
| browser update would be awesome. Would people not replace
| phones in < 4 years if they could have current software? 4
| years on a $800 thing doesn't seem to be a good deal for the
| majority of us.
|
| Sorry about the distance thing. I'm from Philadelphia, so all
| of that (vaguely waving west) has got to be bikeable. But
| I'll remember the /s for next time.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I drove the route on the Pacific Coast Highway and wished I
| was on my bike instead _(motorbike that is)_.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Well goddamn done.
| cjk2 wrote:
| Next time I bitch about debugging something in a container I'm
| going to look at this and stop bitching. Great job!
| Johnie wrote:
| Puts your migration projects to shame.
| groestl wrote:
| /api/v1 stands for Voyager 1 and is forever.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Yep... days worth of work to get Python code I wrote 3 years
| ago working again from all of the 'bitrot.' Can't imagine how
| much work it must be for them to produce new binaries to update
| these old systems from modern computer hardware.
|
| Although I suppose it could actually be easier depending on how
| the code works- perhaps it's just simple bare metal assembly
| without the approx 10^99999 libraries a modern python stack
| has.
| layer8 wrote:
| Having no customers does help a lot.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Hell yeah!
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far.
|
| I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still
| keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would
| be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at
| where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where
| humans have colonized by comparison.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Perhaps our descendants will build a museum around it without
| ever changing its velocity.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Wasn't there a _Star Trek_ enemy that was based on _Voyager_
| colliding with some kind of doomsday machine?
| ioblomov wrote:
| [SPOILER ALERT]
|
| It was the surprise ending for the first Star Trek film...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Pictur.
| ..
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That was Voyager 6, a fictional probe based on the real
| life probes of the same name.
|
| Earth probe gone bad is a common trope in Sci-Fi. Star Trek
| alone has a few episodes:
|
| - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Nomad
|
| - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Friendship_1
|
| Also the Doomsday machine was a very different type of
| probe to V'ger
|
| https://memory-
| alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Doomsday_Machine_(e...
| layer8 wrote:
| Strangely, this isn't listed as a trope here: https://tvt
| ropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/StarTrekTheMotio...
| batch12 wrote:
| I think the Klingons destroyed pioneer 10 too.
| echelon wrote:
| > when we're a true interstellar species
|
| If we can harness all of the energy and mass available in our
| solar system, we [1] can likely compute more than several
| galaxies full of classical humans. We might even begin to test
| the edges of physics.
|
| Maybe we don't need to go anywhere at all. Maybe we [1] have
| all we need right here to become literal gods.
|
| [1] Our digital descendants. Humans are very much fit to the
| gas exchange and metabolism envelope of our gravity well.
| qwertox wrote:
| Hackers at heart.
|
| I wish media would report about it to illustrate what hacking
| used to mean.
| project2501a wrote:
| sorry, i just have a silly question: what would it take to send
| new probes out there? voyager 3 and 4 for example to follow the
| same path (more or less, sans planet alignment) V1 and V2
| followed, but with better hardware of course.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| You can't. Voyager's launch date coincided with a planetary
| alignment allowing for gravitational slingshotting out of our
| galaxy. We have to wait for the next alignment.
| cbhl wrote:
| If you only want to get a gravity boost from Jupiter and
| Saturn (like V1) I wonder if you wouldn't have to wait as
| long, say, every 20 years instead of every 176?
|
| https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline/#event-a-
| once-...
|
| But you'd still have to fly for ~40 years to get to where
| they are now, and they'll keep on flying during those 40
| years.
| pkaye wrote:
| Mostly need money to fund them. There are various proposals in
| US/EU/China:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_probe#Proposed_mi...
| floxy wrote:
| If you just want to fling something out there fast, I think
| this is a pretty cool way to do it:
|
| https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI?si=28yrQW8B2IfbGvqj&t=883
| vikingerik wrote:
| There's basically no point scientifically for doing the four-
| planet flyby again. Since Voyager, we've already done much
| better at Jupiter and Saturn with years-long orbiter missions.
| A quick flyby wouldn't get us anything we don't already know at
| those.
|
| We could use more investigation at Uranus and Neptune, but we'd
| get much more out of extended orbiter missions to those rather
| than another quick flyby. A Uranus orbiter is currently one of
| the higher priority missions in planning, and there's a launch
| window for a Jupiter-Uranus slingshot in 2034 or 2035.
|
| (What I wonder is, how much planning do these things need? Why
| can't we just launch another copy of Cassini to Uranus and skip
| all the expensive design?)
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Nice one! Voyager carries the hopes, aspirations and fantasies of
| many of us space romantics.
|
| On the technical side of things, there are also other companies
| doing live patching, like the Ericsson telephone exchanges. Their
| code can be altered "live" while operating, in order to fix or
| enhance the software and with zero downtime ;-)
| Covzire wrote:
| Could NASA send another probe after them to act as a kind of
| message relay?
| jlaneve wrote:
| > The team started by singling out the code responsible for
| packaging the spacecraft's engineering data. They sent it to its
| new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes
| about 22 1/2 hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion
| miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 1/2
| hours for a signal to come back to Earth.
|
| Talk about a slow feedback loop! And I get frustrated when I need
| to push code to a repo to test things in CI...
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| How much data can you send in a single radio single? I assume
| it's not TCP/IP
| dgfitz wrote:
| Have you investigated this or are you just asking? I imagine
| if you wish to learn the answer it is a few simple searches
| away. And by "imagine" I mean, it is.
| z500 wrote:
| My internet is operating at about 1/100 normal speed today. It
| feels a bit like I've been remoting into a machine on Mars.
| fsniper wrote:
| Good old segmentation and goto's at work! Are goto's still
| considered harmful?
| whatrocks wrote:
| Sucker for any news about the voyage of the Golden Record (almost
| but not quite a CS Lewis title)! For fun, I wrote a short story
| two years ago about a top-secret "Voyager 3" mission (and the
| probe's unexpected return to Earth):
| https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/
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