[HN Gopher] NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates...
___________________________________________________________________
NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
Author : jonathankoren
Score : 736 points
Date : 2024-04-22 18:59 UTC (1 days 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.
| Fatnino wrote:
| That bulb in Livermore is still lit.
|
| Or are you talking about something else?
| temp0826 wrote:
| Referencing 17776 by Jon Bois when the bulb (spoiler
| alert?) meets its demise. A tragic day for sentient
| satellites and immortal football fans alike.
| cancerboi wrote:
| What is this sbnation link? The text explodes and a calendar
| pops up.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| Keep reading. It's a story.
| bombcar wrote:
| Existential crisis as football was not on my expected
| list for today.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| That was remarkably good!
| chungy wrote:
| > With some amount of luck, Voyager might last ten more years
| beyond that:
|
| Oh, good, it won't have to suffer a year 2038 problem :)
|
| Also: what's with that last link? Definitely didn't expect
| something to make my browser slow to a crawl.
| Keyframe wrote:
| no way to purchase/watch this outside of certain regions (I
| presume US-only or similar). What a shame.
| an1sotropy wrote:
| What a sweet film. Thank you for the link. This whole time when
| I heard about work on the Voyager mission I assumed there was a
| larger team, with fewer single points of failure.
| 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!!
| dotnet00 wrote:
| But it drops the golden record for a more modern,
| hardware locked bluetooth speaker :(
| cjk2 wrote:
| I actually just bought a new black iPhone so this burns
| :)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| If this happened after 45 years, I don't think people
| would mind.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Voyager's cameras were shut off after only 13 years to
| conserve power. Still a long time, but some people might
| mind if their phone did that.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| True but their phones aren't a billion kms away so they
| can just get the battery replaced :P 13 years is really
| excellent for lithium batteries.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| I mean yeah, it was just a little bit of humor at Apples
| expense. Obviously the Voyager plan of turning stuff off
| wouldn't be applicable to an iPhone.
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Well it IS crazy.
|
| This silicon and lithium could be used for much much
| better things and recycled as well, than a few puffs of a
| substance only meant to make people addicted.
| dekhn wrote:
| A Pinecil (digital soldering pen) is probably a better
| example. BL706 MCU, "a low-power, high-performance IoT
| chip that supports BLE/Zigbee wireless networking, ...
| BL702 has built-in RISC-V 32-bit single-core processor
| with FPU, the clock frequency can reach 144MHz, has 132KB
| RAM / 192KB ROM / 1Kb eFuse storage resources, supports
| external Flash, and optional embedded pSRAM."
|
| The Voyager had a custom-designed processor (well,
| several) that were basically computers made out of basic
| logic chips (74xx series); see details here
| https://www.eejournal.com/article/voyagers-1-and-2-take-
| embe...
|
| Either way, it's clear that we (well, JPL) can build
| extremely powerful and sophisticated systems with
| relatively small computers, suggesting that resource
| constraints can sometimes be a source of stability and
| creativity.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >The Voyager had a custom-designed processor (well,
| several) that were basically computers made out of basic
| logic chips (74xx series);
|
| This was not unusual at the time: many early arcade games
| were made exactly the same way. They've even been
| emulated by the MAME project.
| dekhn wrote:
| yep, I had fun watching the Ben Eater videos where he
| builds a retrocomputer out of them. I even bought some of
| the chips to build a simple 4-bit counter with up/down
| buttons. It was a real revelation to understand that
| concept, and I ended up looking at an Apple I motherboard
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#/media/File:Copson
| Appl...) and noticed the regular array of 74xx chips
| connected by some elegantly laid-out wires.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wonder if some billionaire ordered one.
| lolive wrote:
| FYI, my original iPad is still working fine.
| kevincox wrote:
| Can you run any secure browser on it?
| lolive wrote:
| Safari does open Amazon.com in HTTPS. But 256MB of RAM is
| really small for proper browsing.
|
| Anyway, apart from the browser, comics reading,
| TuneInRadio, old games and digital photoframe apps still
| work ok.
|
| (in case you have the strange idea to buy outdated ipad
| to play with, take at least ipad 2, which is indeed
| stupidly obsolete, but faaaaaar more powerful than the
| original iPad :)
| 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.
| olabyne wrote:
| I have an Ipad Air 2 from 2014, running Ios15 (not too old
| yet) with security updates.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I drove the route on the Pacific Coast Highway and wished I
| was on my bike instead _(motorbike that is)_.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| JPL is in Altadena and Apple is in the sf Bay Area
| somenameforme wrote:
| Planned obsolescence [1] in the problem. Apple could certainly
| create modular devices designed to be used and piecemeal
| modified/updated indefinitely. But it's way more profitable to
| sell you a brand new phone every couple of years than it is to
| sell you a modular device that you could update as desired,
| especially if the parts/connections are standardized meaning
| you could foster a [normalized] third party market for
| batteries, screens, etc.
|
| Devices would last way longer, prices would be much lower, and
| it'd be unimaginably better for the environment. But Apple
| wouldn't make as much money, and the government's GDP growth
| figures wouldn't be as high. So clearly it's a terrible idea.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Modular devices aren't free in terms of engineering
| tradeoffs. Those interconnects to support modularity add
| their own unreliability (connectors that can fail more
| easily), weight (connectors) & increased size. Additionally,
| the connectors themselves have obsolescence anyway & at some
| point really expensive components start to be bottlenecks
| (e.g. upgrading the display uses a new connector or requires
| processing power/bandwidth that the CPU/RAM/GPU don't have
| etc). You see this in desktops where modularity is still
| fairly limited in terms of extending the lifespan of your
| machine - most people will buy a new computer anyway after 5
| years vs trying to upgrade some components piecemeal because
| the new computer is cheaper / unit of performance than doing
| piecemeal upgrades.
|
| According to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone, the
| modularity of the FairPhone helps it live 5-7 years. Notably
| that's not different from the 6-8 years that an iPhone is
| supported for.
|
| It's easy to blame it as planned obsolescence on the part of
| a single party instead of viewing it as a consequence of
| natural marketplace dynamics. You may of course adjust those
| dynamics by having the government impose a different set of
| constraints to have a different outcome. Politically that can
| be difficult though, especially in America, & it's not
| primarily because of the GDP but because people here
| generally distrust the government.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| In 2016, Apple released the original iPhone SE and Google
| released the original Pixel phone.
|
| The Pixel stopped getting security updates at the end of 2019.
| The OG iPhone SE is still getting security updates eight years
| later.
|
| Maybe Google should try seeing how Apple does it?
| nolist_policy wrote:
| The Google Pixel 8 series receives 7 years of updates. And
| unlike Apple they are upfront about it, which is important.
| Maybe your iPhone gets 8 years of updates, maybe 6 noone
| knows.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I'm not sure why anyone would take Google seriously when it
| comes to sticking to their word, but Google is merely
| promising to deliver in the future what Apple has already
| been doing in the past, since that iPhone SE is already in
| it's eighth year of support.
|
| Remember Google promising to never link your advertising
| profile with the other data they had about you when they
| bought DoubleClick?
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Google certainly delivered on 8 (now even 10) years of
| updates for Chromebooks.
|
| And advertising n years of updates is legally binding in
| a way. Apple can stop updating tomorrow if they feel like
| it. Google can't.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Google literally testified before Congress that they
| wouldn't link their user data with advertising profiles
| when they bought DoubleClick. That didn't stop them from
| doing it anyway.
|
| I think the fact that Apple started delivering long term
| support over a decade ago is much more compelling.
| 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.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| It's probably a lot easier in a way, because they _don 't_
| have to worry about external dependencies changing at all.
| Modern code is a real PITA that way.
|
| What's hard about their work is 1) it's really, really slow
| to communicate with, so you can't iterate quickly, 2) the
| tech is really old and unlike today's stuff, so it's very
| specialized domain knowledge.
| kevincox wrote:
| Also whatever you do don't break the receiver pathway!
| Otherwise you will need to send a technician on-site.
| butlike wrote:
| The lead engineer from the 70's is actually in Voyager
| 1's fuselage. It's cramped but they seem to be doing ok!
| They're just taking pictures with an old Canon point and
| shoot.
| layer8 wrote:
| Having no customers does help a lot.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Hell yeah!
| golem14 wrote:
| Imagine you are the alien finding the probe 10k years from now
| and have to analyze and reverse engineer the now quite complex
| logic :)
| 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.
| beeeeerp wrote:
| I've never thought about it this way. What a cool idea!
| justinclift wrote:
| Someone (something?) will probably make a religion out of it.
| ;)
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| There is no destination; there is only the voyage.
|
| There was no beginning; there is only the voyage.
|
| In life, we voyage together, and in death we shall voyage
| alone.
|
| Now, then, and forever voyaging.
| el-duderino42 wrote:
| I think a 19 year old yobbo, whose dad is a successful
| interstellar logistics businessman, who out of a guilty
| conscience for never having had time for his son and having
| bought him an overpowered spacecraft, will either put
| grafitti on it or misjudge his afterburner and half burn it
| while trying to fly a very tight corner around it, in order
| to impress the 2 girls he has on board.
| 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...
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The article does also say
|
| > As a side note, the general story is nearly identical
| to the Original Series episode "The Changeling,"
|
| That episode was one of the other examples in my post
| (Nomad).
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Also a Futurama episode where a probe merged with God.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| My favourite, the ANDROMEDA STRAIN .. the idea that the
| US government would experiment with weaponizing upper-
| atmosphere organisms is just too real ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
| rob74 wrote:
| Ah yes, the first Michael Crichton novel I read - and
| also the book that first introduced me to binary code
| (https://imgur.com/N4IjIYq)! And after watching (and then
| reading) _Jurassic Park_ some 10 years later, it took a
| while until I realized that it was from the same
| author...
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Yes, I too had the same disparity in recognizing the
| author as a young 'un, reading CONGO and SPHERE and so on
| .. Mr. Crichton sure had his finger on the pulse of the
| technological world we live in. What a wild series of
| stories he has created .. he was my favourite author
| until Messrs. Stephenson and Gibson came along ..
|
| Staying on subject, I wonder if we will see a new
| adaptation of ANDROMEDA STRAIN some time. As a story it
| seems topical and relevant.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| There was a mini-series, starring Benjamin Bratt, about
| fifteen years ago.
|
| Wasn't really great, but not bad, either. Just didn't
| have the impact of the 1970s movie.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Don't forget the Venus-bound "Death Probe" that got loose
| on earth in the 6 Million Dollar Man.
| https://bionic.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Probe
| batch12 wrote:
| I think the Klingons destroyed pioneer 10 too.
| INGSOCIALITE wrote:
| V-GER
| 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.
| science4sail wrote:
| > compute more than several galaxies full of classical humans
|
| Unfortunately the simulated classical humans in your
| Matrioshka Brain will want to mine Bitcoin, which means that
| our digital descendants will have to become a true
| interstellar species anyway in order to convert the Laniakea
| Supercluster into coin-mining computronium.
| eigenket wrote:
| This is essentially the plot of a book called Accelerando,
| published way back in 2005!
| eru wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I grant that. But why would that keep us from pressing on?
|
| If we have more resources in general, we will also have more
| resources for interstellar adventures.
| echelon wrote:
| I'm sure we will send interstellar probes of some sort. But
| I think that assuming we'll want to send lots of entities
| vast distances in space and time might be a lot like
| thinking we'll have flying cars.
|
| We already have quite a lot to exploit in the region around
| us.
|
| We assume we understand our future wants, needs, costs, and
| capabilities. (Granted, any future thinking is also subject
| to this, including my own.)
| iampivot wrote:
| Do we know how long the power source will last?
| Fatnino wrote:
| It has a few years left as best.
|
| Supposed to run out in the 2020s
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah too bad they didn't put a bit more plutonium in it.
| But it's already lasted beyond the designers' wildest
| imagination.
| retrac wrote:
| The plutonium 238 decays according to a curve, and the
| thermocouples are degraded as well by heat and radiation
| according to a curve. So the power output drops rather
| predictably: "The radioisotope thermoelectric generator on
| each spacecraft puts out 4 watts less each year." [1]
|
| The Voyagers will soon no longer have enough power to operate
| any of their instruments. They'll have enough power to
| continue operating the transmitter (which serves as a science
| experiment of its own) into the 2030s. The power of the
| signal will drop before the electronics and control brown out
| (if it works as designed), and it the signal might become too
| weak to detect before the probe completely stops operating.
| Such a fate befell Pioneer 11, who may yet still be warbling
| away at low power no longer pointed at Earth; its carrier was
| last detected in 2003.
|
| [1] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > [1] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-
| questions/
|
| Also:
|
| _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._
|
| That FAQ covers a lot of interesting ground (though it
| talks about 2020 in the future tense).
|
| _After Voyager 1 took its last image (the "Solar System
| Family Portrait" in 1990), the cameras were turned off to
| save power and memory ..._
|
| I didn't realize that was the last image.
|
| _... it is very dark where the Voyagers are now. While you
| could still see some brighter stars and some of the planets
| with the cameras, you can actually see these stars and
| planets better with amateur telescopes on Earth._
| xattt wrote:
| > the cameras were turned off to save power and memory
|
| Since it's powered by an RTG, how does the power get
| "used up"? I assume that this refers to the available
| power budget at a given moment versus some sort of
| expendable power reserve.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| Probably a physical relay to deal with parasitic power
| draw
| xcv123 wrote:
| Yes the power budget is decreasing as the generator
| output decreases over time.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| It's the first question at the top of that ^ FAQ page.
| One of their comments is : "Mission managers removed the
| software from both spacecraft that controls the camera."
| Makes me wonder if that unused RAM came in handy lately!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's radioactive so the half-life has a serious effect.
| Its half-life is 87 years so it's not even used up one. I
| guess it wasn't really very overdimensioned. But it
| wasn't meant to last this long.
| exitb wrote:
| > The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of
| the Deep Space Network through about 2036
|
| It would be quite depressing if it was us failing to
| receive a fainter signal, rather than Voyager failing to
| send it.
| dmurray wrote:
| > the transmitter (which serves as a science experiment of
| its own) into the 2030s.
|
| One of the longest-running scientific experiments, too.
| It's already about as old as the Queensland pitch drop
| experiment was when Voyager I was launched.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Oh, you sweet summer child...
| tempestn wrote:
| This patronizing phrase should really be scrubbed from the
| modern lexicon.
| jojobas wrote:
| Even if you construe this phrase as unequivocally negative,
| you can't scrub negative emotions and intentions. If you
| were able to actually scrub some word or phrase from the
| language, another would take its place, like with all the
| racial and intellectual disability slurs.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It is the modern lexicon, it's from the game of thrones.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| We get it. You're scared and want everyone else to be just as
| scared as you.
| divbzero wrote:
| I've imagined a scene playing out, in sci-fi or for real in the
| distant future, where astronauts test out a new propulsion
| system by flying out towards Voyager 1 and catch up to it with
| ease. As they approach, they see the ancient probe grow larger
| and larger in their window until...
| randomtoast wrote:
| If my math is correct, we would already need to build a
| spaceship that can travel at 1/10th the speed of light to
| reach Voyager 1 within one week. It will be quite an
| engineering challenge for the future.
| Aachen wrote:
| https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-they-
| now/ says the furthest is 24.4 million km from earth.
| Pulling out the trusty qalculator: $ qalc
| '24.4e6 km / 1 week / c to %' (((24.4 * (10^6))
| kilometers) / (1 week)) / SpeedOfLight = approx.
| 0.0134572816%
|
| So this is using the "millions of kilometers per week" as a
| speed unit (like km/h but bigger), then dividing by the
| speed of light (c) to get the fraction of c this is, and
| finally asks it to format it as a percentage
|
| Edit: found a potentially easier (more intuitive to
| understand) query, giving the same result, as well as how
| to ask it nearly for the how manyth part of c this is. I'm
| still learning all the tricks of this tool :)
| $ qalc '24.4e6 km / 1 week to c%' [...] approx.
| 0.0134572816(%c) $ qalc '24.4e6 km / 1 week to 1/c'
| [...] approx. 7430.92125 c^-1
| divbzero wrote:
| That's pretty cool.
|
| Wolfram Alpha also yields approx. 0.134 _c_ for 1 week of
| travel time:
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=distance+to+voyager+
| 1+/...
|
| ---
|
| Perhaps targeting 100 weeks of travel time would be more
| plausible:
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=distance+to+voyager+
| 1+/...
|
| 0.00134 _c_ is approx. two times the top speed of 0.00064
| _c_ for the fastest space probe:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe
|
| If only we could harness gravity assist at will...
| 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.
| skykooler wrote:
| You don't even need to fly by Saturn - New Horizons only
| used a Jupiter gravity assist, and those are available
| about once a year.
| layer8 wrote:
| I think you mean solar system.
| 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. Voyager gets the mindshare because it was first and the
| four-way slingshot is fun to visualize, but the reality is that
| Galileo and Cassini and Juno delivered thousands of times more
| data.
|
| 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? You'd need some changes to antennas
| and power supply for a more distant planet, but the scientific
| instruments and computing platform should just be reusable
| designs.)
| wongarsu wrote:
| Going out further than Voyager might be interesting just for
| studying the conditions outside the inner solar system.
| Though I'm not sure how much there is to observe unless you
| go an order of magnitude faster than Voyager to try to reach
| the oort cloud
| vikingerik wrote:
| There are proposals for this, here's one: https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Interstellar_Probe_(spacecraft...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| If you mean just to beat them on distance, we could probably
| launch something capable of it in a decade or two by getting
| more serious about nuclear propulsion and using some slingshots
| to pick up speed further.
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You can get raw bitrate numbers, not so much about the way
| transmissions are formatted.
| huytersd wrote:
| Posting a question in a forum has its benefits though. A
| bunch of drive by folks end up picking up information they
| would never have gone through the trouble of researching
| themselves.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Downlink from Voyager to Earth is currently 40 bits/s but can
| be up to 160 bits/s. The signal is received at -160dBm or
| around 100 _zeptowatts_ (1e-22 kW).
| 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.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| So there is something with a worse ping than IP over Avian
| Carriers.
| fsniper wrote:
| Good old segmentation and goto's at work! Are goto's still
| considered harmful?
| jacoblambda wrote:
| What's the paper title? "goto considered harmful considered
| harmful" I think?
|
| Even in modern C programming goto is still pulling its weight
| for handling unrolling and cleanups.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| The paper was written by Dijkstra, and even he doesn't like
| how it's become some kind of mindless mantra, instead of a
| warning against spaghetti code which it was. He never meant
| that you should never, ever use GOTO.
| 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/
| harles wrote:
| Pretty incredible feat of engineering (both back when it was
| launched and now). Does anyone know its current purpose? I'm
| curious if there's anything we're actively using it for or if
| it's just a matter of "look for surprises".
| retrac wrote:
| The magnetometers and charged particle detectors are still
| operating. So they are measuring the galactic magnetic field,
| and cosmic rays and the gas in interstellar space. The results
| are more or less what was predicted, though the exact boundary
| of the sun's influence was only discovered when Voyager 1 and 2
| crossed over it in 2012 and 2018 respectively. Beyond that,
| yes, they're basically assuring us the sun is still there and
| that space is very empty. I don't think anyone expects the
| interstellar gas to vary in density on the timeframe that the
| Voyagers will be able to observe it but, I guess we'll find
| out!
|
| Edit: I spoke way too soon. It varies, as discovered with
| Voyager measurements recently:
| https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/as-nasas-voyager-1-surveys-int...
| harles wrote:
| Exactly what I was looking for - thanks! Not earth
| shattering, but it's neat to fill out our map of the
| neighborhood.
| taco-hands wrote:
| I don't know about anyone else, but that box of assorted
| pastries/doughnuts should been rapidly consumed after hearing the
| news!
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Voyager has been an inspiration for generations of engineers.
|
| Bless you all that worked on it. Thank you.
|
| Recently I designed in a Voyager inspired secret Easter egg into
| the surgical robot I designed. I put a gold (plated) plate with
| everyone's signature engraved on it. Gave everyone one as a
| surprise Christmas gift.
| 14 wrote:
| Cool! What else can you tell us about this robot you built?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's the Maestro from Moon Surgical, it's done over 200
| surgeries, all successful. So far (no whammy) its had 100%
| reliability with the first 6 systems we built. We designed it
| (hardware wise) with only 3 engineers, including me, and we
| hand built the first ones right here in San Carlos, CA. The
| company is based in Paris and has a whole interesting history
| there as well.
| phinnaeus wrote:
| Hold on, is that the robot that did surgery on a grape?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| No, but I worked on one of those too. I worked on J&Js
| ottava, its designed to compete with the one doing the
| grape surgury, Intuitive's Da Vinci. I've had the
| pleasure of using one (Da Vinci XI) to play around with,
| it's truly amazing.
| squarefoot wrote:
| "The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a
| portion of the FDS memory -- including some of the FDS computer's
| software code -- isn't working. The loss of that code rendered
| the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the
| chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in
| the FDS memory."
|
| Just another proof that we may have gained a lot, but also lost
| something in our pursuit of modernity: on modern systems direct
| memory access is discouraged if not prevented by the underlying
| OSes, and this hack would not have been possible.
| lolive wrote:
| I want no remote hacker to do this kind of hack on my devices.
| drivebycomment wrote:
| Modern systems can automatically detect bad memories and map
| those hardware pages out. SSDs can do it at the firmware. ECC
| are also self correcting.
|
| The "hack" wouldn't be necessary, or can be done natively in
| many modern systems.
| InvisibleUp wrote:
| The modern equivalent to this would be an embedded system with
| an RTOS, where you _do_ get full control of memory, because you
| _are_ the OS. We just have nice abstractions on top of that for
| the most common use cases, since you very rarely need that
| precise of control over system timings or memory allocation.
| grosswait wrote:
| > 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.
|
| It has taken 46 years to get 22.5 light hours away from Earth!
| sllabres wrote:
| Yes, this is why I always liked 'planet walks' like this [1] If
| you see Images the planets in the solar system, the solar
| system itself etc. are mostly not to scale. If you walk such
| path one get a bit of a feel how large everything is, I think
| especially if the plantes on the walk are to scale too. Even
| our solar system is mostly empty. And the distances to moon a
| microscopic.
|
| Walking such a path is is not the same, but a bit like [3] if
| one is patient (which is difficult on the internet) and doesn't
| scroll manually but only via the little "c" in the lower right
| corner, wich scrolls with light speed.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_Planet_Walk (there are
| several other listed at the bottom of the page)
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model
|
| [3]
| https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem....
| nirav72 wrote:
| All I can say is wow! This probe refuses to die. Despite being
| built with almost 50 year old technology. Amazing engineering by
| the people that designed and built it. Even more amazing is the
| people that continue to debug software problems from 2 light days
| distance.
| eh_why_not wrote:
| > from 2 light days distance
|
| The distance is currently 22.5 light hours (and increases by
| half-hour per year.) But it is indeed about 2 days of round-
| trip time for debugging.
| nxobject wrote:
| I would give my left nut for a Voyager operations + programming
| sim, complete with live patches and day plus communications
| round-trip time.
| userbinator wrote:
| If anyone is curious about the computers they use:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Computers_and_...
|
| 16/18-bit custom architecture, 4k/8k words (around 9/18KB total).
| Other sources I could find indicate a 250kHz clock frequency and
| around 8KIPS.
| taylorius wrote:
| Could get doom running on that, no problem.
| hujun wrote:
| Dark Forest Hypothesis:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Although that's one of the many possible explanations of the
| Fermi paradox [0], I prefer to think that the real reason we
| haven't discovered (or we haven't been discovered) is the fact
| that we're limited by the speed of light.
|
| The distances are so vast, almost unfathomable, that we need
| Faster Than Light means of traveling. Perhaps I'm being naive
| or romantic, but I prefer to think this is the real reason :-)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
| shiroiushi wrote:
| The speed of light and great distances are indeed a limiter,
| but the universe has been around for billions of years. Even
| with the great distances, an interstellar civilization that's
| been around for millions of years would have had plenty of
| time to find us by now.
| butlike wrote:
| Entropy is probably why.
|
| Also as particles spread out, there's less of a chance of
| interaction, which by extension makes it so there's less of a
| chance that a system of electrical impulse that fires in a
| synapse would exist over large distances. This system, of
| course, would be the catalyst for producing such thoughts as
| "I wonder if we're alone in the universe."
|
| That's not to say you can't send dense information over
| larger distances with a shorter wavelength (re: radiation;
| gamma rays)... it just means the flying saucers with little
| green men landing on earth are probably out.
| botanical wrote:
| The Voyager project is an amazing feat for humanity. But I
| wonder, does NASA take into account the repercussions of sending
| a probe deep into space? I know space is big but I can only think
| of the dark forest hypothesis. What's the plan for further space
| exploration?
| techbuttman wrote:
| Well they put a golden record on voyager
| (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/) with a lot of our
| info. so I think they were betting on friendly aliens, if any.
| T-A wrote:
| Voyager 1 is currently 2.4e10 km from Earth. Trisolaris -
| sorry, I mean Proxima Centauri - is 4e13 km away [2], so in the
| (almost) 47 years since its launch, Voyager 1 has covered a
| whopping 0.06% of the distance. And it's not even headed that
| way.
|
| Meanwhile, radio, TV and radar have been advertising the
| presence of a new technological civilization on Earth for more
| than a century. That means any entity worth worrying about
| within a 100+ light year radius - a distance 44+ times longer
| than to Proxima - already knows about us. And that sphere keeps
| growing in all directions at the speed of light, or roughly
| 18000 times faster than Voyager 1 is moving.
|
| If you really want to worry about the Dark Forest, it would be
| more justified to ask if your local radio station takes into
| account the repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns
| into deep space.
|
| [1] https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
| wumeow wrote:
| > repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns into
| deep space.
|
| There's actually a documentary about this:
|
| https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest
| somenameforme wrote:
| Inverse square law. With the power we're transmitting at,
| signals become just background noise _relatively_ quickly.
| They 're nowhere near strong enough to be detectable at e.g.
| Proxima Centauri. This is what makes the radio signals we do
| detect, like fast radio bursts, so interesting. So for
| instance, the furthest signal we've detected is called FRB
| (fast radio burst) 20220610A, and that millisecond length
| signal came from a source with output energy equivalent to
| decades of the Sun's entire output.
| nuccy wrote:
| This "law" is only for point (or spherical) sources, i.e.
| those emitting evenly in all direction - the area is
| increasing as a square of distance and thus signal power
| drops accordingly. With lasers, directional antennas,
| phased array antennas [1] the signal won't decay that fast.
| For instance with lasers it will be just a matter of
| alignment of internal elements to obtain a parallel light
| beam which doesn't lose power over distance (obviously
| there are other factors - atmosphere, particles in the
| vacuum, et al which will result in diveregence anyway).
|
| In fact some billionaires [2] invest into using telescopes
| with fast sampling cameras (in this case IACT [3]
| telescopes used normally to detect gamma-rays by their
| interaction with the atmosphere) to detect flashed of
| extraterrestrial lasers.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array (see the
| animation of the radiation pattern)
|
| [2] https://www.space.com/are-aliens-flashing-laser-
| beams.html
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >This "law" is only for point (or spherical) sources,
| i.e. those emitting evenly in all direction
|
| We're not talking about lasers and directional antenna
| here, we're talking about humans using radio
| communications to talk to each other on Earth over the
| last 100 years, and whether that's detectable from great
| distances.
| T-A wrote:
| There is a reason I included radar in my list.
|
| _military radar transmissions set up during the Cold War
| to detect incoming ballistic missiles have the power and
| frequency characteristics to be detected over hundreds of
| light-years - and have already broadcast our existence to
| any aliens within around 60 light-years of the Earth_ [1]
|
| But never underestimate the power of television:
|
| _The most detectable and useful escaping signals arise
| in a few ultra-powerful military radar systems and in
| normal television broad-casting. A model including over
| 2,000 television transmitters is used to demonstrate the
| wealth of astronomical and cultural information available
| from a distant observer's careful monitoring of frequency
| and intensity variations in individual video carriers
| (program material is not taken to be detectable)._ [2][3]
|
| _once the Square Kilometer Array is completed in
| Australia and Africa, it would be able to detect the
| current TV carrier wave radio leakage at a distance of
| about fifty lightyears for objects in the southern
| hemisphere sky_ [4]
|
| [1] https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-far-from-
| earth-could-...
|
| [2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-
| 9115-6_...
|
| [3]
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.199.4327.377
|
| [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/27/how-
| far-into-s...
| butlike wrote:
| To scale it up, if you're an intergalactic entity, all you'd
| have to do is make a note of objects pulsing/resonating where
| they were not before.
|
| "Oh, looks like Earth just got radio waves, which means
| there's probably life there."
|
| From there you just monitor the wave Hertz output by the
| planet, and when they start transmitting waves at higher Hz,
| you know it might be time to meet up.
|
| "Oh they're sending photonic gamma rays as messages now
| instead of radio waves, I'm gonna go say Hi."
| divbzero wrote:
| The substance of this news release is incredible, but its style
| is also admirable. The authors managed to convey in seven
| paragraphs a concise and comprehensible explanation of how the
| team resolved the technical issue.
| fforflo wrote:
| That's what happens when you're freed from "SEO-optimized
| content". It's also a culture thing I'd probably put under
| military philosophy. I've worked with ex-military engineers,
| and you can tell from how they communicate. Writing technical
| reports and memos is a skill.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Ha! Thank you for mentioning it. I thought the same as well
| while reading it. It was terse but not skimping on details
| while maintaining a certain style.
|
| I really wish most other websites were like this. SEO and
| Google has really made the world a worse place.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| This is cool.
|
| Does anybody know how they identified the non-working regions of
| the chip, without being able to probe the chip?
| ncr100 wrote:
| No, though they should have a real hardware version of the
| machine here on earth, to test out hypotheses.
| ngneer wrote:
| Must be difficult debugging a system with a 45 hour round trip
| each step of the way. And here I thought debugging a system on
| customer premises was tough. Hats off!
| orlp wrote:
| Worse than the round-trip is that there's no second chances in
| some scenarios. If you mess up the wrong part(s) of the system,
| it's bricked with no way to recover it.
| hoseja wrote:
| I find it sad they haven't been overtaken by much faster and
| better probes yet.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a
| portion of the FDS memory -- including some of the FDS computer's
| software code -- isn't working.
|
| No one thought of having backup computers on the spacecraft?
| noir_lord wrote:
| Most of the computer hardware is duplicated but much of it has
| already failed/failed earlier - remember these are 50 year old
| hardware - a lot of the logic is TTL and discrete components -
| which are far larger than modern equivalents would be.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| It's not just 50-year-old hardware: it's hardware that's been
| subjected to cosmic radiation for 50 years, part of that
| outside the solar system (so presumably even higher).
| hacker_88 wrote:
| Was it fixed up by intelligent life form
| welzel wrote:
| I wonder if a "modern" probe from 2024 could ever have a similar
| lifespan.
|
| With systems hundred times more complex and build by a NASA that
| is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago, i guess a modern day
| Voyager will not even make it to the edge, let alone continue to
| function.
| rtkwe wrote:
| We'll have a chance to see with New Horizons. It's one of the
| five craft to ever be put on a solar escape trajectory.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > 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
|
| That's about how long it takes for me to deploy a change with
| modern CI/CD pipelines.
| cookingrobot wrote:
| How many Starships would it take to go and bring Voyager 1 back
| to earth?
|
| If each ship was used like an expendable stage, and we were
| willing to use 100 ships, how long would it take to catch up to
| Voyager, stop, and return to earth?
| butlike wrote:
| How many ships could the ships ship if the ships could ship
| probes?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This is so cool. These guys are steely-eyed missile men. (Or
| women but I know what is most likely - lol). Remotely repairing a
| 45 year old probe 24 billion kilometers away. Wow.
| ncr100 wrote:
| This achievement feels like it should be CELEBRATED, like in the
| Oscars of Software Engineering ... Technical Achievement award:
|
| * NASA
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