[HN Gopher] Voyager 1 is back online! NASA spacecraft returns da...
___________________________________________________________________
Voyager 1 is back online! NASA spacecraft returns data from all 4
instruments
Author : dev_tty01
Score : 881 points
Date : 2024-06-15 05:12 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.space.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.space.com)
| gnabgib wrote:
| Discussion yesterday 45 points
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40676221
| NKosmatos wrote:
| It's funny how yesterday's submission (mine) only has 75 points
| and this one 441. Goes to show that the time and date you post
| something on HN plays an important role.
|
| I remember seeing an analysis on when is the best time and day
| to post something based on your country, but couldn't find it
| now.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I'd guess the best time is when the Californians wake up
| JohannesH wrote:
| Timing is everything... and luck. :)
|
| Me and a colleague of mine once posted essentially the same
| video of us pushing a coke can across a table, making the
| sound vaguely similar to Chewbacca.
|
| His video got maybe 100-200 views, and mine got 1.7 million
| views on YouTube and somewhere between 50 and 100 million
| views across other platforms. The reason? I happened to post
| my video to reddit a few hours later, which happened to
| coincide better with people getting ready for Thanksgiving in
| the states. I'm from Denmark, so it didn't really cross my
| mind.
| nnurmanov wrote:
| Awesome!
| neilfrndes wrote:
| I loved watching "It's quieter in the twilight", a documentary
| about how a dedicated team of engineers are fighting to keep the
| Voyager mission alive.
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Anyone know which SUN workstations those techs were using to
| "talk" to Voyager?
|
| They seem to be running some sort of Unix yet look quite new
| ish with their widescreen LCD Displays.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| this -- fascinating -- document about porting the code for
| the Pioneer/Voyager Cosmic Ray Subsystem[0] does not
| specifically mention which _workstations_ were used, but the
| doc is hand-dated to be 4/15/93.
|
| so for servers maybe SPARCservers and SPARCcenters and if
| they had good budget Sparc 10s for workstations? probably had
| a ton of IPXs and IPCs around the place.
|
| this doc from february 1995[1] "a study of workstation
| computational performance for real-time flight simulation"
| used a variety of SPARCs as well as other workstations from
| HP, SGI, IBM etc. the Sun workstation benchmarks are not
| good!
|
| [0] https://voyager.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/Pioneer_Software_po
| rt_...
|
| [1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19950020821/downloads
| /19...
|
| (edited to add 2nd link, derp)
| mrweasel wrote:
| In a brief moment in the trailer for the documentary linked
| above there is something that looks like an Ultra 24, 27 or
| 45. That would make it an Intel or AMD based workstation, but
| they reused that cabinet for a lot of models with minor
| variations. I believe they had one with an UltraSparc CPU as
| well.
| oldman_peter wrote:
| I'd like to say Sun SPARCstation Voyager[0], but I have
| nothing on it but the name and its LCD screen. In the trailer
| some UltraSPARCs can be seen, as noted by others
|
| [0] https://www.oldsilicon.com/sparcstation-voyager
| sixdimensional wrote:
| Seeing this news is a nice tribute to Ed Stone, who was one of
| the core project scientists for Voyager and recently passed [1]
| (and all those who work/worked on the program).
|
| I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Stone at a public NASA event
| many years ago. I asked him, perhaps a silly question: "what does
| it feel like to know you built the furthest man-made known object
| in the universe?".
|
| He paused for a moment, after which he responded, with a smile:
| "Pretty darn good".
|
| RIP, Dr. Stone and go Voyager go!
|
| [1] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ed-stone-former-director-of-
| jp...
| yawpitch wrote:
| Not so silly, considering it's almost certainly always going be
| the furthest man-made object in the Universe.
| mlyle wrote:
| I hope not-- it may take a long time, but I hope we laser
| accelerate some probes really fast.
| dmbche wrote:
| Eh - to send it where? Even laser accelerated, even if it
| gets to 0.1c, where is it gonna go?
|
| Edit0:typo
| robin_reala wrote:
| Alpha Centauri. See Breakthrough Starshot and other such
| potential missions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
| dmbche wrote:
| Obviously, no need to answer further, I'm just being
| grumpy I imagine.
|
| Man - why go there? What are we looking to learn?
|
| Do they have the kilometer Gw phased array yet?
|
| The meterwide/gram weight sails?
|
| The chips that weight one gram with comms and cameras and
| all that?
|
| And just to clarify, they can't flip and slow down, so
| it's a 0.15c flyby of alphacentauri, entirely automated.
| So hopefully the code does't fuck up in this alien
| environnement without human help.
|
| What do they expect to learn at that speed and with such
| small sensors? Like a picture of the planet, like we get
| telescopes? I sure wonder the speed at which that's going
| to transmit data.
|
| I'm just seeing "proof or concept" but this is mostly
| concept and no proof.
|
| And if this is "step one" of interstellar travel, what's
| step two?
|
| Edit0: Just reading the wiki this is so absurd
| -atmospheric turbulence is a challenge to deliver te GW
| laserb- so were planning on building a km phased array in
| space to accelerate the swarm. Just this itself is way
| way beyond realistic. Doesn't this breakdown at napkin
| math levels?
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and its code hasn't
| broken.
|
| Construct a stack of starships in orbit and you would be
| able to get a probe there. It's never about the
| technology, it's about whether someone cares enough to
| spend the resources.
| dmbche wrote:
| What do you mean about the starship stack? That's the
| array?
|
| For Voyager, I'll argue that it's mission is much simpler
| (doesn't need to aim forthe position of something 30
| years in the future) and that we keep transmitting to it
| (the sheer distance will limit our involvement as the
| delays between transmissions grows). It's also not going
| at 0.15c, where it needs to do the calcs very quickly.
|
| I'm not sure how easy it would be to make a km wide Gw
| array on Earth, but building and powering it in space
| seems much, much harder. Just harvesting the GW takes 3
| million solar panels. Just getting that to orbit seems
| unlikely. Even with very generous 1kg per panel we get 3
| million kg to put in orbit, or 21 Falcon Heavy at max
| payload, or two years of putting nothing but solar panels
| up. It's so much.
|
| And then how much money is going to make the gram scale
| probe appear?
|
| Edit0: to clarify, the probe will have less time than the
| duration of the blink of an eye to take measurements.
| That's limiting what you can learn AND makes it very hard
| to aim correctly.
| toss1 wrote:
| When you have the means to harvest and beam out a GW in
| space, it is not like the only use for it would be
| sending those probes. Seems like damn useful
| infrastructure for almost anything else. So, we can
| expect the hurdles to be overcome for other purposes as
| well...
|
| Betting against humans making breakthroughs is usually a
| bad bet. As the saying goes: "You can say 'it can't be
| done' all you want, but please stay out of the way of
| those who are doing it."!
| szundi wrote:
| You know the ultimate answer.
|
| Because we can.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Man - why go there? What are we looking to learn?
|
| The how is a much bigger problem than the why. It would
| be great to have some closer sampling of Proxima b, such
| as images, spectroscopy, etc. You won't get much on a
| 0.15c flyby, but you'd get something, hopefully. No room
| for error of course, with a several year round trip for
| commands.
|
| Having some sense of the planet could inform a
| colonization plan that's likely to have even bigger
| problems with the hows rather than the whys.
|
| But the whys are clear. Even if it's not actually
| feasible.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Doesn't this breakdown at napkin math levels?
|
| Only in terms of cost; there's nothing that seems to be
| fundamentally unobtanium here. The question is whether it
| can be come cheap enough to be viable.
| dmbche wrote:
| I think the gram class probes with gram class sails that
| are a meter wide are outside the scope of feasibility
| today and would require unobtanium. Shielding too.
| somenameforme wrote:
| > there's nothing that seems to be fundamentally
| unobtanium here
|
| Don't you think this is begging the question? The entire
| history of humanity is a lengthy series of discoveries
| that people of times past would have little reason to
| think possible, and in some cases are revolutionary
| enough that it would likely have been all but impossible
| for people of times past to even think of them.
|
| Then there's just the boring things, like aspirin. If not
| for the willow tree, it would not exist today. Ancient
| medicine dating back 2400+ years recommended chewing on
| willow bark to treat fever or pain, and indeed they were
| right. Of course we can now easily synthesize it, but
| that's not always a given for every compound or 'thing'
| imaginable, to say the least. For an obvious example,
| see: uranium.
|
| And now factor in how extremely negligible our knowledge
| of anything outside of our own planet is. We've been
| sending probes and rovers to Mars since 1962. We only
| discovered the soil on Mars was relatively moist (2%
| water by weight) in 2013! 50+ years to figure out there's
| water in the soil. And the latest drills can only go a
| couple of inches deep and are scarcely used in any case,
| because they tend to break. It's impossible to know what
| you don't know, but I see every reason to think that it's
| probably quite extensive.
|
| [1] - https://www.space.com/22949-mars-water-discovery-
| curiosity-r...
| mlyle wrote:
| ?? I think you've misread my post.
|
| I'm saying that the fundamental things required in order
| to launch gram-scale interstellar probes don't seem out
| of reach; that largely something close to the
| requirements could be made at great cost today, and
| making a mission practical is mostly about cost
| optimization and economies of scale.
|
| I think largely whether we do it in 50 years comes down
| to whether we've wiped out a lot of our economic output
| by then with strife, and whether we still consider
| exploration worthwhile to spend a lot of money and
| reources on.
| cryptoz wrote:
| A very cynical take. I expect we'll pass it in 20-30 years.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Voyager 1 has had an almost 50 year head start, and it was
| launched with a series of gravitational assists that are
| only possible every few hundred years. There is 0 chance
| anything will catch up to it in the next 50 years, and
| probably for several hundred more years after that, if
| ever.
| Sharlin wrote:
| That's a really pessimistic take. Voyager 1 moves at ~17
| km/s (and slowing down but it doesn't really matter).
| That's on the order of 0.0001 _c_ and indeed just a half
| of Earth's orbital speed, so a part of the year the probe
| is actually _getting closer_ in Earth's frame.
|
| A one-kg nanoprobe attaining 0.001 _c_ would be perfectly
| feasible with today's tech and would overtake Voyager 1
| within a decade. Breakthrough Starshot proposes laser
| sail acceleration of gram-scale probes to > 0.1 _c_ , a
| thousand times faster than V1, and nothing in the design
| requires fundamentally new tech. Such probes would claim
| the distance record in a few weeks of travel, no matter
| whether they're launched twenty or fifty or a hundred
| years from now.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| What scientific return are we getting from a gram sized
| probe moving at 30,000 km per second?
| peterlada wrote:
| Today: almost certainly nothing In a decade: almost
| certainly very little In a century: almost certainly more
| than the Voyager
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Assuming climate change doesn't prevent any kind of
| launch or most further research.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Modern silicon design with mems sensors I suspect could
| do an awful lot with a gram.
|
| Also, at this scale, not much can be done by hand, so you
| can make hundreds of them for not much more cost than
| doing one.
| bpfrh wrote:
| Doesn't modern electronics require massive shielding?
|
| e.g. you would need too much shielding and would go over
| the 1 gram restriction.
| minitoar wrote:
| If you have enough of them you can just lose some
| fraction and still function.
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| Also it may work out that a lighter, faster probe with a
| shorter service life could have a greater effective
| range, if the service life is less sensitive to weight
| changes than the speed is
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And how do you get the data back from these probes? The
| voyagers have antennas that are close to 4 meters in
| diameter and ~25-watt radio transmitters. You aren't
| doing that in a gram, and you aren't powering that in a
| gram either.
| minitoar wrote:
| Just go read the starshot proposal. They address all of
| these issues, some more convincingly than others but they
| have thought it out in great detail.
|
| In short, it's a swarm of gram-scale probes and they work
| together to transmit.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| The claim was that it would always be the furthest man
| made object in the universe. Nothing about it being
| useful or scientific.
| Scarblac wrote:
| If its not useful, it's not going to be launched and
| accelerated that long.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| People do things for shits and giggles all the time.
| SpaceX _literally_ launched a model Tesla for absolutely
| no reason other than advertising both themselves and
| their sister company.
|
| Doubly so if they can now become "the furthest man made
| object". That's _massive_ free marketing.
|
| It may also be exponentially easier to do so in the
| future, lowering the expenditure needed to make it
| happen.
|
| It might not be reasonable right now, but, once again,
| the bar was set at _always_. That is an exceptionally
| high bar with very little reasoning behind it.
| digitallis42 wrote:
| They absolutely had way more of a reason than no reason.
| Za reason for the Tesla launch was that it was the first
| falcon 9 heavy launch, and no company was willing to
| gamble that large of a payload on a untested rocket. So
| they made the best of it with a PR stunt.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| They literally could have sent up anything and it
| certainly wasn't useful, which was GP's _only_ criteria
| for being launched.
| serf wrote:
| >scientific return
|
| that comes after 'someone out there' misinterprets our
| super fast gram probes as weaponry and conquers our world
| for the sake of their own spacecraft safety.
|
| it's ingenious really, let's antagonize a greater power
| into wormhole-bridge hopping over here so we can reverse
| engineer their tech.
|
| /s , hopefully.
| lolc wrote:
| If they are so much as inconvenienced by our probes, they
| are not a greater power but bumbling roboticists like us.
| withinboredom wrote:
| 1 gram at an appreciable amount of c is about as much
| energy as a nuke. Getting hit by a swarm of these while
| on a Sunday drive would fuck you up, no matter how
| powerful you are.
|
| The real reason there isn't a moon colony? Person gets
| fired and loses their shit, starts tossing 1-2 km sized
| rocks down the gravity well and ... we all die.
|
| Throwing shit in space is a sure fire way to piss off any
| species.
| kadoban wrote:
| It would take an insane amount of energy to throw that
| rock.
| withinboredom wrote:
| But you only need one. Maybe two for good measure
| Sharlin wrote:
| If you have enough of them, you get data from Alpha
| Centauri within a human (natural) lifetime. Plus the
| bragging rights, I guess, Starshot is after all a private
| endeavour.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't see a date announced for launch, and I see a lot
| of technology that needs to be invented for this to be
| feasible. How likely is it to happen within the next 10
| years?
|
| I'm just thinking about my old roommate, a space science
| postdoc, who told me about all these cool propulsion
| projects that sounded very feasible. That was--sheesh--20
| years ago, and I keep waiting for any of them to be real.
| krisoft wrote:
| > There is 0 chance anything will catch up to it in the
| next 50 years, and probably for several hundred more
| years after that, if ever.
|
| That is a bit pessimistic. There is this paper [1] by JPL
| and Nasa folks discussing the possibilites of sun-diving
| solar small satelites. They think that speeds of around 7
| AU/year are possible. Voyager 1 is escaping the solar
| system at 3.6 AU/year. With those speeds catching up to
| Voyager 1 withing 50 year would be doable. Realistically
| since we are not quite ready to launch it just yet it is
| more likely we would miss that 50 year window but I feel
| better about our odds in the window beyond 50 but within
| "several hundred years".
|
| 1: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.14917
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Don't forget that sun-diving at high warp speed also
| gives us more time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Ho
| me
|
| But if we are warp capable, then we can definitely catch
| up with V'Ger, I mean Voyager.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%27Ger
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Pictu
| re
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Voyager 1 only gravity boosted at Jupiter and Saturn.
| That's not a particularly special alignment. Doing the
| same thing doesn't need a "grand tour" alignment, which
| happens every almost-two hundred years by the way.
|
| Also it got most of its speed from Jupiter, and we can do
| a gravity assist with Jupiter any year.
|
| And check out this plan for a double Jupiter gravity
| assist. https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2020/eposte
| r/1110.pdf
| Covzire wrote:
| Is the assist multiplicative or additive?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Additive.
| Keyframe wrote:
| nothing in this universe has 0 chance.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| Plugging a USB cable into the back of a monitor on the
| first try without looking is as close as we've ever come
| to zero chance.
| formercoder wrote:
| Third try always
| mistermann wrote:
| The odds do not increase all that much _with_ looking
| either.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| USB-C fixes this, only to replace the problem of
| orientation with the greater specter of alternate mode
| support, or lack thereof. This is why we can't have nice
| things.
| 93po wrote:
| The real life USB C experience has replaced the "which
| side is up" problem with the "is this cheaply made
| garbage electronic device going to charge at all with my
| $80 MacBook USB C charger", which it often does not (and
| instead requires a USB A to USB C charging cable)
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I have also seen these issues and always wondered why
| this happened. There seems to be an issue with the
| tolerances of USB C compared to A that make C more
| susceptible to damage and also dirt and dust.
|
| The main issue seems to be lack of resistors in some
| devices, which leads to USB C not seeing the device to be
| charged as such, as it isn't negotiating the USB-PD part.
| USB A doesn't officially implement a power delivery
| negotiation spec, it's just always on at the charger end,
| with more amps possibly being negotiated if I'm reading
| properly.
|
| People seem to be able to resolve this issue with a daisy
| chain. Devices that usually only work with A to C cables
| might be able to use a C charger connected to a C to A
| (female) cord or A to C adapter, which is then connected
| with a standard A to C cable to the device to be charged.
|
| It's probably easier to keep a USB A charger and A to C
| cable, but hopefully this helps put your mind at ease
| that there is a rational explanation.
|
| https://acroname.com/blog/why-usb-c-connections-
| sometimes-do...
|
| https://plugable.com/blogs/news/understanding-usb-c-
| charging...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C
|
| The Reddit post below actually explains how to work
| around the problem as I mentioned above:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/w1ismo/how
| _co...
| toast0 wrote:
| USB-C only mostly fixes the what side is up problem. I've
| had devices that degraded to only working with the right
| side up. Usually from pocket fluff accumulation that can
| be cleaned out, but still.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| If I understand the spec properly, the cable isn't truly
| symmetrical internally and relies on switching to
| determine which pins are used for which function. It all
| seems needlessly complicated to my reading, and it seems
| like Apple's Lightning connector is superior in these
| respects, although I don't know if it would be capable of
| performing at USB C's USB3/4 speeds and implement all its
| modes, but we're unlikely to get a new connector standard
| anytime soon, possibly a few USB generations at least. By
| then, the use case for USB is likely to be much different
| also, so different design choices are likely to be made
| to respond to future market conditions that are difficult
| for me to predict, but I hypothesize that by then ad hoc
| wireless power delivery and data transfer will be much
| more mature.
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| Another unfortunate blunder resulting from the
| complicated design is that usb C female to usb A male
| adapters are unsafe and prohibited by the usb C spec
| (because they can be used to make unsafe connectors)
|
| You still see those adapters frequently because this
| stupid decision would hobble usb C adoption (since it
| would prevent you from making a usb C peripheral with
| backwards compatibility for usb A using an adapter) so
| manufacturers have largely ignored that part of the spec
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I'm somehow failing to understand the use case you've
| described and I don't think it's your fault. I've seen
| devices with female USB C ports, and they're perfectly
| backward compatible - you either use a C to C cable or A
| to C cable depending on what is on the other end.
|
| I sometimes see nonstandard A to A cables, however,
| possibly for the same reasons you've mentioned above, but
| I think it's usually a cost-saving measure and perhaps
| easier to implement type A female connectors rather than
| mini/micro type B, but I have no experience with
| designing devices, only operating and repairing them.
|
| What is your experience with devices that are backwards
| compatible with an adapter like you describe? Do you have
| an example of one, because I can't think of any, not that
| I doubt they exist.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you have a usb NIC, chances are it has a male plug so
| it can connect directly to a computer without an extra
| cable.
|
| If it has usb A male, it can connect to a large number of
| computers, but nothing from Apple recently. If it has a
| usb c male, it can connect to recent Apple computers but
| has limited ports on other computers and can't connect to
| older computers.
|
| If it has a usb-c and a usb-a male to usb-c female dongle
| (often attached to the little bit of cable between the
| device and the plug), then it will work with everything.
|
| If you clip off the dongle, then you can use it to
| connect usb c male devices to usb-a female ports in lots
| of useful applications. It violates the spec, but it's
| super handy. If you have a usb a male to usb c male
| cable, you can use the forbidden dongle and the allowed
| cable to make a forbidden usb a male to usb a male cable
| which is probably not useful for much.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I appreciate your example of a USB NIC, as I am familiar
| with both USB A and USB C versions of those. I was
| specifically envisioning devices with female ports, but
| out of convenience and convention, most peripherals have
| a built-in/permanment male-terminated cord. Can you think
| of any examples with a female port?
|
| One of my favorite YouTube creators, DIY Perks, made a
| video about converting USB connectors to USB C which is
| very well done, as is their usual standard of quality.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-vFtiDYiIw
| Keyframe wrote:
| Exception that proves the rule! Plugging USB-A on the
| first try equals excalibur out of the stone. Our Arthur
| is out there, somewhere.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Well, you're probably right since it seems like the US
| govt is foaming at the mouth to start ww3 with both
| Russia and China.
| yawpitch wrote:
| I will bet you literally all the money ever printed that we
| don't.
| Sharlin wrote:
| That's not how betting works. How much would you _really_
| bet, your own real money? For example, I'm totally ready
| to take the bet at merely 1:1000 odds. In 30 years, let's
| say, I'd owe you a $100 if a probe hasn't broken V1's
| distance record, and you'd owe me a hundred grand if we
| have. In today's dollars. Should be a no-brainer if you
| really think it's impossible.
| rightbyte wrote:
| It does't work to get fair odds (estimated value 1) when
| the gains are a nice dinner downtown and a loss might be
| financial servitude.
| noduerme wrote:
| One thing's for sure, $100,000 in today's dollars won't
| buy you dinner by the time the bet's resolved.
| playingalong wrote:
| Doesn't the phrase "today's dollars" imply the practical
| value will stay the same?
| netsharc wrote:
| If we're going to worry about inflation, we might as well
| worry about the climate burning up our planet.
|
| Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but the next ~100
| years we'll be bothered trying to have enough food and
| water and killing ~80% (or more) of humans of the planet
| who want our food, water, and shelter from the extreme
| weather that we won't be sending anything to chase the
| Voyagers...
| elzbardico wrote:
| Nah. This is basically the worst of the worst IPCC
| scenarios, highly unlikely but for some reason the
| preferred ones by journalists and self-serving
| politicians as well as big green industry grifters.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Back of the napkin math shows it to be the most likely,
| especially with some of the more recent discoveries in
| regards to water evaporation and co2 emissions.
|
| IPCC is sorely outdated by this point.
| netsharc wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S9sDyooxf4
|
| TL;DW (poorly): Even IPCC scientists are sort of refusing
| to believe pessimistic data.
| almost_usual wrote:
| The only solution is technological advancement.
|
| If humanity doesn't rise to the challenge (degrowth) this
| could happen.
|
| Fortunately there are smart people all over the world
| solving problems everyday and that is likely to continue.
| netsharc wrote:
| As the ancient South Park meme says...
|
| 1. Technological advancement
|
| 2. ?
|
| 3. Climate change fixed
| Sharlin wrote:
| I could take the bet at 1:100 odds too.
| yawpitch wrote:
| And that's not how long term bookmaking works, as you've
| proposed a wager where I am guaranteed to lose at least
| the time value of my money on either outcome, and I'm
| _extremely_ confident I'd lose exactly and only that. But
| I'll happily put down $100 in today's money if a win in
| 30 years returns a 10% profit over inflation, on the
| conditions that the probe must be launched from the
| Earth's surface after the book is made, that it must
| overtake Voyager 1's then distance inside 30 years, and
| that it must be actively transmitting at least one piece
| of meaningful local-condition scientific data back under
| its own power (for validation of ranging purposes, at
| least) at that time.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I will bet you 10 times more to the contrary, literally,
| absolutely :D
| UberFly wrote:
| On our way to where exactly?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| One target would be about 500AU out, where you can use
| the sun as a gravitational lens.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(spacecraft)
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| "Always" is a pretty big leap (I hope).
| chumanak wrote:
| Yes, but it will always be like that
| hinkley wrote:
| That's the major problem with generation ships. Unless you
| have a propulsion lab and scientists on the ship, earth will
| just keep making faster ships and when you arrive at your
| destination you may discover it has been inhabited for
| generations by people who left a hundred years after you did.
|
| The power of procrastination is great.
| financypants wrote:
| I mentioned this point on a HN post a few months ago and
| someone said that the Voyager was launched at a very
| beneficial time, leveraging some gravitational pull of some
| celestial body, so it's unlikely we can just make a faster
| ship and catch up/surpass it.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Is there any reason that a new generation of ships
| couldn't leverage the same (or similar, if not better)
| gravitational pulls that benefited Voyager?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The "Grand Tour" alignment that Voyagers were initially
| intended to take advantage of only happens once every 175
| years (although if the goal is just max speed I don't
| know if favorable conditions happen more often than that)
| guidoism wrote:
| That's just a standard chemical rocket for the initial
| push and then a few gravity assists right?
|
| Couldn't an ion engine with a nuclear reactor providing
| the electricity accelerate more over that period? I'm
| genuinely curious, I don't know the answer.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Even an ion engine needs fuel. We shot out Voyager 1 in
| 1977. It has traversed 47 years of distance.
|
| There has been the talk of solar sails as well, but
| gravity assist propulsion is already so much easier to
| achieve for satellites.
| hinkley wrote:
| If I thought 17 km/s was even half of the fastest we
| would ever go, I'd have to give up a lot of dreams for
| the future. Since I'm not prepared to do so I will stick
| out my proverbial tongue at this assertion.
| somenameforme wrote:
| This gets really interesting, and weird, if we're ever able
| to start making ships capable of approaching relativistic
| rates. You could arrive at the destination after 500 years,
| only to discover that humans colonized it 50,000 years ago.
|
| For those who may not know, the speed of light isn't really
| a speed limit per se. If you have a button that gives you
| an acceleration of 1km/s, nothing stops you from hitting it
| 300,000 times in a row (with the speed of light being
| ~300,000km/s), or even a billion. Instead the entire
| universe begins to distort with distances becoming
| literally physically closer, and with rate of time itself
| also changing (length contraction + time dilation are the
| terms).
|
| It has the interesting implication that if we could ever
| create a ship that "just" accelerates at 1g, you could
| travel essentially anywhere in the universe, even if it's
| billions of light years away, in a single human lifespan!
| [1] So for instance the distance to the closest galaxy,
| Canis Major, is about 25,000 light years. You could get
| there in our 1g ship in less than 20 years. Of course,
| 25,000 years would genuinely have passed in the interim, so
| you get all sorts of fun paradoxes and oddities. And the
| oddities are exponential, so you could travel a billion
| light years in 40 years.
|
| And this isn't just hypothetical or whatever. Time dilation
| plays a major role in many things, like particle
| accelerators. Unstable emergent particles end up 'living'
| for _far_ longer than they should thanks to the fact they
| 're moving at near light speed relative to us, which means
| that time is [relatively] passing for it more slowly than
| for us.
|
| [1] - http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calcula
| tor.htm...
| cdelsolar wrote:
| The nuclear launched manhole cover is likely further
| User23 wrote:
| I'm interested in the biopic about the engineer that fixed
| this. Anyone know anything?
| flextheruler wrote:
| What are the theoretical risks to sending out these beacons...
| our we at all, as a species, significantly increasing the chance
| of another life form more advanced than us discovering us by
| doing this?
|
| If we come into contact with a significantly advanced life form
| it would certainly lead to ineffable destruction.
|
| Deep space probing without the ability to exert any sort of
| defense if discovered seems risky. I know the chances are low but
| what's the ROI on sending this stuff out without being remotely
| prepared for contact. I think another comment was saying the data
| we've collected has mostly just been used to confirm preexisting
| theories. If that's all we're getting out of it I'm apprehensive.
|
| I'm just a layman but I'd feel much better if we can establish
| control, knowledge and dominance of our solar system and its
| celestial bodies first.
|
| I'm genuinely asking not a conspiracy theorist.
| onion2k wrote:
| If an alien species can spot something as tiny as Voyager but
| doesn't notice our activity on Earth which is just a stone's
| throw away, I doubt they're a threat.
|
| If an alien species finds Voyager in 10,000 years and tracks it
| back to our planet, they'll find some interesting remains of
| our civilization.
| shash wrote:
| More like 10,000,000,000 years at least. The closest star is
| 4.26 light years away. At current speeds (~65000 km/h) it'll
| take 40,767,123 years to reach. _IF_ it's going in the right
| direction.
|
| It's doubtful they'll even find the sun in its current phase
| The_Colonel wrote:
| You're off by a couple of magnitudes. Voyager travels the
| distance of one light year in about 18 000 years.
| iamgopal wrote:
| They could invent Tele transportation and Time Machine
| which essentially the same thing.
| onion2k wrote:
| That suggests aliens won't find Voyager until it reaches
| their star system. If that's the case they probably aren't
| an interstellar species, and they'll never find us, or
| visit us. I was assuming they'd detect it while travelling
| through space.
| konschubert wrote:
| Why so pessimistic.
| onion2k wrote:
| The numbers are against us.
| RichardLake wrote:
| The chance of another live form discovering us due to the
| Voyager probes is ~0. Atmospheric changes and EM emissions from
| Earth are both detectable from far longer ranges.
| speedylight wrote:
| From what I understand space is full of errant radio signals
| that are not generated by us, the beacons we send to voyager or
| it to us is most likely indistinguishable from the multitude of
| others in the same region.
|
| I think the idea of an alien race attacking us is sort of a
| catch 22 because if they're able to attack us (technologically
| speaking), then they wouldn't perceive us as a threat because
| we would be insignificant in comparison to their power.
| lukan wrote:
| "From what I understand space is full of errant radio signals
| that are not generated by us"
|
| But stars and other natural sources emit a different radio
| signal than all the things we have on earth, that we transmit
| into space.
| yawpitch wrote:
| How do I put this gently?
|
| Your species is already extinct.
|
| Your species is really just waiting to find out what caused
| that extinction.
|
| That cause, almost certainly, will have been its own actions in
| its own local environment.
|
| Essentially, your species will almost certainly have shit in
| its own backyard, and eventually its mouth, to death.
|
| It will likely do so within the next 100,000 years.
|
| The odds of Voyager, or any, emission or artifact made by your
| species being encountered by another life form capable of all
| of receiving it, recognizing it, understanding it, and
| responding to it in any manner within that timeframe is,
| essentially, zero. Not precisely zero, but near enough.
|
| The odds of that species having malevolent intent and arriving
| in time to do anything but engage in archaeology? Now you're
| reaching actual zero.
|
| Worrying about this particular existential risk isn't just
| premature, it's prenatal.
| thih9 wrote:
| Species go extinct but also evolve. In 100000 years today's
| civilizations might fall but there would still be some carbon
| based lifeforms. Perhaps tiny, furry humans; maybe with a
| dislike for digging up fossil fuels.
| yawpitch wrote:
| Kind of definitionally if it goes extinct it's done
| evolving. And sure, plenty of carbon-based life forms --
| currently all known life forms -- will survive, and
| hopefully whatever does is smart enough to learn from our
| own-goals. It may even be another primate or another
| hominid... what it won't be is us.
| thih9 wrote:
| Note that on a cosmic scale, hominid, primate, or even
| carbon based might count as us. On a human scale, after
| 100000 years it wouldn't be us in any case.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Civilizations will collapse, but self-eradication might be
| quite difficult.
| lolc wrote:
| Get our reproduction cycle to be based on advanced tech.
| Then let society collapse so it doesn't have the tech
| anymore. Will take a few generations still.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| If the could decode it, the Golden Record [1] onboard Voyager
| will point them directly at us, if anyone ever finds it. I
| doubt that's going to happen, simply because of how small the
| spacecraft is and how insanely large the universe is.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
| bertylicious wrote:
| > If we come into contact with a significantly advanced life
| form it would certainly lead to ineffable destruction.
|
| This is such a very human thing to say. Why are you humans
| always projecting your own insecurities onto others like that?
| We've been among you for millennia now and the only ones
| destroying your species are you yourselves.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| Pffft... Says the species that abducts and anal probes their
| cosmic neighbors!
| nativeit wrote:
| Most cosmic neighbors have evolved to enjoy a good firm
| anal probe by way of introduction. We are the weird ones,
| yet again, in our distaste for getting thoroughly probed.
| nativeit wrote:
| You answered your own question, there, Berty.
| asp_hornet wrote:
| One of the theories floated is if an advanced civilisation made
| it to us, they would most likely be so advanced they would see
| us no differently as we would view ants and not even consider
| us if they needed any resources from our planet.
|
| Another thought is the fact that no advanced civilisation has
| ever made it to earth is proof that any intelligent species is
| destined to destroy itself before it can evolve far enough to
| travel the stars.
|
| Both outcomes are pretty bleak
| Filligree wrote:
| Or it could be that inflation never ended and there's a
| rapidly increasing number of vacuum collapse bubbles inside
| it, like ours, in which case approximately every civilisation
| is the first to exist in their bubble.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > Another thought is the fact that no advanced civilisation
| has ever made it to earth is proof that any intelligent
| species is destined to destroy itself before it can evolve
| far enough to travel the stars.
|
| Looking like our planet might prove this one to be pretty
| close to accurate at least in our case, within the next
| hundred years or so. If not from nuclear war then from
| running extremely low of key resources on the planet and
| suffering a massive conventional war over the remaining
| resources.
|
| Freshwater alone seems like it can cause it. We already have
| major cities almost entirely running out of fresh water (see
| Mexico City this year). Western US came worrying close with
| Lake Mead's water level a couple years ago too, but
| thankfully it eventually started raining enough to replenish
| it again.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Looking like our planet might prove this one to be pretty
| close to accurate at least in our case
|
| Sorry, but modern Doomerism needs at least a dozen more
| orders of magnitude on its confidence that we'll all die
| before it can claim any part in Fermi's paradox.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _I know the chances are low but what's the ROI on sending
| this stuff out without being remotely prepared for contact._
|
| In response to the alien threat, this council of nations has
| chosen to activate the XCOM project.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPvbF7bG7lk
| cess11 wrote:
| Why does 'advancement' imply genocidal results?
| mistermann wrote:
| Anthropomorphism.
| Muromec wrote:
| Because of the founding sin of American continent, from where
| said probe was sent during the very overtly genocidical 20th
| century.
| smolder wrote:
| I think we're vastly more likely to destroy ourselves with
| resource depletion as opposed to the paranoid "dark forest"
| outcome from three body problem. I wouldn't be surprised if we
| get to "oh, hey. What's up?" as far as alien communication and
| that's it.
| JackFr wrote:
| What resource's depletion do you imagine is going to do us
| in?
|
| I'm somewhat skeptical of climate change causing a
| civilization ending process, yet I find that vastly more
| likely than us running out of something.
| smolder wrote:
| Breathable air, drinkable water, arable land -- something
| like that which is probably preceded by severe climate
| change and ecological collapse.
| belter wrote:
| They know we are here. Currently in Cosmic terms we are at the
| level of Sentinel Island. A natural reserve to be left
| alone....
| gumby wrote:
| > [are] we at all, as a species, significantly increasing the
| chance of another life form more advanced than us discovering
| us by doing this?
|
| This topic is explored in:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek%3A_The_Motion_Pictur...
| mistermann wrote:
| > If we come into contact with a significantly advanced life
| form it would certainly lead to ineffable destruction.
|
| I would expect an advanced form of life to be nice. Maybe
| humans will aspire to that some day too.
| tzs wrote:
| I'd also expect an advanced form of life to have discovered
| game theory and analyzed potential interaction with other
| civilizations as a sequential game with imperfect information
| (I'm assuming no FTL so nobody has current knowledge of
| anyone else's capabilities).
|
| The results are pretty scary. PBS Space Time had an episode
| on this recently [1] which goes into more detail. Briefly, if
| you put survival of your planet over all else, "destroy
| aliens as soon as you become aware of them" has a better
| outcome for you than "contact them" or "ignore them".
|
| It's the speed of light limit that is the problem with the
| "contact them" option. If they are not nice and go for
| destroying you, which they do by sending some heavy masses at
| you at relativistic speeds, you don't find out about until it
| is too late to launch a counter attack so there's no "mutual
| assured destruction" deterrent like the one that has kept us
| from using civilization ending weapons on Earth.
|
| The Space Time episode does go into possible reasons that
| advanced aliens might not value their own survival so highly
| that the risk of them being destroyed by not picking
| "destroy" is outweighed by the benefits of contact or
| ignoring others.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U
| f6v wrote:
| My way of thinking about it is that a civilization capable of
| interstellar travel has enough energy and resources (which is
| probably the same) to terraform any "free" planet to their
| liking. For all we know, space is mostly devoid of any life. So
| you can build intergalactic empire for 100,000 years and still
| not encounter anyone. I see no point for such advanced species
| to conquer someone. The Dark Forest is an interesting concept
| but seems unlikely.
| demondemidi wrote:
| "speak"
|
| "package"
|
| "touch up"
|
| Odd that the writer called out these words in quotes in the midst
| of metaphors that were more obvious. I missed the article on the
| first read through because the writing was so bad.
|
| Anyway, on second read through: amazing they were able to keep
| teams on this project for nearly five full decades who can still
| debug this old hardware. Amazing longevity. Talk about
| maintenance of a code base. 15 billion miles to push a patch.
| Amazing.
| mrweasel wrote:
| The quality of the build of Voyager and the software is nothing
| short of amazing.
| fukpaywalls2 wrote:
| Voyager 1 was created in an long by gone era where technological
| obsolescence was unheard of.
| tchbnl wrote:
| Or it was specced and engineered for a long life in the
| harshness of outer space. You can't compare it to a 1950s
| fridge.
| kleiba wrote:
| Amazing! I have a feeling this thing is going to keep on trucking
| well into the 2270s...
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Physics agrees (momentum). Information theory (signal vs noise
| floor) would beg to differ with you.
| mnau wrote:
| Voyager is powered by RTG, with half life 87.7 years. It's
| going to run out of energy before that.
| kleiba wrote:
| Ah, right, sorry. I confused it with Voyager 6.
| somat wrote:
| I always joke that NASA should win the nobel prize in engineering
| for their work on the mars rovers. where the punchline is that
| there is no nobel prize for engineering... I didn't say it was a
| good joke.
|
| But the voyager missions... wow. NASA should totally win the
| nobel prize in engineering for them. What an accomplishment.
| westurner wrote:
| An annual Space Prize, for Engineering.
|
| Maybe people with bonuses these days could fund a prize
| committee in perpetuity like Alfred Nobel, who invented dyn _o_
| mite.
| enginoor wrote:
| The Voyager team did win the 1980 Collier Trophy which is the
| nobel prize of aerospace.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collier_Trophy
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Hell yeah!
| torcete wrote:
| So, a memory chip was damaged? And if that is the case, a cosmic
| ray did it?
|
| [..] "Further sleuthing revealed the exact chip causing the
| problem, which allowed them to find a workaround. After the team
| relocated the code to a new location in the FDS, Voyager 1
| finally sent back intelligible data on April 20, 2024"
| mritchie712 wrote:
| map of where Voyager 1 and 2 are currently:
| https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#where_are_they_...
| beezle wrote:
| Someone at NASA/JPL might want to correct this page:
|
| https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-they-now/
|
| which has (as this writing) them "millions" of miles away
| instead of billions.
|
| Interestingly, it was only last July that Vger 2 passed Pioneer
| 10 to become the second furthest probe.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Is there any detailed technical write up as to how various issues
| with the Voyager, over the years have been resolved?
| willcipriano wrote:
| With the speed of light being a hard limit, should be sending out
| more probes like this with more and more advanced sensor tech so
| that our children can see far away things. They will need to know
| where to send the generation ships.
| shultays wrote:
| Voyager 1 was sent using a slingshot that made it possible to
| achieve its speed. It was a rare opportunity during that time
| (I did a quick google but couldn't find how rare it was or when
| we would get such another opportunity)
| collinmanderson wrote:
| "rare planetary alignment occurring once every 175 years"
| according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program
| kgeist wrote:
| >After the team relocated the code to a new location in the FDS,
|
| I wonder what the protocol for sending update requests is. It
| sure must be encrypted? If so, what if the encryption algoritm is
| weak by modern standards, given Voyager 1 is 46 years old, and
| can be reverse engineered somehow? I.e. can someone outside of
| NASA send requests to Voyager to change its code?
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Perhaps it's theoretically possible. But honestly, it's likely
| no one would.
|
| Most people hacking into systems are doing so for financial
| gain or reputational gain. Neither exists here - there's
| especially no positive reputation to be had in hacking
| something 46 years old that likely can't be fixed again after
| you do.
|
| There are plenty of vandals out there who don't care about
| anything, but the probability one of them would have the skills
| and hardware necessary to do this is nil.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Perhaps it's theoretically possible. But honestly, it's
| likely no one would._
|
| > _Neither exists here - there's especially no positive
| reputation to be had in hacking something 46 years old that
| likely can't be fixed again after you do._
|
| This is perhaps the most plainly wrong thing I have read in a
| long time. Being able to claim "I hacked Voyager" is one of
| the most ultimate hacker flexes one could possibly perform.
|
| A long long time ago I read an account (which may have been
| fiction, but had too many details to be casually dismissed)
| on a very private BBS of someone hacking a NASA space probe
| over many months. I think it is ridiculous to assume that
| nobody would try to do this.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Considering people have hacked other space probes, I would
| guarantee there is no encryption on the communications. See,
| e.g.:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cometary_Explore...
|
| Apparently this says no encryption, though I've not read the
| whole thing:
|
| https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/Descanso4--Voyager_n...
| waz0wski wrote:
| > can someone outside of NASA send requests to Voyager to
| change its code?
|
| Unless you've got your own very-very high power transmitters
| and large dishes, you're not communicating with either Voyager
| satellite
|
| "Newer" science & research satellites from the late 2000s
| onward do support a variety of encryption in transit and
| authentication from the ground stations
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > It sure must be encrypted?
|
| I very much doubt it. There are hard physics limitations at
| play. Nasa's Deep Space Network [0] is the only system on Earth
| capable of communicating with the Voyager probes. If an
| attacker managed to secretly construct a 70-meter dish and
| reverse-engineer a poorly-documented 50 year old protocol I
| would only be impressed.
|
| [0]https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-
| communications-...
| cancerboi wrote:
| How did the Voyagers avoid hitting asteroids when exiting the
| solar system? I thought there was a huge cloud of asteroids
| surrounding our solar system.
| tombert wrote:
| I know nothing about astronomy, but aren't the gaps between
| asteroids pretty huge? Like hundreds of thousands of miles?
|
| I would think if they were close they would just clump together
| under gravity.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Space is really really big. The astroids are tiny and not close
| to each other.
| analog31 wrote:
| Even the "dense" asteroid belt isn't all that dense, so the
| actual probability of getting whacked by something is pretty
| low.
| liversage wrote:
| The asteroid belt is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter so
| the Voyagers traveled through this before reaching their first
| mission goal, Jupiter.
| furyofantares wrote:
| You're getting answers about the asteroid belt because you said
| asteroids, but I believe your question is about the Oort cloud
| (comets) since you said surrounding the solar system.
|
| From wikipedia;
|
| > Space probes have yet to reach the area of the Oort cloud.
| Voyager 1, the fastest[60] and farthest[61][62] of the
| interplanetary space probes currently leaving the Solar System,
| will reach the Oort cloud in about 300 years[6][63] and would
| take about 30,000 years to pass through it.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Space has a lot of space.
| Zren wrote:
| https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0996.html
|
| > Leia: Chewie, get up here! We're going into an asteroid
| field! > Han: That's no problem. Just don't hit whatever
| asteroid might be within a hundred thousand kilometres. > Han:
| They're in nice stable orbits too, so it's easy to avoid them.
| > Leia: Okay, fine. We're going into a massive region of
| randomly moving, closely packed, enormous giant space rocks. >
| Han: Gaaaaaah!
| bsder wrote:
| > How did the Voyagers avoid hitting asteroids when exiting the
| solar system? I thought there was a huge cloud of asteroids
| surrounding our solar system.
|
| The same way the Saturn probes went right through the rings and
| didn't hit anything.
|
| Even if it looks like a "cloud" or "ring", that doesn't mean
| that it is "dense". There are _whopping_ distances between
| objects in space.
|
| It is way, way, way more difficult to actually "hit" something
| in space than it is to avoid something.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| The aliens fixed it
| liendolucas wrote:
| How they have achieved this to me is completely dark magic.
| Exotic wizardry. Kudos to the team for bringing it back to life!
| Meantime on planet earth we need to change our phones and
| technology gadgets faster than our underwear.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Some more on official post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40676221
| jazzgott wrote:
| Voyager 1 is expected to shut down around 2025 because its power
| source, the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs), is
| running out of juice. These RTGs have been gradually losing power
| since the spacecraft was launched in 1977. As the power drops,
| Voyager will have to turn off its scientific instruments and
| other systems, eventually going silent after an amazing run.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| It's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHW-RTG
| ck2 wrote:
| Instead of the next billion dollar war machine, let's build a
| railgun on the moon to launch tic-tac sized probes near 1% speed
| of light in all directions (including past voyager 1)
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Great idea probably not feasable. The military even with their
| effectivly unlimited budget recently ended their rail gun
| programs. One of the main reasons being they require too much
| maintenance/unreliable. I doubt the moon will be a place that
| can have effective repair trips.
| ck2 wrote:
| They can build it using bots.
|
| Develop the bots in the deserts. If they can make them move
| about and assemble/repair things in a desert, they can handle
| moon dust.
|
| Granted it's at least a decade long project. But once we've
| got the bots with AI, they never get tired and can keep
| building.
|
| Alternately I guess we can slingshot stuff off the sun like
| the Parker Probe (0.06% speed of light, it's a start)
| Muromec wrote:
| Space tech is byproduct of military research into ICBM, i.e.
| nuking the hell out of everyone all at once. Since the cold war
| end, it's all defunded and not cool. Now the hype is back, so
| is the funding.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| The ability of NASA to keep this system alive is remarkable. They
| had an expected expiration on Voyager 1 and this far exceeds it.
| If we could only get such reliability in stuff we bought today.
| :(
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Great, now it's back on track to return in a few centuries as a
| destructive sentient cloud entity and threaten civilisation.
| Thanks a lot NASA.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| Its mind blowingly shocking to me, how are they updating the
| software from so far away? how are they fixing the issues?
| hgyjnbdet wrote:
| I remember reading an article years ago about how programmed, and
| what with, the voyager missions. Really with I could find it.
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