[HN Gopher] The first interstellar software update: The hack tha...
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The first interstellar software update: The hack that saved Voyager
1 [video]
Author : daemonologist
Score : 99 points
Date : 2025-10-12 20:31 UTC (11 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| daemonologist wrote:
| An excellent video from Scott Manley about last year's fix of the
| Voyager 1 computer. Not related to the recent thruster fix.
|
| Original title "The First Interstellar Software Update - The
| Insane Hack That Saved Voyager 1"; this combined with the [video]
| tag was too long, so I removed the "number + adjective" in
| accordance with the HN guidelines.
| daemonologist wrote:
| See related:
|
| - from David Cummings at JPL:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43732632
|
| - from Bruce Waggoner at JPL:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42385393
|
| - Ars article from the time of the fix:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40155293
|
| - CNN article from when communication was lost:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38640900
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _We Diagnosed and Fixed the 2023 Voyager 1 Anomaly from 15B
| Miles Away [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43732632 - April 2025
| (18 comments)
|
| _Saving Voyager 1 [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42385393 - Dec 2024 (13
| comments)
|
| _How NASA Repaired Voyager 1 from 15B Miles Away_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40155293 - April 2024
| (56 comments)
|
| _Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38640900 - Dec 2023 (608
| comments)
| quotemstr wrote:
| The earlier Galileo hack was also impressive. The high gain
| antenna (necessary for its high speed data link) got stuck trying
| to unfurl and so the whole mission had to rely on the low-gain,
| low-speed backup antenna --- which topped out at a glorious speed
| of ~10 bits per second.
|
| "The Galileo mission operations concept is undergoing substantial
| redesign, necessitated by the deployment failure of the High Gain
| Antenna, while the spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter. The new
| design applies state-of-the-art technology and processes to
| increase the telemetry rate available through the Low Gain
| Antenna and to increase the information density of the telemetry.
| This paper describes the mission planning process being developed
| as part of this redesign. Principal topics include a brief
| description of the new mission concept and anticipated science
| return (these have been covered more extensively in earlier
| papers), identification of key drivers on the mission planning
| process, a description of the process and its implementation
| schedule, a discussion of the application of automated mission
| planning tool to the process, and a status report on mission
| planning work to date. Galileo enhancements include extensive
| reprogramming of on-board computers and substantial hard ware and
| software upgrades for the Deep Space Network (DSN). The principal
| mode of operation will be onboard recording of science data
| followed by extended playback periods. A variety of techniques
| will be used to compress and edit the data both before recording
| and during playback. A highly-compressed real-time science data
| stream will also be important. The telemetry rate will be
| increased using advanced coding techniques and advanced
| receivers. Galileo mission planning for orbital operations now
| involves partitioning of several scarce resources. Particularly
| difficult are division of the telemetry among the many users
| (eleven instruments, radio science, engineering monitoring, and
| navigation) and allocation of space on the tape recorder at each
| of the ten satellite encounters. The planning process is
| complicated by uncertainty in forecast performance of the DSN
| modifications and the non-deterministic nature of the new data
| compression schemes. Key mission planning steps include
| quantifying resource or capabilities to be allocated,
| prioritizing science observations and estimating resource needs
| for each, working inter-and intra-orbit trades of these resources
| among the Project elements, and planning real-time science
| activity. The first major mission planning activity, a high
| level, orbit-by-orbit allocation of resources among science
| objectives, has already been completed; and results are
| illustrated in the paper. To make efficient use of limited
| resources, Galileo mission planning will rely on automated
| mission planning tools capable of dealing with interactions among
| time-varying downlink capability, real-time science and
| engineering data transmission, and playback of recorded data. A
| new generic mission planning tool is being adapted for this
| purpose."
|
| https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994smog.symp..279G/abstra...
| antonvs wrote:
| It was technically "interstellar", but given its actual position
| - still inside the Oort Cloud, for example - it's a bit
| misleading.
|
| It'd still take another 70+ thousand years for it to reach
| another star, if it was even heading in the optimal direction for
| that. That makes it less than 0.07% of the way to the nearest
| star. At interstellar scales, it's basically still on Earth's
| surface.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Still impressive to do with those latencies. Plus, the Voyager
| team got very lucky --- if a different memory bank had failed,
| recovery might not have been possible.
| antonvs wrote:
| I agree it was impressive.
|
| My objection to using the word "interstellar" here is that it
| gives the impression that Voyager is much further away from
| Earth and the solar system than it really is.
| Insanity wrote:
| Eh, I agree with you but humans can't really visualize /
| comprehend these distances regardless. It's just "very far
| away"
| 8note wrote:
| id have gone with "extrastellar"
|
| its not so far to be between two stars, but its far
| enough from our star, at least past the firewall
| locusofself wrote:
| perhaps "extrasolar" if we want to be extra pedantic
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "at least past the firewall"
|
| what do you mean by this???? also where I can study these
| stuff
| snitch182 wrote:
| Its past the influence of our sun. At least as measured
| by the on board tec of the time. Sort of out in the void
| between the stars but at these distances just barely out.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > what do you mean by this????
|
| https://www.wionews.com/photos/why-firewall-protects-our-
| sol...
|
| It's where incoming charged particles and plasma from the
| rest of the universe collide with the solar wind - on one
| side the "wind" (charged particles emitted by the sun)
| heading away from our sun and pushing everything away and
| on the other incoming particles where our wind isn't
| strong enough anymore to overpower them. The firewall is
| the "boundary". It's not literally a wall of fire, it's
| not literally wind, it's not literally pushing away all
| other particles (some have energies that can overcome the
| solar wind and some aren't charged), and it's not a
| discrete boundary but more a region of space.
|
| Space is filled with euphemistic language to try to help
| build mental models of reality that we actually have 0
| experience with and can't really observe but kind of act
| like things we do know intuitively.
|
| > also where I can study these stuff
|
| Well I got this link by googling "solar firewall" and
| it's literally the first link. Improving your self
| empowerment and willpower to look up trivially accessible
| information yourself is step #1. There's also a small up
| and coming website called Wikipedia that I've heard
| contains information you can go read and contains links
| to dig deep even further. There's also plenty of YouTube
| personalities that devote their channel to "these stuff"
| that can give you intro-level perspectives as they target
| a lay audience (eg Neil deGrasse Tyson).
| mkl wrote:
| I think this was extrasolar, not interstellar.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Reminds me of the pen that saved the Apollo 11 astronauts:
| https://luxurylaunches.com/auctions/apollo-11-broken-switch-...
| kabdib wrote:
| Henry S F Cooper wrote a wonderful account of debugging OS race
| condition on the Magellan (Venus) orbiter in _The Evening Star_
| modo__game wrote:
| Mahmoud
| lisper wrote:
| Two similar incidents from my career:
|
| https://github.com/rongarret/gll-mag-patch/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZK0tW8EhQ&t=2340s
|
| (Also recounted in https://www.corecursive.com/lisp-in-space-
| with-ron-garret/)
| qingcharles wrote:
| It's really frustrating when you need to fix old code and the
| dev environment is gone. Some of that stuff just isn't
| replaceable, or it's a whole bunch of extra work, as you had to
| do to get back to square one.
|
| It isn't 100% clear from the Voyager documentaries how much of
| the dev environments were destroyed/lost between projects being
| canceled. I tried to get the Voyager source but it isn't
| classified as a government record that would be subject to
| FOIA, which is frustrating. (nothing to do with security, just
| IP)
| jpitz wrote:
| In my experience, pretty much anything relating to
| spaceflight is gonna be lumped under ITAR and restricted from
| general disclosure.
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