After Silence, NASA's Voyager Finally Phones Home - With a Device Unused Since 1981 (mashable.com)
- Reference: 0175388417
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/03/2037238/after-silence-nasas-voyager-finally-phones-home---with-a-device-unused-since-1981
- Source link: https://mashable.com/article/nasa-voyager-1-spacecraft
The probe "shut off its main radio transmitter for communicating with mission control..."
> Voyager's problem began on October 16, when flight controllers sent the robotic explorer a somewhat routine command to turn on a heater. Two days later, when NASA expected to receive a response from the spacecraft, the team learned something tripped Voyager's fault protection system, which turned off its X-band transmitter. By October 19, communication had altogether stopped.
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> The flight team was not optimistic. However, Voyager 1 was equipped with a backup that relies on a different, albeit significantly fainter, frequency. No one knew if the second radio transmitter could still work, given the aging spacecraft's extreme distance.
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> Days later, engineers with the Deep Space Network, a system of three enormous radio dish arrays on Earth, found the signal whispering back over the S-band transmitter. The device hadn't been used since 1981, according to NASA.
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> "The team is now working to gather information that will help them figure out what happened and return Voyager 1 to normal operations," NASA said in a recent [2]mission update .
It's been more than 12 years since Voyager entered interstellar space, the article points out. And interstellar space "is a high-radiation environment that nothing human-made has ever flown in before.
"That means the only thing the teams running the old probes can count on are surprises."
[1] https://mashable.com/article/nasa-voyager-1-spacecraft
[2] https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/10/28/after-pause-nasas-voyager-1-communicating-with-mission-team/
Take note, kids... (Score:2)
That is what actually solid, redundant and reliable engineering looks like.
Re: (Score:2)
It is worth noting that today we have the ability to make components even more reliable than then.
Not that we always do. Profit, you know.
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Indeed. But we usually do not. And on system design level, I somewhat doubt we can even replicate that feat.
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Speaking to your original comment, it has more to do with who is doing it versus what is possible with current tech. And there is more than a half century of experience to build on.
So I was thinking more if you had a team today that was similar to the one that launched "v'ger" in terms of dedication, aptitude, attitude and moxie and gave them the tools available today they would accomplish much more. And the project leader is key.
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And I doubt that. The Voyager team was exceptional in every regard. You cannot create teams like that. You can just try and get lucky. And the second thing is that you will have a lot more problems finding people for it today.
Re: Take note, kids... (Score:1)
Us Carbon Units like the money ðY
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There's still the matter of power, though. For this particular type of mission, I don't think we can do much better than an ASRG, which has the same power output as an RTG on 1/4 the plutonium... but it's still plutonium, with the same half-life, so you'd probably want to go with the full mass and waste a lot of power up front just to (partially) overcome the half-life issues and still have a decent power supply running things a century from now.
You're going to want a nice laser system on there for a high
Re: (Score:2)
> Personally, I think we ought to be doing it just because we can, the science return would be awesome, and it's unlikely to be a thing that causes infighting. And it ought to be a 'swing around the target star and return home' mission so our great-great-grandchildren can recover it if they choose to do so.
Uh, you do realize that after 45 years, the Voyagers are roughly 25 billion km from earth, right?
And that the distance to Proxima Centauri is 40 TRILLION km. So we could expect (with current rocket technology) a 72000 year (1600*45) one way trip, or a 144000 year round trip to the nearest target star. That would be a lot more than our "great-great-grandchildren).
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Bah, just toss it out there, it's good enough. We can just fix it later with some patches!
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Indeed. Unless you cannot because a) it already got hacked and it is too late or b) it already blew up or c) you do not actually have the incentives, funds or expertise to do that fix. Like, I don't know, Crowdstrike, MS Exchange online, countless ransomware incidentes, the recent self-destroying Intel CPUs, etc.
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At some point, engineering boils down to psychology rather than specific knowledge. We were in a position to make something like that at the time. Maybe we could do better today, or maybe we couldn't even equal it if we tried our best.
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LOL, no. Not unless you would consider moving into an area with lots of stray gunfire as an "energy abundant environment." High radiation means lots of bit flips and random faults that are not trivial to guard against.
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If that radiation is generally directional and you're able to convert the impacts to heat, maybe you could harness some useful energy across a thermal gradient with a simple radiator pointed towards the area of least radiation.
Outside the heliosphere Voyager gets hit by more radiation, which would imply the heliosphere would be a 'cold spot' behind the probe, wouldn't it? Or does it randomly redirect the ISM so that the surface of the heliosphere is indistinguishable from any other bit of space? I'd expec
Brings a smile to my face (Score:5, Insightful)
All of us here have seen good, bad and mediocre software and hardware development over the last 40+ years. We've even gotten used to seemingly-endless bugs as evidence of ever-progressing functions. Identify, correct, come out with the next rev.
But when I think of the mindset that developed spacecraft for NASA in the 60s & 70s, they never had that luxury. It (mostly) had to be right the first time. Very limited chance to correct it later. Roadside service calls not an option.
So when I hear about a device on Voyager that has been off for 40+ years and is suddenly needed, and it still works , I'm like OMFG. Engineers toiled over that to make sure it was rock solid. It was personal to them. It was dedication, intellectual rigor and pride.
It's rather uplifting.
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I get similar feelings watching some brilliant people reverse-engineer and repair Apollo-era electronics including the Apollo Guidance Computer. On YouTube CuriousMarc has been documenting much of this. Fantastic stuff. There's a video of a real AGC running original code, controlling a lunar lander simulator, performing what it thinks is a real landing. So cool. Smart people then, smart people now.
I get similar feelings watching the mars rovers continue to perform above and beyond expectations. And the
4x farther out than Pluto's max distance to Earth (Score:1)
Pluto, forever a full planet, is 4.67 billion miles away from Earth at the largest.
[1]https://www.space.com/18566-pl... [space.com]
So the NASA Voyager is 4 times farther than Pluto.
[1] https://www.space.com/18566-pluto-distance.html
Definitions (Score:2, Troll)
Terms like 'Planet' and 'interstellar space' are subjective.
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> Pluto, forever a full planet
Nope. And if you weren't emotionally attached to that word you'd acknowledge that it became scientifically useless for classifying bodies like Pluto once we figured out how many almost identical neighbours it has.
Why not argue for Ceres as well?