Voyager 1 is back online: NASA spacecraft returns data from all 4 instruments

sixdimensional

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...

neilfrndes

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/

somat

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.

jazzgott

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.

gnabgib

Discussion yesterday 45 points https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40676221

kgeist

>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?

mrweasel

The quality of the build of Voyager and the software is nothing short of amazing.

torcete

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"

cancerboi

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.

mritchie712

map of where Voyager 1 and 2 are currently: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#where_are_they_...

liendolucas

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

[dupe]

Some more on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40676221

demondemidi

"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.

ngcc_hk

No emulator for these is really sad. That meant we never knew what happen when they decide to reprogram both of them for longer and maintain by remote debugging.

This is one of the few production remote operating computer … and open source it and done an emulation so we can help (or just look) … and even if we want to we cannot hack it from earth. Safe with us.

kumarvvr

Is there any detailed technical write up as to how various issues with the Voyager, over the years have been resolved?

willcipriano

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.

Sparkyte

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. :(

ck2

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)

hgyjnbdet

I remember reading an article years ago about how programmed, and what with, the voyager missions. Really with I could find it.

icemelt8

Its mind blowingly shocking to me, how are they updating the software from so far away? how are they fixing the issues?

kleiba

Amazing! I have a feeling this thing is going to keep on trucking well into the 2270s...

Vaslo

Was hoping it was starting the process to become vger

nnurmanov

Awesome!

fukpaywalls2

Voyager 1 was created in an long by gone era where technological obsolescence was unheard of.

arisAlexis

The aliens fixed it

Sporktacular

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.

Dalewyn

Hell yeah!

flextheruler

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.