Sophisticated != good, necessarily. I trust solid-state electronics (or whatever those old tracking systems are using) as long as our military does. What I wou

Sophisticated != good, necessarily. I trust solid-state electronics (or whatever those old tracking systems are using) as long as our military does. What I would be more worried about is components deteriorating. However, I'll take an older but less error prone unit over a newer more sophisticated but more error prone unit any day. Voyager 1 was older and less sophisticated. Launched September 5, 1977 and still going, reporting useful data back at least as recently as December 2004. Mars Climate Orbiter was newer and more sophisticated. Launched December 11, 1998 and crashed September 23, 1999. Software failure.